Team of the tournament

It's going to be hard to look outside teams in blue for this side, and largely Les Bleus at that.

Front Row: All French. This was an area of some debate - Euan Murray and Adam Jones held their hands up and had to be considered, as did the Scottish hooker for his line out work. The problem? Overall the French scrum dominated all the other sides and were sufficiently dominant to get the call. Castrogiovanni was the other person in contention - the only Azzuri to get considered this year sadly. Castro was not the force he was last year, nor the force he is for Leicester though.

Second Row: All French again. All Scottish as a consideration - the scrums weren't great from Scotland until today against Ireland, but their line out work was amazing. But the French were good at scrum, line out and in the loose and edged it on all round play.

Back Row: All French yet again. There was a lot of competition here. Ireland were pretty good here, the Killer B's too for Scotland, Ryan Jones when fit, Lewis Moody too. But that balance and the incision that they always delivered plus being a consistently selected group gets them the call.

Half Backs: Parra in 9. Was there ever any doubt? Mike Phillips in his one outing looked good and showed how much Wales had missed him but it was only one outing. Sexton and Parks are really the only contenders at 10 - although Jones never looked bad, he never had good service and couldn't shine. Tranh-Duc was solid and fired his outside backs magnificently but never really had any adversity to test him either. Parks, man of the match in 3 matches this 6N gets our first non-French blue shirt.

Centres: Basteraud, BOD and perhaps surprisingly Hook are the three into two spaces here. Basteraud gets the nod as the crash-ball centre. Hook just edges out BOD - both were good in defence in different ways but too often Hook was a ray of hope in attack with a massive array of skills that he brought to the position. BOD, on the other hand, is starting to look a bit old and slow for the position and was never really incisive or creative save one moment today.

Wings: Here France's rotation has left the door rather wide open because it makes their 4 wingers not up for selection. This gets Williams on one wing, Earles on the other. Two fast, try-scoring wingers, and with nicely complementary styles of play too.

Full Back: Really only Byrne and Poitrineau were up for consideration here. Scotland played too many, Ireland too. We all know Clement can be flaky but he wasn't in any of these games whilst Byrne got sin-binned and may not have cost Wales the match, but didn't help their cause.

So, there you are 11 Frenchmen, 1 Scot, 1 Irishman and 2 Welshmen.

The worrying thing? France seem to have rotated out a number of their more senior players, through injury or otherwise, and replaced them with players who gain them in terms of speed and youth and haven't appeared to cost them in terms of talent, stability and execution under pressure. Jauzion is now the player possibly under most pressure - he is getting old, relatively speaking and a bit like BOD he is adding maturity and experience whilst gradually losing the cutting edge.

The unexpected positive? Wales had, for the first time, their first choice front row and scrum half today and looked like an entirely different side. It was a bad 6N for Wales, but not all is dark for the future although the strength in depth I thought they showed last year seems to have evaporated somewhat, sadly. Scotland produced a try and rewarded their coach and their efforts with a good win today. They're not the finished product but if they continue to grow and England continue to stagnate at best and slide backwards to my eyes they might get out of their pool in the RWC next year. Positive for me: England's decline seems to be continuing. Although Flood, Foden and Ashton looked good in their one game. Will England decide to play a more expansive game and use these talents? Sexton's replacement of ROG wasn't really unexpected, but Earls' emergence is good and he might slide in to 13 when BOD hangs his international boots up.

Coaches who have shot their bolt...

Come 15 months or so time, a lot of international rugby coaches will be looking for new jobs (or in some cases retiring, possibly covered in glory, possibly not).

But you have to think that there are two teams that will be, barring miracles, out on their ears. Those teams would be the current England and Wales teams - in particular two English giants, Edwards and Johnson.

The much vaunted defensive maestro has produced a defence that is particularly and peculiarly vulnerable to both giving away yellow cards and falling apart as soon as it has a player missing. It's a bad combination and it cost Wales their games against England and certainly helped the Irish feel much more comfortable too. Gatland seems to have produced high-risk but spectacular rugby. Wales, when it all clicks, have produced comfortably the most exciting attacking rugby of the contest, and have produced it in just about all the games. There are errors, and those errors were critical against France but in general the errors are those of ambition and aren't critical save in stopping Wales scoring - they don't usually knock on and give up points.

The problem is, I believe, that the Edwards defensive system has been around too long. It's a good system - don't get me wrong - but it's long enough in the tooth that coaches are working out how to break it (Wasps have been struggling defensively too remember) and international sides are good enough to really exploit the weaknesses.

But, both Gatland and Edwards will be, if you want more exciting rugby, in a stronger position that a certain M. Johnson. He's revealing why coaches and managers need experience. He's created a team that panders to locks - 1-10 and usually 15 are pretty good and in the right places to defend, create scrums, line outs and the like. But the 10-12-13-14 activities seem to completely elude him. Why bother to give fast ball, as a lock he wants the 10 to kick for metres and another lineout - slow ball forces that choice. If the 10 is just doing that, the 12 being in the right places to give a good option is actually a bad thing - and England never had a 12 supporting either 10.

Don't get me wrong yet again - there are certainly times that this is the right tactic. But good rugby has several game plans that are changed and adapted in light of the situation in front of the players on attack (on defence the choices are fewer in some respects I think because you tend to have to commit as a team to a unified approach) and as we are seeing boring rugby is, provided you keep a full team on the field, easy to defend at this level. All it takes, as Ireland showed last week, is one slip in concentration and you lose. England are going backwards not forwards... and the buck has to stop at the top table.