Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

I don’t normally do a review of the tournament. Typically, after a week or two you get to see the teams locked in to a kind of stream, and you can predict the results from there on. There might be the odd upset but that’s it. So, if you looked at week one, Italy had arrived after beating Scotland, France and England were awesome and Le Crunch was going to decide the championship and the Grand Slam. Ireland were definitely past it. Then Ireland staggered past Italy, but the Italian scrum destroyed the Irish scrum, and you could rack that up to the Aviva factor. But Scotland demolished England. And everything we thought we knew in advance was thrown out of the window. This year’s M6N feels more like a series of overlapping character arcs, so let’s look at it that way, in finishing order. France : The French started with a bang, a perfect half of rugby against Ireland and everything went downhill from there! That’s harsh, even in their two worst performances France were pretty damn goo...

Fairly unusually all of these games are of interest, at least potentially, to the neutral average punter and not just fans of the various teams and the tragics. The victor of Ireland v Scotland will win the Triple Crown and might win the Six Nations. Then, if Italy win, it’s their first time winning three games in a single tournament. If Wales win with a bonus point they can consign England to last place, any win breaks their three year Six Nations losing streak. There are neutrals who probably want any of those outcomes just about equally. In the final match, depending on the exact result of the first one, a French victory, maybe with a bonus point, wins them the Six Nations for this year, and a big win possibly consigns England to a wooden spoon. The Games Scotland v Ireland After ripping up the script and putting 50 points on France last week, can Scotland back it up and beat Ireland to win the Triple Crown and potentially the Six Nations? For the first 15 minutes or so, each entr...

Coming in to this weekend France have one hand on the trophy, a bonus point win in Scotland and it’s all over, although they’ll be aiming for le grand chelem next week should that happen. Ireland can keep their hopes of the title alive with a bonus point win over Wales, which would see Scotland and Ireland facing off for the Triple Crown next week. Borthwick has wielded the axe liberally, the England side travelling to Rome has no fewer than 12 changes from the side that got thrashed by Ireland. The real question is do they have a new plan? This Italian side are not going to get bullied like the Welsh did in week one, and are good enough to take the English attacking system away from them. The Games Ireland v Wales An Ireland side buoyed by smashing England and playing at home against a Wales team growing in confidence and starting to build good combinations, unearth genuine talent that will form the nucleus of a team for years to come. Ireland are in decline, there’s no doubt, was t...