Men's Six Nations 2026, Week Four

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 that big win just a one-off and could Wales sneak this?

Any thoughts Wales might win seemed to be thrown out in the first fifteen minutes when Ireland scored a fast try and were denied a second, correctly, by the eagle-eye of the TMO and a tiny knock on. The Welsh defence tried but looked ineffective, ok at forcing another phase or two, but not really able to go further and apply proper pressure. After that knock on it was like a switch had been flipped and suddenly the Welsh defence was aggressive and the Irish attack was stuttering. There were handling errors, passes to no one, plus Welsh steals and turnover penalties. On the back of this, the Welsh attack mounted a fairly extended period of pressure that the Irish contained, ending with Carré held up over the line. He would return later on the end of a pass and charge in from outside the 22, after Ireland had scored their second. 12-10 at half time.

The second half was, in terms of the scoring, pretty much a carbon copy of the first. Ireland scored a couple of tries, unconverted, Wales one, so it was 24-17 with five to go. A penalty to Ireland stretched it out to 27-17 and snatched the losing bonus point away. However, Wales ended with more entries into the 22 than Ireland, which is good and bad. Their attack is capable of making chances, but not finishing them. That’s definitely something that needs work. Many of those entries didn’t really threaten to break the try line. However, Addams bombed what looked like a golden opportunity and a smart chip from Edwards bounced horribly for two Welsh players, nicely for the final Irish defender, and denied them what could easily have been another try.

Yes, this another loss for Wales. The first 15 minutes and a short brain fade around 65 minutes arguably cost them the game. However, for the other 65 minutes the quality of the Welsh defence reminded me of the Gatland 1.0 years, the years when Wales would win championships and grand slams. The attack is not yet that good but it’s definitely improving as well. What we’re starting to see is, yes some quality players, but a core team emerging too. There’s still competition for places I think but, as with France (although nowhere near as good yet) there’s starting to be a team you expect to see. And they’re starting to deliver the plan. It’s not polished yet, but it’s visibly coming together, week-by-week, and those faint flickers of hope are becoming a real fire.

Scotland v France

There are two, intertwined, questions at the start of this match. Can Scotland, who stole a win in Cardiff two weeks ago to sort of stop their history of post-England slumps, recover and find a win over the French, who have looked to be in a class of their own this year. On the flip side of that, can the French find another bonus point victory and wrap up the championship a week early, leaving them to focus on winning the grand slam next week?

Scotland started brightly, scoring a nice try, taking Graham to the top of Scotland’s try scoring list, and putting France behind for the first all championship. Then the referee entered the fray. A series of dubious decisions, all against the French really kept Scotland in it when they possibly shouldn’t have been. LBB was clearly checked a couple of steps after kicking the ball by Russell sticking his arse out. You’re not allowed to do that, but Gus didn’t see it, even on the replay after both the AR and TMO brought it to his attention. Two odd scrum penalties too. That appeared to spill into French frustration and ill-discipline, and a warning for too many penalties that were all outside the 22, which is unusual. In the interim, Dupont produced a bit of magic to strip the ball from Tuipulotu in a one-on-one tackle that led to a try for LBB in the corner, LBB also kicked through for Attisogbe. Scotland produced two more tries, a nicely executed set play off a lineout and a ground out try after many phases close to the line. The half ended 19-14 which, with the way the whistle went, is pretty fair. Galthié needs to reinstil some discipline, which we know this team are capable of, and get his team back to playing the way they want. A bonus point victory is still there for them if they can tidy things up.

The second half started with Scotland scoring a soft try which triggered Galthié to make a load of changes. Sadly Gus hadn’t changed his glasses and continued to penalise France for things that I couldn’t see, and not penalise Scotland. He warned France for cumulative penalties including one given away (wrongly) inside the Scottish 22 ffs. Apparently when Russell is standing mingled amongst the players in the ruck, he can’t be hit… Bollocks. And when French players enter from behind the back foot and bind to the hindmost French player that’s in at the side because they’re not parallel to the side lines (that hasn’t been what the laws say for years) because they’re avoiding a Scottish player lying on the wrong side. That penalty really needs to go the other way…

France may not have played well enough to win this, I’m not sure. Any time they tried to do something and build momentum out went Gus' arm, usually for a penalty that only he could see. The two yellow cards would not have been given by any other referee for three penalties outside the 22, in one case outside the half and not penalties. He should be ashamed.

It was noticeable that in their earlier games, France have always had a load of players around to hoover up tapped down ball from kicks. In this game I’m not sure if they were deliberately trying something new or they were just not on song, but that cluster of players was not there, I don’t think even once. Which makes me suspect it was deliberate. If so, probably a mistake.

Somehow, probably because Gus started refereeing both sides in the last 15 minutes when the game was out of reach, France scored the two tries they needed for their bonus point. This is important because it puts France on top of the table still. If France and Scotland win next week, with the same bonus points, they’ll win thanks to their massive points difference. They’re also two points ahead of Ireland, so if they win the Triple Crown, France can actually win the championship with any sort of win.

France kept scoring once Gus didn’t blow them out of the contest. It went from two French tries to six in the last fifteen minutes! 50-40 final score. I said a few paragraphs ago I didn’t know if France could have won if Gus hadn’t whistled them out of the game. The last few minutes shows that actually they could.

But congratulations to Scotland for playing to the whistle and making the final weekend interesting.

Italy v England

Can Italy finally beat England?

I’m going to start by talking about the referee again. I don’t think he was biased, but in the first half scrums ended mostly in penalties, and these went pretty randomly in either direction. Dave Flatman, who knows a fair bit about being a test level prop reckons that Ramos held the phases of setting the scrum for a long time, so on bind it was a lottery based on how the props reacted and how they happened to hit based on that. The cadence after crouch did seem slow to me, I’ll take his word for the rest.

England started appearing to have changed their tactics. There was a lot more passing and offloading, a lot less kicking. Not zero kicks to compete, and obviously longer kicks to touch, to clear and to push Italy back, but the number of shorter kicks was vastly lower than we’ve seen for over a year. As the game went on, that started to change, and England were kicking as soon as they reached halfway. The passing was far from perfect, especially as the pressure rose, but it was good enough to score a couple of nice tries. Italy took a nice penalty and scored a beautiful try when the English defence seemingly ignored Menoncello and he punished them for making such a stupid mistake. Although it was 12-10 to England, and the low score feels like an accurate reflection of the game. In part that was because England's discipline was still pretty poor but their defence for the first couple of phases after a set piece was well organised and managed to stifle many Italian possessions. This led to very skewed possession stats, but as we’re increasingly seeing, they’re about as useful as a chocolate kettle. England managed more entries into the Italian 22, Italy scored more efficiently once they entered. The penalty count ended 10-8 against England, but that was seven penalties conceded by England when they were in possession, which is crazy. Italy’s penalty count was 4-4, which is much nicer.

The scrums in the second half were not perfect, but quite a bit better. I think both sets of front rows spent half time reviewing the way Ramos was calling the sequence and that helped them get it right more often. Interestingly, perhaps predictably, in the scrums that developed into anything Italy were dominant. Sadly whoever was talking to the rest of the players emphasised breakdown work, and England really started to dominate in that area.

Italy lost a player to the sin bin for cynically slapping the ball down while lying on the ground. No complaints. During that period, England scored three points from the immediate penalty. Italy scored six, a couple of penalties, one for a high tackle that England were lucky wasn’t upgraded to red. Italy were back within two points and all the pressure was on England. No sooner were Italy back to full strength than Itoje was carded for slapping the ball out of the 9’s hands. Italy couldn’t take advantage of the two man advantage but struck from a kick, Ioane ran, passed to Menoncello, passed to Marin and an easy try under the posts. A five point lead and six minutes to go…

England kicked much more in the second half and absolutely obviously Italy had prepared for this. They won so much ball from this, as well as from their own kicking game. By eye, I’d guess about 75% of the kicks came back in blue hands, one way or another.

England mounted an attack off a pilfer, but the Italian scrambled hard in defence, made a tackle and the English player was pinged for not releasing. A kick to touch, a safe lineout, a maul that inched forward for a few seconds and a gentle tap into touch. Rome erupted and the commentators were silent to let the joy speak for itself.

England looked better, particularly when they could get on the front foot and play the ball through the hands. But Italy worked out a way to contain and even prevent that. When England reverted to their short-range kicking game Italy were all over it.

Happy Coaches

1. Quesada. First ever victory over England. That’s huge. And Italy went out, adapted defensively twice, adapted to the referee, played the offensive strategy they’d planned and it all worked. Sure, there were errors, but they were the sorts of things that come from having 15 people running around, getting tired and trying to do things at the edge of their physical limits, not making bad decisions and falling out of the plan, getting frustrated and so on.
2. Townsend. After losing to Italy there were serious doubts about his future. Now, although it’s unlikely, Scotland can win this year’s M6N. They could be destroyed by Ireland and his jobs safe until next December. And whilst I think the ref gave Scotland the game, that won’t matter to him.
3. Third equal Tandy, Farrell and Galthié. Yes, this is cheating a bit but I can’t separate them. Tandy will be happy with the improvement that Wales showed from Scotland, and that with a bit more luck they could have won this match, in Dublin. Farrell will be happy with a win, but Wales really made Ireland work for it, much more than England did in the previous game, and some of the frailties that France exploited, Wales exposed. After Scotland’s performance can they win the Triple Crown? Galthié had a lot to be unhappy about, especially in the first 65 minutes, both with his team and with the referee. If they hadn’t scored four tries in the last fifteen minutes he’d be fifth, but the way they kept playing and reduced the points difference, that just lifts him up to equal with the other two.

6. Borthwick. He's lost to Italy. England are in fifth. They’re travelling to Paris who are going to be hurting and looking to grind a broken England into the dust. England have been bad before, but this time they came in as a top three side, off a great run last year, and all the media “you don’t become a bad team overnight” dialogue is looking increasingly hollow. Maybe it’s true, but it’s no longer overnight, it’s now over a month…

Looking Ahead

• Ireland v Scotland. The winner takes the Triple Crown. In principle they could win the championship, but after the way England played in Italy, it’s hard to imagine them winning in Paris.
• Wales v Italy. Although Wales are improving, I can’t help wishing we’d played Italy first and were facing England next week. However, there’s a vague hope that Italy will party all week and we can ambush them! Otherwise, I think Italy will win, and I’m hoping for another improvement from the Welsh.
• France v England. After England’s last three games, it’s hard to see how they can get up to defeat a French side that will be hurting after their defeat. Stranger things have happened of course, like Scotland's victory today, but France have to be really off their game and England have to improve by leaps and bounds. They got a bit better in two weeks, getting a lot better in one seems like a huge ask.