Women's Six Nations 2024, Week Five

Super Saturday is here. There are quite a few questions this year. Can Wales win a game and do better than the men? Can they avoid the wooden spoon? Who will finish third and not only play in WX1 but guarantee a place at next year’s World Cup? (The other three teams can still make it, but the team that finishes third will qualify today.)

The Matches

Wales v Italy

The match was played at The Principality Stadium as part of a huge day of Welsh rugby, four matches in total. While I think this is a great thing in general, the women’s fixtures have been packing out the Arm's Park and the same crowd (actually a somewhat larger one) is lost in the Principality, which is a bit of a shame.

This was a nervy match, it’s not right to say that neither side wanted to win, they both tried but the shortcomings that have been on display throughout the championship haunted both sides. The Welsh pack were superior, although far from faultless, the Italian backs were superior but the Welsh defence contained and turned them over.

The Welsh had possession and territory to burn but, again, struggled to cross the try line. The Italians looked dangerous for a phase or two, but couldn’t sustain it much beyond that unless they won good set piece ball and could get the ball quickly away from the forwards and strike, but the dominance of the Welsh forwards meant that was really rare.

It’s all too easy to look at the mistakes made by both sides (my memory snags on those made by the women in red most readily of course) and a howler made by the ref, and while that’s true it’s not the whole story. For every mistake there were two or three moments of brilliance. That’s not good enough for the best teams, the best players, where you’d hope for the odd missed tackle and maybe one other mistake in the whole game, but it’s a start.

Wales ground out a narrow victory, once again proving the old adage that it’s the forwards who decide who wins, the back decide by how much. I’m not sure how much was relief, how much joy, but when the final whistle went, Cunningham buried his head in his hands and wept.

You hear “the coach has lost the dressing room” bandied around as one of those sports clichés. While Cunningham was being interviewed, his teammates mobbed him to show their support. I hope the WRU look and see that, see the good things that Wales have done this year and not just the results.

Ireland v Scotland

This was a game of two halves due in no small part to what was technically a shower I guess, at least in terms of duration, but it hammered down so hard I wasn’t sure if it was rain or snow, it obstructed the vision that much. That made the ball incredibly slippery and, to a neutral like me, a bit of a comedy of errors.

In the second half the ball and the grass were drier; the handling and the general rugby improved. Scotland played better structured rugby but Ireland scraped and took their chances better. Although this might sound like sour grapes, I’m honestly not sure how either of them beat Wales, certainly not playing like this!

In the end the Irish ground out a win. I’m not sure they actually deserved it, and there were definitely points where Scotland could have won or drawn but just didn’t take the points. Their loss. Congratulations to Ireland.

France v England

This might have been a much better match with a better refereeing team. England do not need the ref giving them 14 points in the first half, one following a kick and a really stupid piece of French play but it should never have got to that kick, I counted two or three English knocks on that the ref just ignored before the ball was passed back to the kicker. Likewise a try was awarded for something that even Brian Moore said wasn’t a try for trying to place the ball three times instead of landing and placing it immediately. A start where the ref ignored England offside and playing the 9 before she’d lifted the ball as well… really not good.

Later the ref and TMO correctly ruled Bourdon Sansus offside when it looked like she might have scored a try. You can imagine how the crowd reacted to that!

France applied pressure to England, slowed their attack down nearly all of the time which was good to see. Their attack was fluid and dangerous as well.

All of that changed early in the second half when the French prop was shown a red card. The French continued to show willing when they had the ball, and in fairness they had a lot of ball, and the crowd got behind them, but the English almost always had an extra player and could snuff it out. On the occasions they couldn’t do that directly, they could keep on making another tackle until the French made a mistake. In fact, after a really high scoring first half (with some referee assistance) the French had so much ball that the score in the second half was 7-7.

It’s one of those unanswerable questions really. I don’t think the French reacted badly to the bad refereeing, I can’t really say the same for me, although at least my abuse was limited to shouting the correct call at the TV rather than sending threats on social media and saying I think the ref had a terrible game here. But take out the 14 points that the ref gifted the English directly, what are the knock on effects on morale for both sides? France definitely showed enough to challenge England, despite the referee. A bit more rub of the green with the whistle and a victory is not out of the question.

Happy Coaches

Cunningham

I’m going to put Cunningham first, just because of how he reacted, and then how his team reacted to finally winning a game. Too little, too late to be meaningful in the grand scheme of things, but a great confidence boost at long last. The journey is not complete, but the spine of the team that started with basically no caps between them have worked together and visibly improved game on game.

Bemand

Coming third for Ireland is huge, qualifying for the World Cup, WXV1 but also bouncing back after that mauling by England last week. Ireland have issues but he should be happy with this performance.

Mitchell

He will have things to work on, especially only scoring seven points against a 14 woman France in the whole of the second half. But a third Grand Slam in a row, a much prettier attack and a stingy defence. Lots of positives.

Mignot and Ortiz

I must admit, I thought long and hard about this, but just as Wales are rebuilding, so are France. It’s not quite as noticeable, because it’s not quite as much of the spine, but the Bourdon and Sansus pairing at 9, arguably the best two scrum halves in the women’s game, has gone, well half gone, and the replacement isn’t as good. She’s not bad, but she’s not as good. Trémoulière has gone, and while her main replacement has more experience than George for Wales, her inexperience showed at times. Her back up is pretty new. There were a sprinkling of really young players making really naive mistakes in other positions too.

This match was stolen and destroyed early as a contest by some poor refereeing decisions, so poor that Brian Moore was showing sympathy for the French! But they’ll be happy on reflection that the team didn’t crumble in the face of adversity. With WXV1 and next year’s W6N to come before the World Cup they must feel they’re going in the right direction.

Easson and Ranieri

I’m finding it hard to separate these two, largely because what I have to say is very similar. I guess Italy were less “in control” against Wales than Scotland were against Ireland, but they were both in the lead with five minutes to go and still lost. Long term this is a bigger potential loss for Scotland, they’ve lost automatic qualification for the World Cup too. However, in the immediate term they’ll be equally unhappy.

Looking Ahead

As last year there will be some warm up games and WXV once again. England, France and Ireland will play in WXV1 with the top three teams from The Pacific Four tournament. That’s likely to be NZ, Canada and Australia, with the USA sliding into WXV2.

Scotland and Italy are guaranteed to play in WXV2, Wales and Spain have a playoff match, the winner plays in WXV2. The winners of the Africa and Asia tournaments also play in WXV2.

The loser of the Wales v Spain playoff, The Netherlands (second place in the European shadow W6N), runners up from Asia and Africa plus the winners and runners-up from the Oceania Championship (this is effectively a shadow Pacific Four) all play in WXV3.

Playing in WXV2 is important - five of the six teams in WXV1 have already qualified for the 2025 World Cup, four of them as semi-finalists in the 2021 finals. It seems likely that the sixth team there will also qualify by right, assuming NZ and Canada both qualify and the Pacific Four spot goes to the highest placed team not already qualified. In that case, the teams in WXV2 will qualify. (It can get a bit more complicated, but essentially playing in WXV1 or WXV2 means you’re playing in the World Cup.)

England and New Zealand remain the teams to beat. France and Canada seem to be challengers for the top spot too, but perhaps they need everything to go right at the moment. That’s not to say by next autumn this will be the case, but that’s how it looks right now. There is a pool of Ireland, Scotland, Italy and Wales in that order currently, with Spain and The Netherlands, Australia and USA to be worked in - positions currently unknown. I’d guess Australia near or at the top, but I really can’t rank the others.

I think this will be a fun WXV and mark the build up to a really competitive World Cup.