Two rounds is generally all it takes for the Six Nations to sort the wheat from the chaff and the 2025 edition is proving no exception. The lower podium might yet turn into a bunfight but, right now, top and bottom of the pile are looking decidedly ominous; chirpy, green shoots at the Irish end of the table but dull roots and stony rubbish in The Waste Land that is Wales. February can be a cruel month.
Just ask Scotland. Once again, they were asked to solve their intractable Irish Question and, once again, they did little more than write their name at the top of the examination paper. Murrayfield was a hard, grey hush. Forced and unforced Scottish errors invited in the Irish and the green team duly wreaked havoc. It was flies and windscreens.
In fairness, almost nothing went Scotland’s way. The blue-on-blue collision between Darcy Graham and Finn Russell was a sickener and every good wish to Graham as he recovers. A hefty hat-tip, too, to the Scottish medical team. Russell, apparently, passed his HIA but still didn’t look right and was dispatched to the stands. For a union which works so hard to promote the vital ‘If In Doubt, Sit Them Out’ campaign, it was an exemplary decision.
Scotland, though, remain an enigma; fabulous parts that still don’t add up to a sum. What was required was a coarse, ultra-abrasive, 40-grit sandpaper of a performance; what was delivered took absolutely no sheen off the Irish gameplan. Simon Easterby’s side grabbed the match by the throat in the first five minutes and never let go.
The best compliment you can pay Ireland is that if you didn’t know El Farrellissimo was elsewhere, you wouldn’t know. That’s huge credit to Easterby but it also tells you just how robust the organisation is. Their forwards are a scourge and once Jamison Gibson-Park and Sam Prendergast hit their groove, it’s game over. Prendergast, bizarrely, reminds you of Ernie Els; ‘The Slim Easy’ more than ‘The Big Easy’ but it’s all so effortlessly excellent, it’s almost languid.
From 15/8 to pinch the pot at the beginning of the tournament, Ireland are now 8/15 and sniffing a greenwash. “There’s definitely a Grand Slam in this team now,” said Ronan O’Gara in the BBC studio and given France in Dublin look to be the one and only remaining tripwire, it’s all-too tangible. Put it this way, answering the Irish Question right now will befuddle better teams than Scotland.
For England – against France – it was a case of ‘enfin’. In an intoxicating blur of a match where the lead changed hands thrice in the last 10 minutes, England hung tough and – ironically – won courtesy of everything that’s bedevilled them in recent months; stickability; smart decision-making in clutch moments; ‘finishers’ actually finishing – two of them scored the game-winning tries – and all-round, emotional resilience. It felt like a coming-of-age performance.
Certainly it was a statement showing from Fin Smith. He not only called the killer play but executed it to perfection, the timing of his pop pass to Eliot Daly being cold brilliance. His game-sealing conversion was a puzzler; if there’s eight seconds left on the match and 10 seconds left on the shot clock, take your time, son, but perhaps that would’ve been cutting his priorities a little too fine. Bag the two and trust the restart routine.
But what impressed most was Smith’s total lack of flap or fluster. In a jumble of a game, he was totally uncluttered. “I felt like a rabbit in the headlights in the first half,” he confessed afterwards. “But I definitely felt like I grew into the game. This is pretty cool.”
The England captain, Mario Itoje, was equally ebullient. “We were brave, we were ballsy,” he said of his team’s furious performance. “Imagine how good we can be if we can layer some accuracy on that.” Imagine, indeed.
But while tight losses don’t suggest a terminal decline, nor does one – famous – win mean all is roses and rainbows. England won a similarly fabulous victory last season against Ireland – another, heroic ‘sod you, not in our backyard’ performance – and the square root of very little was built on its foundations. Yes, Steve Borthwick’s side is suddenly a title contender but a chastened Scotland in a fortnight will tell us more.
France will have driven away from Twickenham on Saturday night with their ‘têtes’ in their ‘mains’, or perhaps not given they’d probably have dropped them.
France will have driven away from Twickenham on Saturday night with their ‘têtes’ in their ‘mains’, or perhaps not given they’d probably have dropped them. Certainly the great bewilderment of the day was that England edged it by – effectively – turning their serial weaknesses into game-winning strengths while France did the exact opposite. Yes, each of their three tries were fashioned by their Three Musketeers – Antoine Dupont, Damian Penaud and Louis Bielle-Biarrey – but each of their four open goals was butchered by one of the same three players. On a sun-kissed afternoon in Toulouse, you suspect that game might’ve been over by half-time. On a greasy evening at Twickenham, hélas, not so much.
There were times in that match you could’ve fried onions on Fabian Galthié’s forehead. “We got the dropsies, didn’t we?” said Shaun Edwards in the aftermath; “I’ve never seen that happen before.” Nor will Edwards be turning cartwheels about conceding four tries. And with Ireland looming in Dublin, France are suddenly wedged tight behind the eight-ball. ‘Frustrated; crucified; hopes fly away,’ said the headline in Midi Olympique. The French do not do defeat by halves.
Nor do Wales, although if you’re Welsh and an optimist – a rare breed these days – your boys could still win a Triple Crown. Mind you, the chances of Shane Williams, Dan Biggar or Jamie Roberts opening their wallets to lay down a tenner on their team at 100/1 seem remote. Seat cushions and catcalls raining down on social media are one thing but when your tribal elders are reaching for the razor blades, you’re in a ditch.
In commentary on ITV, Shane Williams muttered, “it’s simply not good enough”. In fact, he muttered it twice the space of 10 minutes; “Wales,” he said, “have got their game plan completely wrong.” Post match, Dan Biggar and Jamie Roberts held nothing back. “Probably their worst performance in the past 20 months,” said Roberts, which is about as damning as you can get. “The kicking game was schoolboy… I cannot accept this is our level.”
Biggar sounded a similar, funereal vibe. “The team looks shot of belief, shot of confidence,” he said. “We can’t carry on like this.” Asked whether it was time for a new head coach, even in the middle of a Six Nations, Biggar’s reply – “nothing’s off the table, it can’t be” – was an unspoken yet unequivocal damnation of Warren Gatland.
Right now, an apocalypse is upon Wales; it’s raining frogs and the graves are yawning and yielding up their dead. The numbers – consecutive losses, world ranking, take your pick – have never been worse and, like Lear, the team is bound upon a ring of fire. True, 12 points in the last 10 minutes snaffled a losing bonus point but for all the excellence of Jac Morgan and Blair Murray, it looked like little more than what a city analyst would call ‘dead cat bounce.’
It’s almost Trumpian; the weekly lunacy becomes so commonplace, you end up inured to it.
Wales are in a right old knot. Their selection is indecipherable, their attacking strategy is almost as limp as their kicking game and their discipline is borderline suicidal. Screw plan A; what exactly is plan A? On the upside, you suppose, they’ve got a fortnight to sort it all out ahead of, ahem, Ireland.
But the danger here for Wales is the nation succumbs, if it hasn’t already, to what you might call ‘failure fatigue’. It’s almost Trumpian; the weekly lunacy becomes so commonplace, you end up inured to it. If a change is going to be made in the Warren department, make it now. Even an interim appointment would at least bring some order to the chaos.
As for Italy – only one loss in their past five Six Nations outings – they were perfectly prosaic, which was about all you could ask given the orchestra of rain. Lorenzo Cannone was both a rock and a hard place; Federico Ruzza – again – ruled every roost at the line out; Monty Ioane’s kick chase was almost predatory and Ange Capuozzo’s try-scoring finish was, well, characteristic Capuozzo.
But a word here for the Italian prop, Danilo Fischetti. The man’s almost immovable at the breakdown, he carries like a Shire horse, his defence is a ton of bricks and – once again – he was the last Italian forward to be substituted. Add in the two penalties he eked out of the Welsh scrum and he looks almost Porter-esque. He’s tougher than a two-bob steak.
But, almost suddenly, the tournament is Ireland’s to lose. With 10 points in the bag and – you’d reckon – 10 more available against Wales and Italy, even a losing bonus point at home to France might be enough. The Kansas City Chiefs might not have been able to pull off the fabled three-peat but Ireland are now odds on. It’ll take something very special to derail them.
