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.