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Eddie's finishers flop, Sexton loop still works, Wales challenge Italy for the spoon: 6N Talking Points
Oliver Matthews
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6th February, 2022
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Oliver Matthews
Expert
6th February, 2022
8
1200 Reads

The first round of the 2022 Six Nations has been and gone and fans have been treated to some thrilling games. Ireland stand out as France’s biggest threat to the title, Scotland have shown that they can win ugly and Wales have given their fans a warning that it might be a very tough championship. There’s lots to talk about after the opening three matches.

The power of defence helping Scotland to gain momentum
Of course to win a rugby match you need to score more points than the opposition, but there are many routes to those points. Over the years some of the best sides have shown that an effective and aggressive defence not only helps reduce the number of points that the opposition scores, but can also create plenty of scoring opportunities for the defending side.

France are a perfect example of this – their attacking credentials have rarely been in doubt but their defensive and organisational shortcomings used to be spoken about consistently. Until Shaun Edwards came on board. The edge that he has helped the French squad add to their game has made them favourites for this Six Nations and one of the fancied teams for the big one in 2023.

Scotland have their own Shaun Edwards now in the form of defence coach, Steve Tandy. The Welshman was part of the Waratahs set up in 2018/19 before joining Scotland where he has helped the national side improve significantly over the past couple of years.

Stuart Hogg called Tandy “the best defence coach in world rugby” before the game kicked off this weekend and the stats back him up. Scotland have only conceded 167 points from their past 11 Six Nations clashes and against England, despite having 46% of the ball, Scotland successfully completed 94% of their tackles and only let England have three clean breaks.

This hardened and effective defensive edge is turning Scotland into a much better side and while they will struggle to go on to beat the likes of Ireland or France this year, they are definitely on the rise.

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Continuity and familiarity help Ireland punish Wales
Ireland looked very good against Wales and plenty of pundits, fans and bookies will have moved them a bit closer to France as favourites for the Six Nations title this year.

The underlying foundation of the impressive Irish performance was their control in both attack and defence, especially up front where seven of the starting pack all play for Leinster. They were near perfect in their set pieces and bullied Wales throughout the match. They then combined control and discipline to this aggression and never gave Wales any reprieve.

Ireland gave away only six penalties in the whole game and the fact that 11 of the starting 15 all come from the one club was clear to see as the team played with great continuity, even in this first game of the competition.

If Ireland maintain this level of discipline and their forwards continue to put in such dominant performances, then they are going to be very hard to bear by anyone.

The old Sexton loop still works and now the whole team is getting in on the act
Over his 102 caps, Johnny Sexton has evolved his game and remains one of the best fly halves in the game. There are many aspects of his game that fans are used to and one of them – his signature loop – is catching on in the Irish team.

He’s been using the move for years and despite its notoriety, he often makes it work and creates an extra man in space as he receives the return pass from his pivot man. As the saying goes – “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” and Ireland seem to be embracing that mantra with several other players using the loop manoeuvre on Sunday to unlock the Welsh defence. At one point even the front rower Tadhg Furlong got in on the act and used the move to break the red wall.

This Ireland are not only playing with more aggression, pace and intensity than previous versions, they also seem to have freed up the players to play what they see in front of them. Sexton is still the conductor, but other players are being trusted to play what they see and take the team in a different direction if they believe it’s where success lies.

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Mack Hansen’s successful debut highlights range of attacking threats Ireland have
The Canberra winger had a pretty much perfect start to his international career picking up the Player of the Match award against Wales and impressing many.

He made more metres than anyone else in the game, a couple of clean breaks and gave a delicious pass to set up Bundee Aki for his third minute try.

Having not been able to secure a Super Rugby spot, Hansen headed to play for Connacht and has found a perfect alignment between his desire to come off his wing and find the ball and Andy Farrell’s game plan of having his wingers create chaos and break up the strict patterns of normal play.

Hansen will have earned himself a starting spot for a good few games now and it will be interesting to see how he goes now that defence coaches are all to aware of the threat he poses.

Wales looking like genuine Wooden Spoon contenders
It’s not a new state of affairs for Wales to go into the Six Nations with pundits and fans alike predicting a very average tournament. Time and again they’ve poured cold water on those predictions and found ways to not just perform beyond expectations, but to be crowned champions.

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2022 is different though and the Welsh Dragon looks to have lost its fire. Against Ireland, Wales were missing 680 caps with several first choice players out injured and while that does explain some of the issues with their performance, it doesn’t excuse everything that happened.

Their discipline was poor and conceding 14 penalties in Dublin doesn’t usually lead to a positive outcome. Their set piece – especially their line out – was unreliable and losing a third of their throws was always going to cause problems.

Coach Wayne Pivac has hopefully learned the risks of playing men out of position. Josh Adams looked all at sea when defending at outside centre and Ireland took full advantage of his indecision. Yes Pivac was having to cope with a depleted squad but he’s got to play his world class winger on the wing and not force him to play against top class attacks in a brand new role.

Ireland away is a tough assignment and Wales were not expected to win this one. But the weakness of their attack and the revolving door nature of their defence doesn’t bode well for the rest of the competition. They’ve got to play Scotland next week then travel to England and France the rounds after that – it’s very possible that they will be going into the final weekend of the tournament winless.

Effect not effort the problem for England
England can still win the Six Nations but they will need to learn very quickly from their mistakes against Scotland if they want to stand a chance of competing with Ireland and France in the weeks to come.

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Domination of possession and territory are just not enough if you don’t do something with those advantages. England could only turn this dominance into three clean breaks and only beat eight defenders the whole game.

Yes the England three quarters were cobbled together after a series of injuries caused selection challenges, but the forwards were hit just as hard and they still managed to provide plenty of ball for their team to play with.

England should have scored more points and they should have controlled the game and grabbed the win, but they didn’t and with their lack of scoring edge, they looked like a side that could become really good rather than a side that is really good right now.

Marcus Smith was one of the positives that came out of the loss and Eddie Jones must be wondering what would have happened if he’d let Smith close out of the game instead of bringing on George Ford. But Smith needs other attacking threats around him to challenge opponents and the team as a whole need to become more ruthless, and Jones needs to rethink his Finishers concept because it certainly didn’t work against Scotland.

Italy halfbacks show signs of an exciting pairing
One of the most common themes used when describing Italy ahead of each year’s Six Nations is that there are signs of improvement and potential. Usually these signs of potential never quite turn into results but this year might just be the year we see something different.

They were never going to beat France but there were plenty of positive signs from the team and from halfbacks Paolo Garbisi and Stephen Varney especially. Varney has been on the radar as a serious talent for a couple of seasons now and seems to be developing nicely.

Garbisi arguably overplays his hand a bit too often at the moment but the 21 year old showed some real touches of class and if the major criticism against him is he looks to attack too often, then coach Kieran Crowley will happily take that and look to help him develop control as his career progresses.

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Just as Ireland benefited from having 11 of their 15 from the same club, so too did Italy benefit from having a huge number of Benetton in their squad – 23 of the 33.

It made the headlines when Crowley dropped the experienced scrum half Carlo Canna from the squad. Canna had played for the Azzurri over 50 times and many assumed he was a guaranteed starter. But Crowley’s commitment to go with youth such as Varney and Garbisi and the young halves have already shown signs of repaying the decision against France.

Garbisi will be very excited about coming up against Marcus Smith in Italy’s next match and the team in general will really have taken a lot from the game against France.

England shouldn’t be too worried, but Wales should be.

It’s been an exciting opening weekend and with Ireland and France due to meet in Paris in week two, it feels like we could be seeing a Grand Slam decider very early in the competition. England really have to step things up and Wales will be desperate for a better performance – round two should be an absolute beauty!

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