Peter Jackson: The greatest? Where does Ireland-France classic rank in Six Nations history?
GO FORWARD BALL: Ireland's Garry Ringrose scores his side's fourth try. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
Had Muhammad Ali only lived to see a proper rugby match in all its gladiatorial glory, it would surely have had him waxing lyrical on his favourite subject.
SIX NATIONS RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP 2025
Your home for the latest news, views and analysis of this year's Six Nations Championship from our award winning sports team.
SIX NATIONS RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP 2025
Your home for the latest news, views and analysis of this year's Six Nations Championship from our award winning sports team.
"I know greatness when I see it because I am still The Greatest,’’ he would probably have told anyone within earshot. "And I ain’t seen no football game nowhere as great as that.’’
Anywhere else his mere presence would have brought the house down but not in the Lansdowne Road area of D4 any time after 2.15 on Saturday afternoon. Ireland and France had beaten him to it.
The blazing pyrotechnics, technical precision in a maelstrom, physical ferocity, imagination to envisage the seemingly impossible and make it happen created a game for the ages; so good that for once the most battered word in the English language could be applied without exaggeration.
Everyone at The Aviva and the millions on television knew they had witnessed a great match but how great? Greater than any during almost a quarter-of-a-century of the Six Nations?
Plunging into an ocean of memories over some 60 winters of the grand old championship evokes images of Wales-France slugging it out during the Seventies, always brutal, rarely beautiful.
Images, too, of classic Grand Slam deciders: Scotland-England in 1990 when David Sole’s famous slow walk spooked the odds-on favourites, England edging France at Twickenham the following year despite Philippe Saint-Andre’s electrifying 100-metre try, Wales-Ireland at Cardiff in 2009 and Ronan O’Gara’s priceless drop.
Great performances do not make for great 80-minute matches because of their one-sided effect; France thrashing Wales 51-0 at Wembley in 1998, England beating Ireland 42-6 at Lansdowne Road in 2003, Wales outclassing England 30-3 ten years ago.
Apart from being a contest of the highest quality, Ireland-France has another undeniable fact to justify acclamation as the greatest of Six Nations matches: the world’s No. 1 against the world’s No. 2. Neither could have risen more magnificently to a unique occasion.
The cast of 46 included some of world-beating stature at the very top of their game. Antoine Dupont has long been in a scrum-half class of his own but others, fore and aft, are now demanding elevation to the same global status.
Is there a more complete full back than Hugo Keenan? A more outrageous right wing than Damian Penaud, a better outside centre than Garry Ringrose, a more rounded second row than James Ryan, a No. 8 as gigantic as Caelan Doris?
Never can one team have packed so many striking performances into one match. The most striking one of all turned out to be the collective impact from the eight who came off the bench and kept Ireland at full-throttle to the very end, nobody more so than Tom O’Toole.
A few torpedoes from the Ulster prop softened French resistance in the minutes before Ringrose’s try de-Slammed the champions. That O’Toole scrums down at No. 3 in the Irish tighthead rankings behind Tadhg Furlong and Finlay Bealham says a lot about their strength in depth.
The entire cast conspired to give the Six Nations a monumental event, the tournament’s equivalent of Murray-Djokovic at Wimbledon ten years ago or the best of FIFA’s World Cup finals, Brazil-Italy in 1970.
It felt like Rocky and Rocky II III IV and V rolled into one without a single punch to be seen, just the one act of gratuitous violence: Uini Atonio’s high hit which did for Rob Herring and left the monstrous French super-heavyweight lucky not to have been sent off.
Like Ali-Frazier, there will be a re-match, at some stage of the World Cup. Even from this distance, it will be a crying shame should the draw prevent it taking place in the final.
Sir Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation, based on the reasonable theory that what goes up must come down, has stood the test of time for more than 300 years. Since then nobody can have made a better job of defying it in the Irish cause than James Lowe did over the weekend.
He gave every appearance of being suspended above the ground for long enough to convince those with 21st century technology at their disposal to rule that he did really score the most acrobatic of tries. There was, however, a good deal more to it than met the eye.
The TMO (Television Match Official) Brendon Pickrell took his time subjecting various video angles to forensic examination. One suggested that Lowe’sright foot, with green stocking and matching boot, brushed against the grass on the wrong side of the touchline. Another didn’t.
Wayne Barnes told Pickrell of his on-field decision: a try but he wasn’t sure. After considering all the available evidence, the New Zealand official told the English referee: ‘’You can stick with your on-field decision.’’ And then, at half-time with Ireland six points ahead, evidence emerged that Lowe’s right foot had touched the ground. Why had that not been put at Pickrell’s disposal?
The four home countries haven’t been slow over the years to sneer about French television directors and their selective use of controversial incidents in Paris. The boot having been on the other foot, they will know exactly how audiences in France felt about the Dublin decision, a Lowe blow.
To argue that France could hardly complain given Uini Atonio’s subsequent avoidance of a red card is irrelevant. It raised the old issue about justice not only being done but being seen to be done.
Lowe may have got away with it but the damning evidence will eliminate any danger of what Sir Isaac discovered in 1687 needing to be rewritten.
Wales have never made as bad a start to any Six Nations, worse even than in the last days of ‘The Great Redeemer’ in the wake of a 54-10 rout by Mick Galwey’s Ireland at Lansdowne Road 21 years ago.
Graham Henry gave it up as a bad job a few days later, clearing off before Wales prised a losing bonus point despite conceding 37 more points to France. Their current predicament, zero points out of ten, will have given Warren Gatland some idea how his Kiwi compatriot felt in the winter of 2002.
A measure of how far Wales have fallen can be gauged from an insight into how Johnny Sexton & Co. reacted to their 34-10 win in Cardiff. ‘’Everyone talked about that performance last week,’’ head coach Andy Farrell said after the blockbuster against France.
‘’I asked the guys after all the reviews where the team thought we were at. To a man everyone thought the performance (against Wales) wasn’t good enough. Pushing the standards (up). That’s all that matters to us.’’
England welcomed the faithful back to Twickenham yesterday with fanciful talk of ‘excitement’. Eighty minutes later they had confirmed the suspicion that right now Ireland have cornered the market in the entertainment business.
Those who get their kicks from the bludgeon than the rapier will no doubt have had a run for their money from all three rows of the England pack delivering four tries against Italy.
Substitute wing Henry Arundell, one of the bright young things at London Irish, broke the sequence towards the end of a distinctly underwhelming win despite the 17-point margin.
Of the four teams trying to follow the toughest of Irish acts, only Scotland made any attempt and then belatedly so, four tries in the last half hour at Murrayfield sending a limited Wales team to their heaviest defeat in 140 years of visiting Edinburgh.
Dan Biggar ought to have known better than to belittle Scotland before the match as reflected in headlines shouting out from the back pages like: "You’re All Talk And No Medals.’’ For reasons only he knows, the pre-match narrative about the Scots’ chronic failure to follow a big Six Nations win irked the Lions’ stand-off. "We don’t seem to get any credit and other teams seem to get a lot of praise for probably not quite the success we’ve had.
"Medals are important when you look back on your career and we have been lucky enough to fill the cabinet a few times and it’s up to other teams to try and replicate that.
"We do have a bit of a laugh that there are other teams around who get a fair bit of praise without really backing it up, I suppose.’’ Nobody was laughing once Biggar’s opposite number, Finn Russell, had finished playing with Wales as if he had them dangling on pieces of string. The Scottish puppeteer had a hand or a foot in all four home tries during a second half which Biggar failed to complete.
Nobody needs tell him now that some things are best left unsaid. Scotland’s jubilant captain James Ritchie dismissed his outburst in three words: ‘’Talk is cheap.’’
15 Hugo Keenan (Ireland) 14 Damian Penaud (Frane) 13 Garry Ringrose (Ireland) 12 Stuart McCloskey (Ireland) 11 James Lowe (Ireland) 10 Johnny Sexton (Ireland) 9 Antoine Dupont (France) 1 Cyril Baille (France) 2 Julien Marchand (France) 4 Thibault Flament (France) 5 James Ryan (Ireland) 6 Anthony Jelonch (France) 7 Josh van der Flier (Ireland) 8 Caelan Doris (Ireland).
Best of the rest:
Scotland: Finn Russell, Duhan van der Merwe, George Turner, James Ritchie.
England: Ollie Lawrence, Ollie Chessum, Jack Willis, Ellis Genge.
Italy: Ange Capuozzo, Sebastian Negri.
Wales: None.
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