Seeing as I cut off short last week and didn’t wait for the Twickenham result, this week I will deal with the Six Nations first.

Okay. Ready? France won the title by virtue of a points differential. They beat Scotland (46-19) by the same twenty seven point margin that Ireland beat Italy (51-24), thus retaining their four point differential week from the previous round.

I’m sorry but it’s true… I actually led a newsletter with that. Oh, and Wales beat England 27-18 in Cardiff, a win more disturbing for England than it was heartening to the Welsh, whose season has been the most grim of all since Clive Woodward sabotaged their development.

Unlike the above information (i.e. interestingly), a competition that had averaged one try per half suddenly saw twenty three scored over three games in its final round. Once the teams at the top realised that the competition would come down to points scored, they finally started using the most efficient method. So the final round was leant a little fake drama as the two top offensive teams flat-track bullied the two most defensively weak. And not ironically at all, champions France managed two tries less in the whole competition than the second-placed Irish. More was the new less.

Honestly, if SANZAR ran its competitions that way they might be almost as unwatchable. Our southern academies would have post graduate courses in The Set Piece, maybe even tailoring their entrance exams along the same lines, and eventually South African forwards would be six foot twenty.

This weekend in Super 14 was a good example of how pace and cohesion can beat size and length of punt, the Chiefs kicking it off with a 34-7 win over the Lions in Hamilton.

Faced with the stodgy Lions structure, they seized the opportunity to finally get their until-now-sorry-arsed act together. It was always a mental leap from the ridiculous to the sublime for them, and they made it. It’s astonishing how quickly a backline can gel given a steady supply of front foot ball.

Although after what I’ve already written it may seem somewhat contradictory to applaud their much improved efficiency at set piece, it gives me the chance to say that set pieces are still the plinth for a game plan. They become what the statue is erected on, or the springboard from which the spectacular dive is attempted if you like. But alone they are not enough.

Either way, the Chiefs looked honestly at themselves and answered all their own questions. A wise man’s question, it is said, contains half the answer… in this case, Do our set pieces suck? NOT ANY MORE.

Which brings us to the other thing the win showed, character.. and the Chiefs have it. Tremendous stuff.

The Force beat the Reds bloody in similar fashion at Subiaco Oval later that night, 38-3. The Reds had nothing to offer against the franchise on a roll out West, but the fans in Perth enjoyed the humiliation of the union they’d poached half their players from regardless. New money is better than no money, obviously.

By Saturday evening the sleek and fast-moving cat was well and truly among the chubby pigeons, as the Crusaders dealt a 32-10 spanking to the Bulls in Christchurch.

If the word Christchurch suggests a religious city, Rugby has the temple with highest attendance. The Crusaders were without their All Blacks for one final week, but this year their conveyor belt has once again delivered another batch of titanium-shelled young counter-attacking robots.

Fifteen men always thinking exactly the same thing are unbeatable, and the Crusader way does not change. Their record is the only vindication that counts. This is where an unwavering religious zealot can seem robotic of course, but by robotic I’m not suggesting the religious art they’re practising is any less exciting to watch. Nowhere can you see a team that better embodies the philosophy of the common goal.

And there is an elegant African saying… when you pray, move your feet.

I’m not sure if it’s a popular saying in the southern part of that continent, where guys that could bench-press a car like to turn rugby into a bulldozing contest. But it certainly fits with the New Zealand way of praying, and who better to demonstrate it than those on a Crusade?

The locals sized up their visitors and assessed their weakness perfectly. If the ball could be prised away from them, by exploiting the fundamental rule of rugby which says no man can hold onto the ball indefinitely, then they could be outflanked.

So they waded into them like GIs yelling “Get some!”, all righteousness and aggression. They were fifteen flankers as they threw themselves into the collisions to win possession, then suddenly became fifteen pacy three-quarters and sent it wide as quickly as possible, the team-wide transition instantaneous each time.

The Bulls looked like all the low-altitude oxygen-thick air had doped them, but against the Crusaders it was how any team would have looked whose pace of play was not competitive.

The Waratahs’ misery continued against the Stormers, who beat them 16-10 on a horror night in Sydney. Future fans of the Waratahs will have developed a congenital allergy to fun if this continues. Most other teams would have been unhappy with such a small margin, but the Stormers were nearly as bad as the home side so looked thrilled at the final whistle.

There’s no way of explaining the Waratahs’ fall from grace without taking into account their brutal injury toll and considering that half the current side haven’t played much rugby above club level. I’d sympathise, but Sydney is a place as little in need of kind wishes as its inhabitants are to give them out.

The Waratahs’ character remains intact, a credit to their resilience. They were staging an agonising comeback on guts alone by the end of eighty minutes. The turnaround was obvious to the Stormers too, who preferred to kick for touch at the death instead of attempting a shot at goal, not backing themselves (if the shot missed and stayed in play) to prevent the Waratahs driving the length of the field, and therefore conceding them a close-loss bonus point.

The Blues or Crusaders would have had no such mercy. They know an Australian sportsman must be beaten when down, reversed over once run down. He is the world’s hardest to kill species. If your foot is on his throat, you must twist your heel to sever the windpipe and make a monkey noise like Bruce Lee. What’s the bet the Stormers now finish one point below the Waratahs after thirteen rounds?

The Cheetahs were almost as charitable when they had the Brumbies hobbling in Bloemfontein. They allowed their visitors three of the last four tries, having built their 38-20 win early with a total first hour blitzkrieg. The psychological hiding was encapsulated when the talismanic Stirling Mortlock left the field, his arm hanging at his side. It was either the depth of his pain or the depth of his despair that made him limp the first ten yards of his walk to the sideline, before realising it was his arm that was injured and not his leg.

Strangely for a side who play a hundred percent better with Mortlock as their anchor, the mini rally was achieved without him.

The final game saw the Sharks continue their unbeaten season against the Hurricanes in Durban. The Hurricanes made a slew of errors from start to finish, both on attack and defence. On their day they are capable of delivering the come-uppance that the Sharks are overdue, but that day was not Saturday at King’s Park.

The new competition leaders won 27-14 and now begin the second half of their campaign against the haemorrhaging Brumbies next week, followed by the sort of Australasian itinerary that had me checking whether or not a director of some Natal-based travel agency sat on the board of the South African Rugby Union.

The Hurricanes will have more ball to work with from now on, once their five All Black forwards return, but their ability to score from turnovers is not enough in itself to cancel out the number of errors per game they are averaging.

They need to do what the Chiefs did and be brutally honest about the failings of their battle strategy, not rely on the combat skills of their elite warriors… especially considering that they’ll only make the play-offs if they win almost every available point between now and a final round meeting with the Crusaders who have more All Blacks returning than anyone else.

Yes, the All Blacks are back next week… well, those to whom the gymnasium and sleeping in on Saturdays didn’t overtax (Keven Mealamu, Andrew Hore, Reuben Thorne, Joe Rokocoko, Mils Muliaina).

The others will be the most marked men in sport.

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