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Hello. Excuse me. Have you seen any of my grey matter? I had a full complement and then I went to Dublin for St Patrick’s weekend, backed the Irish winner in the Cheltenham Gold Cup on the Friday and then someone gave me a ticket for the Aviva Stadium on Saturday and the next thing I know is that I woke up on St Stephen’s Green on Sunday morning with one shoe lost, my wallet empty and half a million brain cells missing. What happened?
The Six Nations finale is what happened, delivering the most romantic as well as the most fitting of climaxes with Ireland landing their first ever Grand Slam in Dublin (the 1948 one was claimed in Belfast), cementing their status as Europe’s leading contender for World Cup honours with their fourth title of the last decade. It was nervy, it was tense, occasionally tetchy but the team did as it has done over the past 18 months, finding a way through a thicket of challenges to send the fair city into raptures.
Ireland keep on winning no matter what – and, fair play to England, they were up for the fight, a minimum requirement for an international team, you might say, but they had been so useless, so spineless, so meaningless against France that the prospect of another horror show was very real.
It made for wonderful scenes at the final whistle, producing images that reached out way beyond rugby’s normal constituency.
In the long-running saga of bone-headed rugby administrators pride of place must go to those who have repeatedly pushed for the Six Nations championship to be shunted towards the end of the season. Take your pick as to the reasons behind such cack-handed thinking: aligning the southern and northern hemisphere seasons, greater clarity for club season, better weather and so on and so on. All lame excuses, short-sighted and wilfully destructive. Thankfully there are those with wisdom, foresight and backbone in those corridors of power and instead of a humdrum club weekend, Test-match rugby once again hit the headlines.
The Six Nations Championship is made for this time of year, filling the schedules and drawing in so many passing viewers as well as the diehards. As for the guff that has long been spouted about aligning the seasons north and south of the equator, it has only ever meant playing to a southern calendar. The north is where the money lies, so why should it meddle with its long-established conventions and tournaments. It makes no sense.
And as Dubliners scrabble among the rubble of a boisterous celebratory weekend, it’s only right to salute the finely-paced rhythms of this seven week competition, its ongoing narrative arch which threw up so many intriguing story lines. The denouement in Dublin may not have given us high-end quality fare but it was never less than riveting.
It has never been difficult to be in thrall to what Ireland has to offer, the warmth (of the welcome rather than the weather), the fun, the craic and all that malarky. Cliched, perhaps but true nonetheless.
Andy Farrell’s Ireland team have all those characteristics in them, derived from the persona of their head coach who has released them from the more rigid ways, on and off the field, of his predecessor, Joe Schmidt. Ireland benefitted hugely from Schmidt’s scholastic approach, their finely choregraphed play seeing them rise up the rankings and taking them to a Grand Slam in 2018.
Andy Farrell, the Ireland head coach, holds the Six Nations trophy after Ireland secure a Grand Slam victory during the Six Nations Rugby match between Ireland and England at Aviva Stadium on March 18, 2023 in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)
But Farrell has moved the team on from that period which, once again, ended in World Cup failure in Japan. Farrell has liberated the side, encouraged them to trust their instincts as much as the game plan. There is intelligence as well as emotion in their play, craft and graft in equal measure, cleverness, variety, nuance, all of those subtle shifts of on-field strategy and off-field mindset.
Ireland once again won on the hoof, adapting to the circumstances they found themselves in, didn’t rush or panic, let the man advantage take its toll ( what an over-the-top red card that was for Freddie Steward) and got their due returns. Ireland play winning rugby, far easier said than done, and is the most precious virtue of a champion team.
England’s relative misery is encapsulated in the figure of Andy Farrell, not so much the one that got away as the one shown the door in 2015 following England’s ignominious World Cup exit at the pool stage. Farrell’s stock is so high, and rightly so, that he is already a shoo-in to be Lions head coach in Australia in 2025.
England did at least put some pride back into performance. They are still so far behind the market leaders but at least they are back in the fight, scuffling sluggers maybe while the champs dance around the ring, but that is their rightful place on the card at the moment. They’ve spent too long bemoaning the supposed mess Eddie Jones left behind and now have to get on with the job. And it’s a monumental one.
And what of last weekend’s Anglo-slayers, the buccaneering French, bested only by Ireland but showing enough punch and panache in brushing off the Welsh challenge to show that the opening match of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, France vs New Zealand, on September 8th might well turn out to greatest opener that the tournament has ever seen?
France have so much to offer, from the power of their forward pack, the skill too, to the all-round brilliance of their back line. To prove that they are an all-court side, capable of hurting you from anywhere, it was an old-school barrelling score from prop, Uni Antonio, four minutes into the second-half that took France past their previous best ever total of points (156 pts in 2002) in the championship. They let their attention drift to allow Wales, doing something of an England with a spirited sort of show, to get a bonus point with a fourth try by Rio Dyer.
Scotland, edgy, febrile, just-about-got-away-with-it, Scotland confirmed their reputation as a team with potential if not yet wholly proven product. The 26-14 scoreline against Italy to deliver a respectable third place finish with three victories for the fifth time in the last seven seasons masks just how squeaky-bum a win it was.
Italy, oh Italy. How close, knocking the ball on within a gnat’s whisker of the line in the dying seconds only to then see Scotland go the length-of-the-field to secure victory, once again have to deal with the heartache of a near-miss. They will be bruised, as well as cheesed off, with all those well-intentioned yet patronising pats on the back and the dreaded, ‘Well played old chap but tough luck.’ At least talk of relegation from the championship has been well and truly stilled.
Scotland will be troublesome at the World Cup, dangerous as they showed against France. But they are not yet Ireland, able to rise above the mess and mayhem to see their way to glory. And thoroughly deserved it was too. Ireland and France have proper designs on the Webb Ellis trophy, the rest of the European sides are also-rans.
Mick Cleary, who was Daily Telegraph rugby correspondent ( 1997-2021), was also a sports feature writer for The Observer ( 1988-1997). Cleary has covered eight Rugby World Cups as well as seven Lions tours. He was written several books on those tournaments and tours as well as worked with Jeremy Guscott on his autobiography. Cleary has also had extensive experience of other sports including tennis at Wimbledon, cycling at the Tour de France and golf at The Open. Cricket, athletics , horse racing and F1 also feature on his CV.