Six Nations 2016: State of the sides after first weekend's games
Ireland’s hopes of another Grand Slam have already disappeared while Eddie Jones has hit the ground running with England, but what else did we learn from the weekend? Chris Hewett picks through all the action
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Your support makes all the difference.England Flying start for Jones but doubts remain
A Calcutta Cup victory in the graveyard surroundings of Murrayfield; a clean sheet on the casualty front; the two dominant Six Nations forces of recent years erasing each other from the Grand Slam equation… only if the Rugby Football Union chief executive, Ian Ritchie, had put 50 per cent of his £600,000 salary behind the bar could the opening weekend have been more satisfying for Eddie Jones and his players.
The new coach can already see some wood amid the trees. He has identified Owen Farrell as his first-choice marksman – no more of that “George Ford has to kick because it’s part of a No 10’s job” nonsense – and is in the happy position of knowing that Dan Cole’s flirtation with anonymity at the World Cup was confined to that miserable tournament. The downside? Danny Care’s kicking game from scrum-half remains a weakness, while Mike Brown’s habit of doing all his best running at the wrong end of the field appears to have resurrected itself. He is too good an attacker to see the red-rose 22-metre line as the limit of his wanderlust.
France Vakatawa’s debut papers over the cracks
They’ve found themselves a left wing, that’s for sure. Many wide men have made an immediate impact on the rugby consciousness by making the most of their opportunity on debut, but Virimi Vakatawa managed to do it in a team performing at half-cock – or, in the case of Les Bleus, half-coq. The Fijian-born sevens specialist may turn out to be at least as good as Henry Speight, Waisake Naholo and all the other strike-runners from down Suva way who play their international rugby elsewhere. He may even stack up alongside Joe Rokocoko and Sitiveni Sivivatu, in which case… watch out, world.
Elsewhere, the coach Guy Novès has more questions than answers. Louis Picamoles, his kingpin No 8, is already hors de combat and unlikely to play another Six Nations game until 2017; the front-rowers failed to have their wicked way with an inexperienced Italian combination at the weekend; the defence against the Azzurri was all over the place. Jules Plisson looks a decent bet at No 10, but without a “petit général” at scrum-half, his effectiveness could be blunted.
Ireland Draw felt like a victory after all the injuries
Any thoughts the reigning champions might have had about claiming an unprecedented third successive Six Nations title in Grand Slam style have evaporated, but they must still be significantly happier than Wales, with whom they drew in Dublin two days ago. It was no mean achievement to hold the visitors with half the first-choice side watching from the stand.
Joe Schmidt, the head coach, has two reasons to be cheerful: for one, the weapons-grade pairing of Jonathan Sexton and Conor Murray has stopped firing blanks from half-back and resorted to live ammunition; for another, the South African import CJ Stander looks well capable of bringing some vim and vigour to a green-shirted back row potentially emasculated by the absence of Peter O’Mahony and Sean O’Brien.
Italy Canna capable of posing problems for England
Maybe, just maybe, the Azzurri have found an outside-half good enough to stop the locals spending the entire tournament praying for the Second Coming of Diego Dominguez. The fact that Carlo Canna’s performance against the French in Paris was more encouraging in the creative sense than in the kicking one is a serious plus: it is easier to knock a No 10’s marksmanship into shape than it is to arm him with footballing instinct and game understanding.
You have to like the centre partnership outside him, too: Gonzalo Garcia has always been a passionate soul with an appetite for hard work, while Michele Campagnaro looks the real deal at No 13. As they also have something going for them in the front and back rows (leaving aside Sergio Parisse’s drop-kicking, naturally), they should be in the right frame of mind to take a swipe at England on Sunday.
Scotland Silver linings to Calcutta Cup defeat
Stuart Hogg has been talking up his team’s performance in the Calcutta Cup match rather than talking it down, and he has a point: England did not win the game quite as easily as Eddie Jones suggested afterwards, and but for one horrible missed tackle from Richie Gray and one glorious piece of skill from Mako Vunipola, the try-count might have been 0-0.
Scotland are weak off the bench – that much is obvious – and, without Alex Dunbar and Tim Visser in their back line, they look just a little toothless. But it is possible to see Willem Nel giving rival front rows a proper hurry-up, just as it is reasonable to think that Jonny Gray and John Hardie have man-of-the-match displays in them. All is not lost.
Wales Rusty returnees must pick up the pace soon
Warren Gatland’s side are unbeaten going into their first home fixture. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they underperformed badly in the opening stages against Ireland and then failed to extract full value from a dominant scrummaging performance and some characteristically forthright midfield contributions from Jamie Roberts and Jonathan Davies.
It was by no means obvious in Dublin that the decision to run Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric as a pair of double-trouble flankers paid dividends – Warburton looked well shy of match sharpness – and while two other recent non-combatants, the full-back Liam Williams and the replacement outside-half Rhys Priestland, did some good things, they too looked short of a gallop. They will still start as favourites against Scotland this week, but it is no one’s idea of a gimme.
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