Tuesday 17-03-21 Six Nations Round-Up

And so the Six Nations comes to an end for another year. It’s a great tournament and I really enjoy watching it. This year, highlights for me were Scotland beating Ireland and Wales. Their appetite and attacking play has really changed in the last two years or so, and it is a joy to watch. The way they physically threw themselves into the game against Wales had me worried / looking forward to the match against England. Eventually though, that fixture turned out to be a bit of a damp squib, meaning that England dominated the match from the start, and the end result was never in doubt. Scotland’s final game against Italy yesterday saw them keep a clean sheet against Italy, but there were points where the old style of game play surfaced again, where they passed back and weren’t able to go forward. Maybe that was due to Italy’s forwards, but it was a bit concerning.

The game between Wales and Ireland last week was a brilliant, breath-taking game, quite literally. TW was holding her breath, she was so excited…! I could have done with a lie-down in a dark room to calm down afterwards.

There were two outstanding games which I think will be talked about for years to come; the first is of course the England - Italy game, or “ruckgate” as it will be forever known. Basically, Italy didn’t want to come to Twickenham and get beaten by England on England’s terms, and so they refused to commit men to the ruck area. This completely confounded England, because they had their routine all sorted: take the ball in, get tackled, go to ground, ruck over, recycle, take the ball in… How could England progress without a vital phase of their game? Unfortunately it took England much longer than it should have done to adapt to the game Italy were trying to play, but they still won through.

There have been rumblings that the laws of the game need to change to prevent teams playing like that in future, but I think it was a high-risk ploy, and if you play like that you risk losing massively; so it is self-managing. It was a fascinating match to watch though.

The other match which stretched the bounds of the game was the France-Wales match, which took 20 minutes of extra time to play a scrum. So the game took 100 minutes to play. Unfortunately at 80 minutes Wales were ahead, and by the time the clock showed 100 minutes, France had taken that lead. I think Wales should have won, so it was a pity, from my point of view, that the scrum had to be reset so many times.
It was though an exhilarating competition all round, with some brilliant moments and some awesome contests, and I can’t wait until next February comes around…