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Six Nations: Joy For England And Wales, More Misery For Scotland

Gareth Knight reviews the second weekend of the 2012 Six Nations Championship.

By Gareth Knight

13 Feb 2012, 11:00

Italy 15 England 19

A long and dull game that was hard to follow (red lines on a green pitch – didn’t anyone tell the Italians that yellow would have been a better colour?!). Italy would have won were it not for missed kicks and on balance a draw would have been a fair result, but like it or not, kicks are a way to score points, and England took the opportunities, so they deserved to win.

Italy’s forwards had a far tougher game than they were expecting but they showed a lot of promise by not collapsing under the pressure. The conditions undoubtedly sapped some of the positive game plan we saw last week. The Italian back row had the edge over England but they were making some poor decisions when distributing the ball – in those conditions they needed to keep it tight and allow the Italian back row to break the defensive line, instead they sent it out to the backs which took away Italy’s biggest advantage. If Italy can keep the score down in Dublin and Cardiff they could beat the Scots on the final weekend but I fear this will not be their year.

England have taken another victory and they’re in a stronger position as they prepare to face the far tougher tests of Wales, France and Ireland. The English scrum was very impressive – what should have been an area of Italian domination was neutralised, though the lineout needs a lot of work. Ben Youngs had a dreadful game, on at least three occasions he appeared to lose the ball and it was only the inability of the Italians to capitalise that stopped Youngs’s errors becoming English disasters. I think I’ve finally worked out the advantage of Charlie Hodgson – he is opportunistic. Scoring tries in consecutive matches as a result of charge-downs is no way to win a match but it still gets the job done and when your team are developing, having an opportunistic fly half is a great way to keep heads up. But now the hard work starts and when they face Wales at Twickenham in a fortnight’s time, the younger England players may have a rude awakening.

 

France vs Ireland – match postponed

Well this screws up my team of the week no end but, more importantly, we had a lesson in how not to cancel a match. Putting aside the astonishing fact that the Stade de France was built without under-soil heating and the fact that the game would have been played had the stadium’s grass been longer, there is no justification in allowing a game to be cancelled so late in the day because of weather. A week ago they could have made the decision to postpone the match or, far better, they could have moved it to Marseille – a rugby heartland where the weather is warmer. Cancelling a match ten minutes before the start time is unacceptable.

I was also very disappointed by the BBC’s alternative. They had a Saturday night audience of rugby fans and they decided to put on a documentary about a bin man – eh? Why didn’t they go into their extensive archive and pull out the France vs Ireland game from 2000, play the second test match from the last Lions tour or play the Living with the Lions or Living with the Pride films from the 1997 or 2009 tours, you know, something genuinely of interest to the rugby supporting viewers? This is the kind of thing they do when tennis and golf is cancelled so why not do it for rugby too? Very poor show.

 

Wales 27 Scotland 13

This was a good game that was slow coming. Scotland’s disallowed try should have been awarded but the yellow cards the received were justified (and one probably prevented a try).

Wales were not playing the seamless rugby they were against Ireland – they were under pressure in the scrum and Mike Phillips allowed himself to be frustrated. There’s no denying that switching to Leigh Halfpenny to do the kicking has paid dividends. Defensively Wales were extremely good, though very frustrating for the Scots or indeed for neutral fans who wanted to watch some running rugby, at one point they were defending so effectively they pushed the Scottish attack backwards from the Welsh half to their Scottish 22 yard line. What was most concerning is that Wales failed to score in the first 20 minutes when they dominated the game and they only started performing well when Scotland went down to 14 men. The lineout was a disaster as usual and Wales badly miss Alun Wyn Jones, Luke Charteris and Bradley Davies. I feel keeping Ryan Jones on the second row when Sam Warburton withdrew from the game at the last minute was a big mistake. There were too many players out of position and if you have the space for a lock on the pitch you shouldn’t play a back rower on the second row and keep the lock on the bench.

Scotland had their moments but this felt like a step backwards to me – the intensity of the Welsh attack was far higher than the English attack and the Scots looked slightly lost at sea which eventually led to two sin-binnings. The forwards were strong and highly effective in set pieces and in the loose but the backs had no chance against the mammoth Welshmen. Errors dropped from last week but there were still too many. Scotland missed Euan Murray (they always do on a Sunday) and they didn’t pick up the game until Mike Blair came on for Chris Cusiter. Greig Laidlaw’s kicking game was too easy for Wales to handle and the three-quarter line was easily snuffed out. Credit has to go to Stuart Hogg for an outstanding debut, the Scottish winger who always did something when he got the ball, it’s just that he got the ball too rarely. Scotland need Simon Danielli, Joe Ansbro and Ruaridh Jackson back.

 

My team of the round

Obviously this excludes the Irish and French.

1. Alex Corbisiero – England

England should have been hammered in the scrum and they weren’t, largely thanks to Corbisiero’s loosehead play, though it did get much easier once Martin Castrogiovanni, the Italian tighthead, was substituted.

2. Ross Ford – Scotland

Excellent lineout play and solid in the scrum and in the loose. Like many players do, Ford has seriously upped his game since becoming captain.

3. Adam Jones – Wales

High work-rate as always – everywhere the ball goes, Jones is always there to support his colleagues.

4. Richie Gray – Scotland

I nearly gave it to Mouritz Botha but Gray stood out again for his ball carrying.

5. Jim Hamilton – Scotland  

Outstanding play once more for loose play and the lineout.

6. Dan Lydiate – Wales  

Exceptionally strong game from the forgotten member of the Welsh back row. Lydiate is on a par with Stephen Ferris and Sean O’Brien and arguably more important to the Welsh defence than Sam Warburton is to the Welsh attack. Credit goes to Alessandro Zanni for his outstanding performance for Italy.

7. Ross Rennie – Scotland  

Rennie always plays well but in this game he took advantage of Warburton’s injury and got the better of newbee Aasron Shingler.

8. David Denton – Scotland

Rapidly becoming one of the players of the tournament – excellent play once again.

9. Lee Dickson – England

He may have only been on the field for 29 minutes but his impact was immense. The moment Dickson came on for Ben Youngs England’s tempo and determination leaped up as if Dickson had been the missing link all along. An excellent display.

10. Rhys Priestland – Wales

Priestland was not at his best but he was the only fly half kicking accurately for territory and that gives him the nod for my team this week. I want to give it to Charlie Hodgson but other than the charge-down and try he made some huge errors.

11. Leigh Halfpenny – Wales

Shifted from fullback to the wing when George North was injured and played brilliantly. By far the shortest Welsh back, he seemed to take up the reigns of the nippy try-snatcher from Shane Williams.

12. Jamie Roberts – Wales  

Broke the defensive line every time he got the ball and played well despite a lack of ball for much of the game.

13. Jonathan Davies – Wales

Outstanding again.

14. Alex Cuthbert – Wales   

The most difficult player to pick is the second winger but I have to go for Cuthbert for being so effective against the Scottish defence. North and Cuthbert could be terrifying opposition defenders for the next decade. George North and Luke McLean also had fine games and Chris Ashton had his best game in some time. Stuart Hogg had a great debut for Scotland and if he keeps up that level of performance he’ll be a big star.

15. Rory Lamont – Scotland

Despite the sin-binning, Rory Lamont was highly effective at fullback and made the right kick, pass, run decisions. Ben Foden misses out because of two mistakes that led to tries – a rare case of one of England’s best players royally messing up.

In a fortnight: Ireland vs Italy, England va Wales, Scotland vs France