As the Six Nations ground to an end in an even less satisfactory fashion than usual, there were the usual outpourings of ‘Wasn't it great' from the usual suspects, and they deserve the usual response: it was like the curate's egg, good in parts.
First, Italy conceded 239 points in five games. The Italians shouldn't be there – it's blindingly obvious they've never been good enough, and on the basis of this year's results they don't seem to be progressing at all. So, out of the 15 games, let's discount five of them straight away as being below-par contests.
When it comes to the other ten, you have to consider them from the point of view of the neutral to get any balance: if you're a proud follower of your nation's team, you probably don't care how they played or how much of a spectacle it was, you just want them to win.
As a Scot that, of course, is how I viewed the match against England, but even then it was hardly a great advertisement for rugby, and the same can be said of a fair number of other games.
England were poor throughout – although they managed to beat the French – as were Ireland most of the time, and while the Welsh were deserved champions, they've a way to go before they can be considered a great team. The Welsh performance was even better than it looks at first sight, because they overcame the disadvantage of having three away fixtures.
The Scots managed to win away against England and France, which you would have thought might make them contenders, but managed to lose narrowly at home to Ireland and Wales – at least they were consistent in their inconsistency!
Which leaves France, who managed to snatch defeat from a certain victory against the Scots in the match that should never have taken place. They looked like the team with most improvement in them, and if their Gallic moments of madness – like failing to boot the ball out with the clock red – can be overcome, then they're the team to fear going forward.
The Six Nations is already dragged out to seven weekends, but because of Covid it stretched into an eighth.
The French couldn't play their game against the Scots on the designated date, and should have forfeited it. However, because this is the Six Nations where the laws of common sense rarely apply, the match was rescheduled.
The Premiership kindly allowed the Scots to ‘rent' four players for the rescheduled fixture, cunningly managing to balance the books by spotting that Gloucester and Exeter were playing each other, so depriving each of them of two players would be equitable! Four Anglo-Scots still left Scotland weakened, but who cares about fairness, this is the Six Nations and the show must go on!
The CVC deal appears to mean that kicking out Italy and reverting to a Five Nations, played over four weekends, with each team having two home and two away games, is a nonstarter, which is a crying shame.
This weekend sees the round of 16 of the much-messed-about with Champions Cup, and while some rugby on the box is always welcome, it's really a bit of a joke, isn't it? France is in deep trouble with Covid, and heading for another lockdown, which means that sending five French teams to England and Ireland, and sending Bristol and Edinburgh to France, never looked to be the smartest decision.
I understand the parlous state of rugby's finances, and the desire to honour lucrative broadcasting commitments, but it seems that commonsense gets chucked out of the window on a regular basis. The same nonsense is taking place with the Lions tour, scheduled to happen in just three months' time. The sensible thing is to simply call it off – maybe it's time for players to stand up and say if the organisers aren't prepared to make the right decision, they'll do it for them.
