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.