It's Ours To Win. Or Lose

Right so, it’s time for Six Nations combat, as our rugby warriors aim to restore the natural order by grinding the hated Sassenachs, Jocks, Taffies, Frogs and Eye-ties into the dirt. Like Orwell’s ‘boot stamping on a human face, forever’ – except in high definition and washed down with a few beers. Really, there’s nothing quite like it. (Apart from maybe the Rugby World Cup, which kicks off in seven months’ time).

Natural optimism might be tempered by the fact that we have, in fact, won the Grand Slam once in the last 62 years – but it was only two years ago, almost all the players who scaled that Everest are still available (though with a good deal more mileage on the clock) and all five of our opponents are perfectly beatable (though they will, without doubt, be thinking exactly same thing about us).
While Munster’s recent implosion may have been gratifying on many levels (is there a more self-regarding set of sports fans this side of Barcelona?), it also rings a few alarm bells in the Ireland context.
On the other hand, Ulster has arisen from its decade of slumber, while Leinster (snapped up by yours truly at an unbelievable 16/1 for the Heineken Cup back in October when there were a few teething problems with the new coach) are now a mighty force indeed, looking at least as formidable as they were two years ago when landing the big one.
The question of whether Declan Kidney’s tactical conservatism is innately incompatible with the players now at his disposal will be answered in due time – and there are question marks at loose-head prop, hooker, in the second row and in the back three – but the championship is realistically attainable.
And, despite the bombast of the intro you’ve just read, we must also accept that it will be extremely difficult, that the Slam is the sort of feat you’ll be lucky to see more than once or twice in a lifetime, and that it will be a colossal achievement just to win the championship.
At any rate, Rome seems the perfect place to start the adventure. The Italians’ atrocious discipline is coupled with a chronic tendency to let an hour or so of entirely competent play be completely undermined by 15-or-20-minute spells of error-ridden madness. While Sergio Parisse would probably walk into almost any club or national team in Europe, and the giant hairy Leicester prop Martin Castrogiovanni (nice name – Ed) is not somebody opponents will especially enjoy crashing into for 80-odd minutes, the rest of the gang are a bit swift to wave the white flag when things start to go against them. As Otto von Bismarck once observed: “Italy has such a large appetite and such poor teeth.”
We have a time-honoured tradition of not playing particularly well against Italy (that crazy, helter-skelter afternoon at the tail-end of 2007’s championship being a notable exception) but we have still registered 11 wins from 11 against them since they gatecrashed what used to be the Five Nations. Some day, sooner or later, Italy will beat Ireland in the Six Nations, but I trust that barring a total systems failure, it won’t happen this year.
The other four nations, obviously, represent significantly sterner tests. I shall reserve judgement on them until I see the opening skirmishes, but lest anyone suspect me of sitting on the fence, I’m tipping the mercurial Welsh to claim this year’s title, having watched them scare the fuck out of the almighty All Blacks a couple of months ago before running out of gas late on. While they perhaps could do with a little more brute-force up front, there is a bewildering array of quicksilver attacking options in their ranks that, if it all clicks, is definitely good enough to see off all comers.
The bookies, mistrustful of Wales’ questionable forward power, have rated them a distant fourth. The championship favourites, almost unbelievably, are England. Though their line-up is now more settled than it’s been for several years, I have yet to detect any real signs of a lasting renaissance from Martin Johnson’s men, and until such time as they string together two impressive performances in a row, I will continue to take them with a pinch of salt. You could do a lot worse than back the Welsh (who, even at their worst, are always almost-psychotically ‘up for it’ against England) to give them a bloody nose on opening night.
The French can be as good or as bad as their whims dictate – at their best, no-one can live with them, but you would be terminally daft to trust them with your hard-earned. The Scots have been pretty lamentable for ten years now, but the worst is definitely over, and their victory in Dublin last year (for all that we clearly played into their hands with a ridiculously high-risk gameplan) was no once-off, as a recent victory over South Africa demonstrated. Any team who emerges from Edinburgh this year with a victory will have the scars and bite-marks to prove it. France are certainly fragile enough to lose there, and talented enough to win by a street if the mood takes them. I wouldn’t care to call it.
Anyway, if we lose in Rome, the future begins to look a little bleak. We won’t, though. Once more, with feeling…