Team of the 6N

Unlike last year, when winning the grand slam gave me an almost all Welsh team of the competition, this year there's more of a mixture. That is, in part, because most of the teams chopped and changed a number of players and there's a bit of a bias to those that impressed against everyone. It is also because Ireland had bits that worked really well - line out, BOD - and players that really didn't click - ROG - and a few where their players were good but others were better overall.

Like last time, I'll do this in chunks.

Fullback - Lee Byrne, absolutely no doubt. He made about 2 mistakes all tournament, ran gorgeous attacking lines, caught every ball and kicked sensibly as well as running back bad kicks.

Wings - This is a harder call. Williams was expected to be a wizard and at times was, but he wasn't the same twinkling feet as last week. Médard, Malzieu and Heymans all deserve a mention, except for that debacle against England. Tommy Bowe outplayed Williams on the day, but didn't really shine throughout. Halfpenny had a storming start, but then didn't get picked for the last two games. Sackey looked good in an England side when it didn't fire, but seemed to become anonymous the rest of the time. Malzieu and Williams, get the nod, just.

Centres - BOD is as nailed in as Byrne in the 15 shirt. Shanklin, Flutey, Roberts, and maybe if Byrne hadn't limped off Henson are the contenders for the other shirt. Henson looked wonderful but only played 90 minutes in the centres. Ireland and France changed too much. Flutey looked better as the rest of the side got better, which makes me wonder how he would do in a tough game. Shanklin played more minutes, Roberts played in 12... but I think Shanklin just edges it.

Half backs - Stephen Jones is nailed on in 10. ROG was too inconsistent and he's too shaky to defend his channel well. No one else controlled the games well enough or played enough to get a look in. At 9 O'Leary was good, but not quite there. Phillips was solid and played throughout. England's scrum halves were largely anonymous except for yellow cards. Mike Blair seems to be a commentator's favourite, but didn't shine to my mind. Stringer probably looked the best, but played off the bench. Phillips I think just edges it - for his partnership with Jones and because he's often an 80 minute player which is rare at 9 these days.

Back row - Parese of course. Dusautoir of course. Martyn Williams of course. Powell, Worsley, Ryan Jones are all unlucky here, but those three shone throughout.

Second Row - Paul O'Connell is a shoe-in here. Ireland's line out never faltered and attacked the others, and it's most due to POC. DOC was looking good for the role until he got a yellow card and couldn't keep his mind on the job under pressure. Up, to my mind, steps Wyn Jones who was close against POC several times, good the rest of the time and adds ball carrying to the mix. The other line outs tended to stutter, scrums didn't dominate and ball carrying was dull by and large.

Props - tough call here. No side was consistently dominant at the scrum, but Italy, Wales' first choice and England all get a shout here. Gethin Jenkins never looked flustered and made some spectacular tackles above the call of duty, so he gets one slot. I think Califano just gets the other slot. White and Jones to the bench.

Hooker - Really has to be Flannery for his throwing at the lineout and his partnership with POC. Mears is unlucky - his throwing was good, his hooking was good and around the park he's better than Flannery but that relationship with POC just edges Flannery in. Mears on the bench could be devestating in the last 20-30 minutes.

Wales 15 - 17 Ireland

Congratulations to Ireland on their second grand slam ever. And despite finishing fourth, congratulations to Wales for producing, with the exception of the Italy game and in my opinion, the best games of a rather turgid 6N.

This game was in many ways the culmination of a bad spring. There was tension, there was willingness to try and attack from both sides (something England until last week, Scotland and Italy, and Ireland for most weeks) seemed to lack. There was ferocious, committed and mostly very successful defence. There was passion (possibly too much in a few players), and it all came down to the very last kick of the game. If Stephen Jones had kicked it 5m further, Ireland wouldn't be celebrating in the same way tonight.

The Irish "golden generation" has finally delivered as well.

If you look at the stats one thing that will leap out is handling errors. If you haven't watched the match as well, you'd think it was a really scrappy game. But, if we steal a stat from tennis with forced and unforced errors, the unforced error count was really low - about 2 on each side, everything else was caused by the weight of the tackle, tackles that hit the ball and so on.

Ireland, again, had an inspired 10 minutes after the break, in which they scored 2 tries and laid the foundation for their win. Wales chipped away with penalties and a drop goal - leading 6-0 at half time, and pulling back to 15-14 in front until ROG found a drop goal, and then Jones missed that last kick.

The game wasn't a classic in the sense of making a memorable match that I'd want to watch again and again, but was still gripping and by far the best of the bunch this year.

France v Italy, Scotland v England

What on earth happened to France last week? Two matches ago they beat Wales who had been looking fairly imperious. This week they stuffed Italy and 50-8, Italy's worst ever 6N result, is a stuffing. Last week they weren't there.

There's not much to say really past that scoreline. France played sublimely, as you might imagine they would have to rack up that sort of a score. Several of the "villains" of the piece last week - particularly Chabal - shone this week. Chabal is a decent 4, 5 or 8, but he's a muscular 8 rather than a speedy one, and he's just not fast enough to be an international 7. A bit like Bergamasco at 9 was the coach's fault, you would have to say that Liévremont must bear some of the blame for playing Chabal in a position that doesn't suit him.

Parese, for the first time really, looked pretty ordinary. He's still consistently the best number 8 in the contest, possibly in the world, but carrying the team against France in this mood was too much even for him. He was, by far, Italy's best player still, but still looked mortal for the first time in several years.

As for England v Scotland - Scotland's inability to score tries showed: at various points they created chances and managed to find ways not to convert them. It could have put them in front with 10 minutes to go and who knows what would have happened then? England's "green shoots" that I talked about last week are a bit stronger than I thought last time, and I'm sure in public they'll be talked up BUT...

In the second half, England seemed to forget what they'd done in the first half. Sometimes, of course, that's desirable when you want to totally change the plays that aren't working, but when you've got a plan that has you 15 points ahead and looking comfortable you don't throw those plans out do you? You might tweak the odd bit, but England seemed to tweak everything. This led them to reverting to aimless kicking, bad running lines and the like. If England are going to rise back up the IRB rankings and seriously compete next year in the 6N and in 2011 in New Zealand they're going to have to root that bit out of their game. New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Wales, and even Ireland and France on a decent day will be close enough after England's good spell to exploit the bad spell and win the games that matter.

England smash France in first half

All the old clichés need to come out for this match - it was a game a two halves, the better side won, there's an element of "you only play as well as your opposition let you" as well.

In the first half France were as bad as in the match two weeks ago against Wales they were inspired. They showed the flair and talent of a bunch of teenagers seeing a rugby ball for the first time, and that let England play well. In fairness to England they played better than I've seen in a while, there were good running lines, some decent support, slick passing and the like, and whilst some of that is because France just let them, some is due to England improving.

However, those green shoots of recovery are fragile, as the second half showed. If you go in 29-0 up, then in the second half you'd expect a romp to develop, at least up to 40+ points, probably 50+ points. But, France turned around and won the second half 10-5. They started to win the contact areas, they started winning on the penalty count (and it's notable that there was only one side warned about yellow cards, even though none were awarded - and that side was England). England went back to providing slow ball and having mostly clueless looking backs.

France won't be this bad for a long time again. England might build from this and move forward once more. But Frank Hadden won't be shaking in his shoes after the second half. He can turn around, point to the second half and say to his players "If you play to your potential you can do this to England, if you play down to their level, you can lose like that..."

Wales and Ireland on collision course

Wales won in Italy, no surprise with the result, but they didn't look at all good. Ireland won in Scotland, which also really doesn't surprise me, but it was a close call, probably closer than anyone expected.

The reasons for these "not being good" were different I think.

With Wales there were two things. In particular 5 changes in the pack, mostly in the tight, disrupted the scrum, and to some extent the speed of ball from the ruck too. That pretty much stopped Wales getting quality ball most of the time, and that dragged the game down into the mire.

But, in addition, I think that all-important balance was missing too often. Hook and Powell in particular should be identified here. Don't get me wrong, they are both seriously high quality players. But, for both of them, they have a wide standard deviation - they have moments of sheer, dazzling brilliance, but they have moments of mediocrity too. One player like that in that 8, 9, 10 axis is OK, probably desirable even. Two players like that, there are too many ways things can go wrong and throw the rest of the team off, and that certainly contributed to the poor performance.

Ireland, on the other hand, looked like they choked. I think Declan Kidney is lucky that his side went in down by a few points - Scotland really should have been further ahead - but also he could turn around and say "If you carry on playing like this, you'll be another Irish side that isn't good enough to be the second Grand Slam winners" and then let his players go out and know that they had to perform to win the game, whilst knowing at the same time they were close enough to manage it.

And, of course, if England lose tomorrow, France aren't out of it either. If Wales win next week, which is certainly possible, they need to win by 13 points to beat Ireland on points difference: that's doable if not necessarily likely on today's performance. But, if France stuff Italy (certainly possible too) they could well be ahead at the end of the weekend. Fun, fun, fun.

Yawn, snooze... Oh, I mean Italy v Scotland and England v Ireland

After a thriller yesterday, we have two of the dullest, most turgid and forgettable matches it's been my misfortune to see in my life. Particularly sad since the Super-14 matches today, with their full-strength ELVs also produced two wonderful matches, one in terrible conditions - but of course the stuffy morons that run the game up in the NH won't think of the spectators...

Italy v Scotland was at least cleaner than Italy's last match. They try to play like England in many ways - 10-man rugby and shut the opponents down and turn it into a arm-wrestle. Last time out Ireland were good enough to get the ball out and score, next time you've got to believe that Wales will be that good too. Scotland just about managed it, but infrequently enough that the match was grinding and tedious as phase play more or less vanished in a welter of scrums, penalties, free-kicks and the like. Scotland let themselves get pulled in too often, and gave away their own share of silly penalties too.

And then there was England v Ireland. England seemed to have a mission to break BOD - and despite that he was one of the few players on either side to really shine. Carney had a stormer too in fairness. But, other than that, Ireland didn't fire, and although that's rarely down to one player, you would have to point the finger at ROG today: he was, again, out of sorts - kicking poorly, passing poorly and running poorly. Failing on all parts of the number-10 curriculum (although tackling well sometimes). The Irish pack creaked and groaned at times, the props can be beaten and England worked them over a few times, but mostly the scrums were balanced - at least in part because the English props cheated to try and force the upper hand and Joubert (who was blind about hits on BOD, some of which looked pretty penalisable to me. Flutey might be lucky to escape being cited for what looked like a shoulder-charge to the head rather than an attempted tackle for example)) spotted the props playing silly buggers and blew it up.

I rather suspect the headlines will be full of the England yellow card trouble. After the Wales match someone in the England coaching set-up suggested that the referee had been one-eyed against England. I'm biased but didn't agree - Paddy O'Brien (the referee's boss) said he was disappointed to hear such comments, particularly since Kaplan's performance had been independently rated as good. I would agree. If the idiot opens his mouth this week, he will be even more one-eyed than Brian Moore at his worst. England again got hit with two yellow cards. One was for repeated (I think it was the fourth or fifth) penalty in the 5m out from the try-line area in a couple of minutes. You really can't complain about that, except to wonder if the referee could have gone to his pocket sooner!

The other was for one of the more cynical and stupid hits that you'll see on a rugby pitch. A prop was standing up from a ruck, and in contact with another player, twisting his back and opening his ribs. Danny Care for some reason decided to run in from about 7m out and wallop the guy in the back with his shoulder when he was totally defenseless. Care went off looking startled that he'd even been penalised. He should be more startled it wasn't given as a red card!

So, again, England play 20 minutes with 14 players. And this time they lose by 1 point to a very out of sorts Ireland. You have to wonder how well they'd have done if they'd kept all their players on the pitch. You have to wonder, as well, what the players, particularly Care were thinking of. The Vickery card you can argue was one of those times it was worth taking the card (although Ireland did score their try moments later), because he was clearly stopping a try and it wasn't guaranteed his side would give one up in the time he was away. But the Care card was just stupid.

One thing that was interesting though - Austin Healey's commentary a couple of times. England had a couple of attacking looking moves that ended up petering out. His comments about why were biting, players not off-loading in set moves when they should know where their support is, players all clustering to the wrong side despite the move having opened a blind side and so on. Quality backs, and at international level you'd expect the forwards to do this too to some extent surely, should be able to pass having drawn the man to someone they know is there shouldn't they? If you've got a move that's run from your right to left, and has the 11, 12 and 15 all going that way, pulling the opposition's defenders across, is it too much to expect that 9, 10, 13, and maybe one of 6, 7, 8 cut back to the left? They all failed to do this - cramming 15 players into half the pitch. Ireland defended that side with 12 players, because their front row was lurking trying to defend the other side. Can 9, 10, 13 not beat 1, 2, 3 for pace in half a pitch width? Well, we'll never know because they were too dumb to find out.

Lions watch? Still no white shirts. No obvious blue shirts. BOD beats out Shanklin on this weekend's performance. Welsh front row, Irish/Welsh second and back row. Tommy Bowe might beat out Leigh Halfpenny, and BOD beats out Shanklin from an otherwise Welsh backline. Stephen Jones didn't play that well, but is still head and shoulders the best of the 10's from the home nations.

Unless Scotland pull off an upset next time out - which is certainly possible - Wales v Ireland will be to decide the championship, and to see if Ireland can win their second ever Grand Slam. If France beat England, certainly possible, they might be in the mix too, able to rack up the points difference with a win over Italy, but only if Wales can win in Ireland.