LET’S ENJOY THIS Six Nations Championship. After all, it may be the last.
At the time of writing Donald Trump has already squared up to China, Iran and, weirdly, Australia. Vladimir Putin is daring anyone to come and have a go if they think they’re hard enough. Europe, meanwhile, is in the grip of a far right power shift.
As a result, the Doomsday Clock has ticked on to two and a half minutes to midnight and no greater authority than Mikhail Gorbachev reckons the world is preparing for war.
But yeah! Six Nations, eh? Woop!
In the event of cataclysmic global conflict, even Rugby’s Greatest Championship™ might struggle to find a space in the calendar.
At any rate, our brave boys would be expected to do their bit in World War III, though quite what side Ireland would be on is unclear. On one hand we want to be sophisticated European types who believe in free movement, human rights and excellent pesto, while on the other still keeping in with our friends in the incipient North Atlantic Reich. Come nuclear Armageddon, the only survivor will be Enda Kenny, poised with a bowl of shamrock for the new mutant cockroach overlords.
There appears to be no such identity crisis afflicting the Six Nations on the eve of what, even putting aside the upcoming apocalypse, is a more highly-anticipated tournament than usual. The grand old competition is striding forth with confidence, laden down with commercial riches and never more popular.
And tournament top brass are not ones to shine their lights under a bushel, especially in the face of external threats.
“In reality, the Six Nations is the last place people should be looking to change,” the tournament’s chief executive John Feehan told Newstalk on Thursday when asked about calls from the English Premiership to cram the championship into five weekends.
“When you look at the importance of the Six Nations, you have to be careful when tinkering with it.”
But tinker with it they have, making the decision to trial bonus points this year all the more intriguing. “We are conscious that we must reward try scoring and an attacking style of play that will deliver more tries and greater rewards for fans and players alike,” said Feehan when the move was announced last November.
The introduction of bonus points can be seen as a Putin-style land grab on the southern hemisphere’s reputation for being the place to see the world’s best rugby. Like most of us, it’s not enough for the Six Nations to be loved; it also wants to be respected.
The statistics explain their thinking. Taking the last five seasons into account, the Six Nations has averaged just under 3.7 tries per game, while the Rugby Championship delivered 4.9. Try average has been climbing since 2013′s nadir of 2.47 to last season’s orgiastic 4.73, but our friends in the south are only getting more explosive, with last year’s Rugby Championship averaging 5.83 tries per game.
The hope is clearly that bonus points will deliver a tournament as renowned for the quality of its rugby as its raucously boozy city breaks. Time to take the South on at its own game.
Not everyone is happy. Stephen Jones, the Sunday Times resident rugby curmudgeon, described bonus points as a “bogus concept” that doesn’t actually work and also demeans the competition. “(The Six Nations) should be the most sacred of all,” he wrote last Sunday. “Victories can be won by brilliant attack or brilliant defence, in scrums, mauls or through luck…Tries? So what?”
Joe Schmidt isn’t sure either. “There was none on offer when we went to Chicago and played the All Blacks, but there were nine tries in a game played in fine weather. You play in a manner to suit the conditions.”
Crafty number 10s booting steaming packs of forwards into position: it’s part of what are. And anyway, didn’t 2016 show that the southern hemisphere, New Zealand aside, isn’t all that?
Renewed confidence in the North is in sharp contrast to the mood of despondency twelve months ago. The humiliation of the 2015 World Cup was fresh in the memory and the Six Nations was roundly dismissed as a oafish backwater. Then we had England’s revival, Ireland’s ‘grand slam’ of the South’s big three, and hell, Italy even beat South Africa.
And yet the southern hemisphere always seems to get it right when it matters. England in 2003 remains the only World Cup winner from these parts, and the South has never had fewer than two semi-finalists. The effectiveness of bonus points may be up for debate, but the Six Nations powers would be well advised to copy the skills, decision-making and craft that the best teams from the southern hemisphere always have.
It’s not quite an identity crisis, but no longer content with being the ‘greatest’, the Six Nations now wants to be the best as well. Ultimately this is one battle for global supremacy that will only be settled in 2019 when Japan welcomes the world.
That’s if there still is a world by then…
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