Kick out Italy to make the tournament fairer

Not with a bang but a whimper perfectly sums up the conclusion to this year’s Six Nations.

- COLIN BOAG

It wasn’t only the lack of crowds, the six-month hiatus was just as important – the essence of the tournament is that the hype builds over six weeks to a climactic ‘Super Saturday’, and this time around the public interest was a lot less than usual.

The quality of the rugby wasn’t great, and that’s often the case with the Six Nations. People love to talk about the small number of epic encounters the tournament throws up, but they conveniently like to forget the ‘dogs’. None of last Saturday’s three games fell into the former category, and I’ve seen much better and more enthralling contests in the Champions Cup and the Premiership.

Wales under Wayne Pivac, and Ireland under Andy Farrell, were pretty poor – if world-class coaches like Warren Gatland and Joe Schmidt depart then it has an impact, and it takes a while to recover. Scotland once again showed the green shoots of recovery, but this was Gregor Townsend’s third Six Nations since Vern Cotter was inexplicably ‘let go’ back in 2017, so it wasn’t before time!