Six Nations Review: Ireland must avoid complacency; England have themselves to blame

Peter Jackson recaps the weekend’s Six Nations action. 

Schmidt’s biggest task is to avoid complacency

One outrageously long pass flung high into the Dublin air followed by another every bit as outrageously long in Edinburgh 90 minutes later has turned the Six Nations into a one-horse race.

The first pass, launched in desperation by Wales’ substitute stand-off Gareth Anscombe only to be seized by Jacob Stockdale as manna from heaven, put a belated end to the ballyhoo about Warren Gatland turning Wales into contenders.

The second, Finn Russell’s 25-metre floating extravaganza for Huw Jones’ decisive second try like a Sgian-Dubh to the heart exposed the concept of English invincibility as a load of old baloney, maybe the biggest since Gazza’s re- enactment of the Dentist’s Chair drinking celebration at Wembley during Euro 96.

Ireland stand this morning so far ahead of the field as to be beyond hearing range of the distant hooves, a position of isolated splendour grand enough to evoke memories of Crisp jumping for home at Aintree 33 lengths clear in what became the most famous finish of all Grand Nationals.

Joe Schmidt could do a lot worse than dust down the commentary of what happened next, be it Michael O’Hehir’s, Peter O’Sullevan’s or Peter Bromley’s and the sheer disbelief in their voices as Kilkenny’s remorseless Red Rum ran Crisp down at the finishing post.

It will stand forever as the equine equivalent of how it’s never over until the fat lady sings. The IRFU ought to have her on discreet standby at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday week armed with a full box of throat lozenges, just in case.

If Ireland beat Scotland and England’s grounded hot air balloon fails to get off the ground again in Paris, the title will be theirs with the prospect of a Grand Slam awaiting collection from the deposed champions at Twickenham on St Paddy’s Day.

The alternative scenario may not bear thinking about it but Schmidt will ensure it is confronted. Should the Scots reproduce the same fearless brand of rugby that engulfed the Sassenachs, then they will go to Rome on the final weekend with a shot at the title.

Complacent England have only themselves to blame

This may be doing England a disservice but they gave every impression that Edinburgh on Saturday night was just another place to get into and out of as quickly as possible. It was as if they believed the pre-match prattle from Red Rose pundits headed by Clive Woodward who stated as a matter of fact: “They will win decisively.”

There were ominous signs pre-match that, like Gloucester at Thomond Park for the original ‘Miracle Match,’ England simply didn’t know what they were letting themselves in for.

Ben Te’o, the ex-Leinster centre who had been serving his time to wear the green before jumping ship, rather gave the game away, “You’re always going to have an away fixture with a hostile crowd,’’ he said, explaining why the Anglo-Scottish rivalry meant nothing special to him. “That’s part of the game. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’’

He sounded like Willie Johnstone when, during a pre-season tour with West Brom, the Scotland footballer declined a visit to the Great Wall of China on the basis that “once you’ve seen one wall, you’ve seen them all.”

Clearly nobody had felt the need to remind the players that England had twice lost Grand Slams at Murrayfield, a place where they always seem to get their collective knickers in a twist over the team bus being caught up behind the Fife Police Pipe Band who marched to two speeds, slow and dead slow. England then allowed themselves to be suckered into a pre-match scuffle which, as it turned out, may have been the one contest they didn’t lose hands down. Martin Johnson’s frown had invaded every corner of his face by the end. The famous old captain’s rhetorical question said it all: “Were we in the right frame of mind?”

Auld Reekie, a nickname inspired by the smell from the city’s breweries, demands respect.

Finn Russell hits high notes (at last)

Fly-halves being the rock stars of the Six Nations, Finn Russell would have gone into the tournament as a sort of tartan Bruce Springsteen, albeit a seriously out-of-tune one. The Boss can never have had an off-night on the same embarrassing scale as Russell’s in Cardiff three weeks ago when the leader of Gregor Townsend’s band went down amid a stramash of bum notes.

The SRU being the SRU were not exactly rushing to refund ticket money and Townsend stuck by his man for the next match on the basis that he couldn’t possibly be that bad again. He was and ended up being subbed.

Despite that Townsend ignored the prophets of doom, kept the faith and picked Russell against England. Far from lying low and changing his natural game, Glasgow’s Warrior stayed true to his best fly by the seat of your pants mantra, ever ready to look for the highest notes. Springsteen would have loved him. Russell dares to do things lesser fly halves never think about let alone imagine, wonderful when it comes off, heart attack territory when it doesn’t. The fact that I am recovering from one a fortnight or so after watching him crash against Wales happens to be nothing more than an unhappy coincidence.

Where has all this French joie de vivre and ambition gone?

For a nation that gave the world the Folies Bergeres, Brigitte Bardot, Claude Monet and Inspector Clouseau, it sounds a trifle harsh to argue that the French haven’t half become a boring lot. Maybe so but their rugby players are making a demoralisingly good fist of it.

Their lack of ambition plunged new depths against Italy in Marseilles on Friday night. The strait-jacketed, safety-first approach to beating the perennial chopping blocks amounted to a grim betrayal of the joie de vivre brought by generations of cavaliers from the Boniface brothers to Serge Blanco and Pierre Berbizier.

Imagine what the old warriors would have thought when France twice went for the posts rather than the corner, when two penalties were deemed to matter more than a try bonus point. Any half-decent team takes one of those as a given against Italy.

The shocking mess Lionel Beauxis made of a three-on-one would have been a lame excuse not to go on trying. How ironic, and, from a neutral perspective, how satisfying that they came up short of the fourth try.

The performance seemed unworthy of the Guissepe Garibaldi Cup. But then if the father of modern Italy had been watching from on high, the General might have wondered what he had done to deserve synonymity with an event made all the more tedious by taking more than 100 minutes to complete.

Sick Doddie’s humour shines

The incomparable Doddie Weir, his inspiring sense of humour untouched by the onset of Motor Neurone Disease, had this to say on two of his English-born sons supporting the Sassenachs: “It’s a serious issue in our house. We’ve not fed them for five years...’’ Jeremy Guscott, one of the stellar victims of David Sole’s slow march to a Scottish Slam in 1990: “I see England winning by 10 to 15 points’’.

Somebody ought to tell him that those who do not recognise the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

At first glance, Rory Best may have uttered the biggest statement of the obvious of the Six Nations, always a fiercely competitive category. “A lot of it will come down to a physical battle,” he said.

In hindsight it can be seen as so much more, Ireland’s canny captain offering an insight into where he thought Wales would be vulnerable.

Ireland duly smashed their close-range defence four times, no mean feat for a team drilled by the formidable Shaun Edwards.

Jonny on Johnny?

Jonny Wilkinson, asked on ITV to explain Johnny Sexton’s goalkicking sudden dose of the shanks, spoke about ‘the feel mechanism not being right’, then said ‘but it seems he’s right back to where he wants to be.’

That proved the cue for Sexton’s worst wobbler of all, bad enough to persuade the man himself into giving it up as a bad job which only goes to show that even a kicker of Wilkinson’s global repute can’t always recognise a duffer when he sees one.

Mexican wave not a welcome sight in rugby

When it comes to the barometer of spectator boredom, there is still nothing to touch the Mexican wave. They were throwing their hands up all around the Stade Velodrome in Marseilles on Friday night in search of some sort half- amusing diversion to what they were watching the pitch. The first wave started doing the rounds in the 21st minute which, to be fair, showed a commendably high boredom threshold among those who had paid through the nose for something more uplifting. The only surprise was that it took them that long.

Team of the weekend (an Anglo-French free zone)

15 Leigh Halfpenny (Wales), 14 Keith Earls (Ireland), 13 Huw Jones (Scotland), 12 Chris Farrell (Ireland), 11 Jacob Stockdale (Ireland), 10 Finn Russell (Scotland), 9 Conor Murray (Ireland), 1 Cian Healy (Ireland), 2 Stuart McInally (Scotland), 3 Simon Berghan (Scotland), 4 James Ryan (Ireland), 5 Johnny Gray (Scotland), 6 Aaron Shingler (Wales), 7 Hamish Watson (Scotland), 8 John Barclay (Scotland).