Six Nations back with a bang

Gregor Townsends injury-depleted squad must travel to London and Paris during the Six Nations. Pic: SNS/Bill Murray

This season has been billed as the most open competition but that is not obviously true. There are probably only three teams who can win it, Italy certainly can’t while Scotland and France could do so but almost certainly won’t. Les Bleus play the best two teams, England and Ireland, away from home. Gregor Townsend’s injury-depleted squad must travel to London and Paris, where many years of failure have created their own mental logjam.

The opening weekend is all important and many will point to the final match that day, England against Ireland, as the decisive one in the entire tournament. Welsh fans in particular will take issue with this and the venerable Old Lady never ceases to spring a surprise two, as Eddie Jones found to his cost last season. And with so much at stake, England and Ireland will knock such lumps out of each other in Dublin that they could both easily lose to France and Scotland respectively the following weekend.

Italy appear to have two opportunities to cause a shock, their first and last matches, against Scotland at Murrayfield, a ground that holds no fears for them, and against France in Rome, especially if Les Bleus have a couple of face-saving wins under their belt.

Ireland boast the best squad allied to the best coach – it is a formidable combination. They will start as odds-on favourites for the title and rightly so but just how comfortably that coat sits on their shoulders will go some way to deciding this championship. Jones knows the pressures that come with being the biggest beast in the jungle and the England coach has been gleefully reminding everyone who will listen that Ireland are firm favourites.

Every Six Nations tournament is the same in some respects, seven weeks, 15 Tests, a slew of points and the same number of talking points with a pontification of pundits doing most of the yacking, at least when Jones pauses to take in air. But every campaign offers something unique.

Last year the campaign was dominated by tries, tries and tries, 78 in all, a record avalanche of scores, 28 more than a decade ago in 2008 although these things are cyclical. The tournament twice racked up 75 tries in the early years of the millennium when England were in their pomp and scoring most of them.

I am guessing things will be a lot tighter this time, defences much improved, narrow, nervy margins of victory, especially with little to choose between many of the teams involved.

I also suspect we’ll get plenty of red cards for tackles that would barely have merited a penalty just a few years ago. The recent death of a Samoan player after a blow to the head, coming on top of three young French players dying from rugby related injuries in 2018, means the cries to make the game safer have risen to an irresistible clamour.

It is easier said than done. The law trial in England’s Championship Cup, introducing  a lower tackle height around the armpits, was brought to an early end last week because instances of concussion had risen, sharply.

It was all to do with body shape – players rarely go into contact upright, almost always bent at the waist, leading with their head.

World Rugby will continue its crackdown on any contact deemed remotely dangerous and, on those odd occasions when cards prove the decisive ingredient in a crucial result, everyone else, players, coaches and fans alike, will just have to suck it up. We can only hope that everyone keeps their head and a sense of proportion.

The Six Nations is all about sport, rather than a matter of life and death. At least that is our eternal hope.