THE BLOG IS BACK –SIX NATIONS SUMMARY

I was chatting to a friend on the phone the other morning.

He’s a writer and our conversation got around to what each of us had written recently, and that’s when it struck me that I hadn’t put finger to keyboard since… well, since before Santa came down our chimneys and left us with those preposterous credit card bills.

My excuse is that I’ve been spending the past three and a half months hunkered down, trying to avoid the apocalyptic weather we’ve had to endure here in southern Andalucía.

I kid you not, you don’t get weather like this anywhere, even in Ireland.

The Costa Del Sol has become El Costa Del Rain (lluvia). Real Estators claim that the most you will get, if you’re unlucky, is forty days of rain in a year, and we’ve had them all in one hit.

Which – you could point out – would be the perfect time to get on with a bit of writing:  no sun, no beach, no sun-kissed early evening beers. No distractions… none at all.

Truth be told, I’ve just been demotivated. Truer truth be told… I’ve just been lazy.

I have a contract to complete the memoir of my German golfer slash-man-of-many-other dodgy-activities. Sadly, he passed away in December from cancer, but another interested party worked with him during the last three months of his life and obtained enough data for me to finish the story. Said anonymous party has contacts in the publishing industry who are apparently falling over each other to get their hands on the completed manuscript, and what have I done? Absolutely nothing.

I’m supposed to have completed the first draft by the end of March. At this rate, next March, maybe?

And so, instead of applying myself to this, I’m writing a blog. But writing something is better than writing nothing (you may, of course, not agree with this) but hopefully it will get me into a more productive groove.

Back in the dim and distant mists of time, when I taught at St. John’s School, as the duty teacher on a Sunday evening, I would often have the misfortune to find myself in the chapel for Evensong. The obligation for delivering the sermon fell to the local Catholic priest, Father Kilgariff. I liked Father Kilgariff, and despite the fact that I am an Irishman who kicks with the other foot, we got on extremely well. His great passion was horse racing, and I knew enough about the runners and riders to pleasantly while away a vacant hour or so in his company.

But his Sunday evening sermons were anything but uplifting, and frequently reduced children and even some members of staff to tears, because the Good Father was not one to bite the bullet when it came to the facts of life… or death, to more precise.

Picture the scene, if you will: around eighty boarders, some of whom who had been lucky enough to have spent the weekend basking in the comfort of their homes. Others who’d had to endure a weekend of dull activities organised by bored duty teachers (punctuated with the occasional punch-up, if they were fortunate). Nothing to look forward to but a cold dormitory, castigation for undone homework, and a week that stretched ahead with all the promised mirth of a Morrissey song.

‘Well, good evening children,’ he would go. ‘Now, I have nothing at all prepared to talk to you about tonight, so I’m going to tell you all about one of my parishioners, old Mrs Mary McKeever, who passed away this morning and is now in a better place, having lost a long, painful battle with cancer.’

And on and on he would drone for thirty minutes or so, until there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Depressing doesn’t even touch it.

And why do I mention this?

Because Father Kilgariff talked about what he knew best, other than horse racing – death and suffering – and this is precisely what I am going to do in this blog; except that in my case, it’s Rugby.

I wrote for Rugby World for almost ten years, so I figure that I’m as qualified to talk about Rugby as Father Kilgariff was to talk about death and suffering.

So here we go. If Rugby doesn’t float your proverbial, you may like to press the delete button now.

The world’s greatest annual sporting event has just been completed, and France are the worthy winners of the Six Nations (6N).

I was lucky enough to be in Rome last weekend for the Italy V Ireland game, and we managed to catch most of the last two Round Five matches in a packed Irish bar near our city centre hotel.

To summarise my take on it, I’m going to give you my thoughts on each of the participants… a snapshot of how they fared, and what we might expect from them between now and the ’27 World Cup.

IRELAND:

Let’s start with Ireland, which is a jolly good place to start, because they kicked off the tournament in Dublin as joint favourites, and finishing third in a six-horse race was a bitter pill for the players, coaches and of course, the supporters to swallow.

No country in the 6N era has lifted the Championship trophy on three consecutive occasions, and a 27-42 defeat in Dublin by France nailed the coffin lid shut on that particular dream. Ireland started well with comfortable wins over England and Scotland, but the wheels started to come off in Cardiff when Wales discovered that stopping Ireland from scoring wasn’t actually all that difficult, and found themselves in their first competitive game for longer than most sheep could remember.

But let’s go back to the England game. At 27-10 with five minutes to go, Ireland switched off and allowed England to score two soft tries. I remember thinking that this could well come back to bite. And when Ireland failed to collect a try bonus point in Cardiff, the France game became a must win fixture. It was The Slam or… well, nothing… or nothing apart from the Triple Crown. This was because even a bonus point against Wales and a losing one against France would not have been enough to secure that third title, as the French comfortably outscored us.

So, why did Ireland misfire? And where are they now? In my opinion, Ireland’s shortcomings and the absence of Head Coach Andy Farrell are not unrelated. The attack had become predictable. The cutting edge that we had become accustomed to seeing slice defences open for the past three years has gone missing, that rapier being replaced by the blunt instrument of the big boys attempting to blunder over from five metres. And that proved to be an unproductive bludgeon when you count the number of times Ireland were held up over the opposition line, which was more times than Butch Cassidy held up banks.

Secondly, post-Sexton questions have not been answered. Sam Prendergast shows promise, but his brilliance can also be Ireland’s undoing – witness the Thomas Ramos interception. On another day, a slight fade on the pass sees Robbie Henshaw go under the posts, 13-42 becomes 20-35, and the game isn’t yet a dead rubber. Prendergast’s kicking and flashes of brilliance shade him slightly ahead of Jack Crowley, whose misaligned boot was accountable for 13 of the points that Ireland left on the field in Rome. In my opinion, this is the key issue, and will it be solved before the next World Cup? I’m not so sure of that.

And then there’s Dad’s Army: Conor Murray, Cain Healy and Pater O’Mahony have been wonderful servants for Irish rugby, but who’s coming through to replace them?

Is Ireland a team in risk (like Wales and poor old Mary McKeever) of terminal decline, or are they a team in transition?

In the fog of disappointment, it is worth remembering two things: Ireland won the 2025 Triple Crown, and their playing record for the past three season is played 15, won 13, lost 2. No other country – even France – has eclipsed that.

If I have a concern over Irish rugby, it is the predominance of Leinster. At the moment, with 11 Leinster players starting in Rome (16 in the squad) Ireland equates to Club Leinster plus a few others. Naturally, this has advantages, but I question whether the health barometer of Irish rugby is best served with such a narrow, and potentially brittle base. You have to go back to ’23 to find any silverware in the Leinster trophy cabinet, and that was only the URC Cup. Oh… there’s the URC Irish Shield, but that’s a bit like winning the Premiership Cup. And I wouldn’t put money on Leinster winning the European Champions Cup this season because that will be an all-French party.

Future prospects: unless the above is addressed, 2^nd/3^rd in the next two 6N and bye bye again in the World Cup quarter-finals.

Best Championship player: Dan Sheehan

FRANCE.

A quick summary: worthy winners, and easily the best team in the tournament. They have very few weaknesses, which prompts the question: how on earth did England manage to beat them? The answer to that is that they effectively beat themselves with four crucial handling errors which led to squandered try-scoring opportunities,. But France are on course to achieve what Ireland failed to do – win a hattrick of Championships. Furthermore, I would put them as favourites for the ’27 World Cup, with only South Africa mounting a challenge to their level of brutal physicality.

Future prospects: Grand Slam winners in ’26, 6N champions in ’27, and RWC winners in ’27.

Best Championship player: Louis Bielle-Biarrey (with le Petit General a close second)

ENGLAND:

It’s difficult to know what to make of England. On the positive side, they finished second by virtue of bonus points and a vastly superior points difference to Ireland. The fact that they ran riot against both Italy and Wales – whereas Ireland failed to dominate in either encounter – would perhaps suggest the dawning of an age of ambition for England for the first time since the Underwood-brothers-slash-Guscott took to the pitch. But one of England’s perennial problems is that, despite having by far the largest pool of talented players to choose from, they have unfailingly chosen the wrong coach, the wrong players, and then either discarded them when they had a poor game (Caden Murley) or made them a fixture in the side when they should have been replaced (Ugo Monye).

Coupled with that, buried deep in the DNA of England Rugby, is the notion that to win a scrum penalty is a cause for major celebration, and that territory still matters as much as it did in the Battle of The Somme. If England had failed to score from the final play against France, and had Finn Russell been permitted to take the final kick of the game from the correct spot (the try was scored in line with the five-metre line, and not one metre from touch) England would have been nought from three. But we’re talking ifs and buts… as Sir Geoffrey once said… if me auntie had a pair of balls, she would be me uncle.

Ifs and buts… as Sir Geoffrey once said… if me auntie had a pair of balls, she would be me uncle.

Future prospects: You can never tell whether England will march onwards, as they did under “Don’t Call me Clive”, or march backwards, as they did under Eddie the Jap. I predict they will finish 2^nd in the 6N in both ’26 & ’27, and reach the RWC semi-finals, with the benefit of their accustomed favourable draw, and that in itself can be deemed as progress.

Best Championship player: Fin Smith

SCOTLAND.

It may be a cliché but it’s true: Scotland continue to falter to deceive (yes… that’s not a typo). If there were an award for the most attractive-slash-entertaining rugby played in the tournament, they would have almost certainly have won it. But entertaining rugby and victory are infrequent bedfellows, and in any case – unlike Father Kilgariff – Scotland could never maintain their entertainment for sufficient time to beat stern opponents.

Future prospects: As usual: 4th place in the 6N in ’26 & ’27, and an exit in the pool stages of the ’27 RWC.

Best Championship player: Blair Kinghorn

ITALY:

As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote (of a little girl) When she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad, she was horrid. I cannot think of a better summary for the current state of Italian rugby. Despite beating Wales, pushing Ireland right to the wire, and being in the contest with the other three teams for a goodly portion of each match, this season must be regarded as a disappointment for the Italians. They have some wonderful players, they have a huge amount of pace out wide, and they have the physicality to compete at the top level, but their defensive systems, game management and discipline constantly lets them down.

Future prospects: Wooden Spoon contestants (as usual) in both the ’26 & ’27, and an exit in the pool stages of the ’27 RWC.

Best Championship player: Monty Ioane

WALES:

Despite threatening to cause a major upset when leading 18-10 against Ireland, Wales are still stalled in the doldrums. There is stagnation in Welsh rugby like there has never been in any era for any country in the competition before. Predictably, they lost every game, they lost their coach, and humiliation in the final game at the hands of England will have been the bitterest pill of all to swallow. In Dafydd Jenkins and Jac Morgan lies a glimmer of renaissance optimism, but there is little else for Wales to be positive about, other than the fact that their set piece functioned well enough. Enough said.

Future prospects: Unless a miracle occurs, Wooden Spoon contestants in both the ’26 & ’27 and an early bath in the ’27 RWC.

Best Championship player: Jac Morgan

Well amigos, that’s about it. I’ve put finger to keyboard and Maverick (Writer) has re-engaged.

Hasta pronto, Chic@s!