The Nations Championship 2026, Week Two

 Carrying on the trend I started last week, I'm going to rank the teams, and indirectly their coaches, in how well I think they did. As last week, this will be based on a combination of their performance, and the expectation of their performance. So, for example, Italy are widely expected to lose, but if they go out and make the All Blacks work, they'll get a higher rating than if England scrape to a win over Fiji, who they are expected to beat. (I'm writing this preamble on Friday, before any of the games have been played, I might look very silly if both the AB and England put 100 on their opponents.)

1. Scotland Yes they lost, but against South Africa in South Africa, they were meant to lose. With five minutes to go Scotland were taking two bonus points from this game, four tries and within seven points, until the Boks stole a try, very much against the run of play, to take away that second point. But this team faced up to the might and main of the Boks, largely defended successfully, and also found ways to attack successfully, and to structure attacks. Their set piece went well, against the Boks no less, and whilst this result would see them knocked out of a world cup, it was also a great result in the wider context of the game. Rassie has said, since the match, he views Scotland as a top-four side now, and whilst I take most of what he says with a shovel full of salt, that comment feels earnt. England fans, when they moan, will complain that this was a weaker SA side than England faced last week, but they went down by 14 points, fought back to parity, went down by 21 and almost fought back to parity, before conceding a late try. The penultimate phase of action was Scotland trying to score to get the losing bp back (they lost the ball, the final phase was SA kicking the ball out). Last week England barely put up any resistance or offence. Big difference. 
2. France Les Bleus were not perfect, in particular they suffered badly during the yellow card period, but the team bounced back. The card should, in my opinion, not really irritate the coaches that much, it was more of a hit to the shoulder that slid up than a reckless tackle, and whilst it was rightly adjudged card-worthy, it wasn’t a “bad” one. The Ntamack at 10, Jalibert at 15 experiment worked just fine. I’m sure that, with a full squad available they’ll go for other choices, but Jalibert at fullback is definitely an option for them in the future. Finally, and possibly justifying the normal July selection policy, Galthié started the bigger stars, and replaced them with the lesser ones. With some obvious absentees (Ramos, LBB, Dupont) this team wouldn’t have looked out of place for a M6N match. However, the replacements were definitely sharper and fought back from 21-12 down at half time to score 30 unanswered points, before conceding a try late to let Australia salvage a bonus point. Hungrier? Fitter? Not sure. But definitely better on the day. However, Galthié should be happy with the way his team overcame his first half difficulties and put the Wallabies away as well as how the wider squad players stepped up.
3. South Africa The Boks won this match, but they were meant to. That’s OK. But they had to dig deep to beat Scotland and deny them a losing bonus point. Rassie made a batch of changes, and whilst he might not make that many changes late in the RWC, the four rounds of knockout matches probably means injuries and the chances of the team in the final (assuming they make it), being the same as the team in that round of 16 match is remote. Rassie will be reasonably happy but, whilst I have heaped praise upon Scotland for showing up and remaining in the match for the full 80 minutes, they also exposed weaknesses in the systems that South Africa uses. Can the likes of New Zealand, France and Ireland exploit them? Maybe. Scotland have certainly shown a way. Nothing to panic about, but some things to think over, in a workmanlike victory over a very good Scottish side.
4. Argentina Los Pumas needed to bounce back after last week’s loss to Scotland and, whilst the opening 20 minutes would have been worrying, they took control in the next 40 and ran out comfortable winners. If it were just job done, a win, they’d be lower down, but that middle 40 minutes, where they were in complete control was probably the prettiest rugby of the weekend, New Zealand after Italy went down to 14 being a close second. And the fact that Wales bounced back and stopped them running the score out reflects well on Wales, yes, but also highlights just how well Argentina were playing in that period. The fact that Wales are still rebuilding and flew from Wales to Argentina during the week stops me putting them any higher up. Argentina were meant to win, and ultimately did so, comfortably.
5. New Zealand The All Blacks were not as sharp as last week. Some of that was a bounce back from Menincello and Brex who were poor last week and caused havoc this week. Some of it was a general lack of precision: poor handling, inaccurate passes, dropped balls and the like. Some of that was caused by Italian pressure, some by unforced errors. In the midst of all that Jordan ran in a hat trick to become the All Blacks' leading try scorer, 50 tries in 56 games, among seven in total, although they only started flowing freely after a harsh red card. However, I think those errors will, perversely, be a good thing in Rennie's mind. Everyone will know that wasn’t good enough, despite a comfortable win, and he’ll be able to start working on the things that went wrong. In the grand scheme of things, the All Blacks don’t have many games for Rennie to sort things out before they’re probably facing South Africa in a Round of 16 match in the MRWC next year. Having a game like this now gives him, and the players, things to work on, areas to improve with plenty of time for those changes to be implemented. Better now than in twelve months time when it’s that much harder to implement the changes in time.
6. England It pains me to put England here, and honestly without the permanent red card to the Fijian 9, they might have been higher. There is an old adage that you can only play the team that you’re facing. England used their set piece to bully Fiji and push them around the field. That let them score tries, and look good doing so, but I think they flattered to deceive a bit. Nevertheless, they have seemingly found their mojo, at least against Fiji. Whilst I’m saying less than complimentary things about England, and the scoreline would suggest that they took their foot off the gas, they actually ended up with Marcus Smith playing at 9 for half an hour in a very rejigged back line and still kept scoring. Yes, against an increasingly fatigued Fiji rather than a full-strength top-four team, but it was still better than we’ve seen from them in some time. The problem is, I didn't see anything to suggest England can do this against a team that can fight back. I don't know why Fiji weren't up for the fight, but they clearly weren't. Kudos to England for racking up the points against them but that's what it was.
7. Italy Yes, Italy lost, and in the end by a lot, but until the red card they were causing all kinds of problems to everyone except Jordan. Even after that, unlike Australia, they showed some pride and kept playing, trying to make it hard for their opponents, even though giving the AB extra space is always a dangerous proposition. But this was the Italy of the M6N: pride, skill, passion and grit. They made New Zealand work for every point, and when they had equal numbers on the pitch they made them look ordinary. 
8. Wales The scoreboard says that Wales were much closer than Italy, and if you look at when the tries were scored it would suggest that Wales never gave up. That’s sort of true, and you can argue that they should be above Italy, but I’m putting them under because for 40 minutes, 20 minutes either side of halftime, Argentina were in almost complete control. After an opening 20 minutes that was tit-for-tat, 14-14, Argentina burst into life, scoring three tries, and somehow not scoring a fourth, which took the game out of reach. Wales deserve credit for taking confidence from denying them that fourth try, fighting their way back and scoring last. But the game was lost. This is probably the last position where the coach will regard the outcome with equanimity. Wales were meant to lose against a much better ranked team, plus a long flight during the week. Wales had a poor 40 minutes, and there’s quite a lot to work on, but given how long Tandy has been in charge that's ok. Unlike England last week, and like both Scotland and Italy above them, Japan below them, this team demonstrated spirit and resilience. Skill, decision-making and cohesion can improve over time but I don’t think I’ve seen a senior team develop that willingness to play for each other without serious changes in personnel before - just to be clear, that's a dig at what I think England need to do, not at Wales.
9. Ireland The Irish had what, on paper, looks like a decent win. But given they barely travelled whilst Japan made the trek from home to New South Wales, and then took until the 80th minute to really stretch their lead, that was a poor performance. Compare what England did to Fiji, after travelling home from South Africa, to what Ireland did to Japan, after the Japanese had travelled a similar distance, at least before the red card to Fiji. Now, all the teams play differently, Japan play a much more spoiling game, Fiji a much more flowing game, but Ireland should have performed better than they did. 
10. Japan The Brave Blossoms lived up to the brave part of their name. Honestly, I’m not sure why they agreed to move this game to Newcastle (NSW, not Tyne and Wear), it felt close enough until the try in the last minute that if they were playing in Japan the result might have been reversed, although playing away the result never really felt in doubt. But turning up and trying, being brave, counts for something. They need more to be genuinely competitive, but this was a match, certainly outside of Japan, that they were meant to lose, and they nearly didn’t. Unlike Scotland, who are much higher up, Japan never truly looked competitive with their much more highly ranked opponents. Brave, but not really threatening. 
11. Australia It feels harsh putting Australia this low down, particularly based on their first half performance. How do you go from a first half lead to almost at the bottom of this sort of list? Simple. You have that sort of second half. Australia essentially conceded as many points in the second half as they did against Ireland last week, or the AB did against France last week for that matter. And they didn’t score a single point in reply during that period, a try in the last few moments when France were relaxing with the game already gone. I’ve talked above about how Italy kept making a nuisance of themselves and making NZ work to score, how Japan were brave and did the same. The Wallabies just rolled over and capitulated, despite their lead, and that pushes you way down the rankings. I don't normally place much reliance on tackle% as a stat, but the Wallabies in the second half tackled at 62%. Ntamack, who for all his qualities is not a great tackler, completed 80% of his tackles. If you're being out-tackled by their flyhalf, you have serious issues!
12. Fiji Fiji got battered. Their forwards were outclassed and the old adage about it being the forwards decide who win matches, the backs decide by how match was brutally demonstrated on the back of that. The Fijian backs hardly ever saw the ball and that meant the fun we saw last week against Wales was absent. That lack of anything pins Fiji to the bottom of the list.

Looking Ahead

Next week sees the final round of matches in the July window.
The matches will be

• New Zealand v Ireland 0810 BST
• Japan v France 0940 BST
• Australia v Italy 1110 BST
• Fiji v Scotland 1410 BST
• South Africa v Wales 1640 BST
• Argentina v England 2010 BST
  Underlined teams are my predictions to win.