Six Nations: round three takeaways

Back in the days when Jonah Lomu was ripping up the turf, a joke did the rounds. The All Blacks coach is giving his pre-match chat and says to the lads: “Right fellas, above all else, rugby is a team sport so I want all 14 of you to pass the ball to Jonah whenever you get the chance.” You have to think that Duhan van der Merwe is now nearing that same level of awesome finishing excellence. Lets’ forget that hiccup for the first England try when the big winger jumped out the line and got caught in no man’s land. It is fair to say that he made amends for that mistake. Scotland have managed seven tries over the three matches thus far, Duhan has scored five of them including that hat trick at Murrayfield, a number of which no one else could have scored. That is some effort and South Africa’s boss Rassie Erasmus must view him as one that got away. The Springboks’ loss is Scotland’s gain even if that means we must sweep under the carpet any questions about the ethics of a South African representing Scotland. It does also beg the question of how on earth Scotland will manage without him if/when he gets injured/carded?

It wasn’t a great match at Murrayfield, again, but obviously it’s always nice to beat England, especially since Saturday made it four times on the bounce. Scotland won with something to spare and they did so without playing terribly well. Duhan took his chances, yes, but elsewhere the Scottish performance left plenty to work on. Scotland fixed their poor second half performance only to be utterly useless in the opening quarter. England were pretty awful throughout. Embarrassingly bad at times. Some of the slapstick and Duhan’s first try arose from England players struggling with a new rush defensive system, but elsewhere the basic skills of the game deserted perfectly good players. I take no great pleasure in pointing this out. Okay, I laughed until my ribs ached, but on a more serious note the health and well being of European Rugby in general and the Six Nations in particular needs its two big beasts, France and England, to be firing live rounds. France are genuine contenders, or they will be when Fabien Galthie goes, England are not. I would love to see them beat Ireland at Twickenham but I can’t see it happening without a plague of red cards for the men in green. It is difficult to pinpoint why England are so bad. In the run up to this match, Sam Warburton suggested that the men in white are not very fit, which may hold water. But there must be other reasons that turn good club players into poor Test ones? I would like England to become a very good team so Scotland can beat them and really have something to celebrate. Last Saturday evening felt a little flat.

The Italians are a mystery to me. The country keeps producing good, well trained, highly competitive under-20s sides who then disappear into the ether when you expect them to transform the fortunes of the men’s senior side. While the senior team were thwarted by the width of the post in Lille on Sunday, the 20s went one better, beating France for the first time ever in the Six Nations. The game was held in France and Italy triumphed despite playing for ten minutes with a man in the bin. The young Italians were shown celebrating on X with a rendition of Nessun Dorma, which warms the heart. It was a brilliant game, 20s matches are infinitely more entertaining than the senior equivalent, and Italy won for two reasons. Throughout the game the Italian forwards ruthlessly dismantled the giant French pack at the set scrum. They powered a scrum over the French line for the winning try around the 70 minute mark with two reserve props in the front-row! Secondly, Italy fielded a 6ft 4ins winger in Marco Scalabrin. He scored against France having done the same against Ireland on the opening weekend, and wouldn’t look out of place in the senior side. Italy’s starting props, since you ask, were Federico Pisani and a beast of a tighthead called Marcos Gallorini. Remember those names. The young Scots play them next and will need all the Weetabix they can eat between now and then.

It’s a good job that France has luck on their side because nothing else is going right for ‘Les Blues’ at the moment. Never have so many talented players looked so completely out of sorts. Whatever magic Galthie had when leading his troops to the Grand Slam just two short years ago has gone with the wind. Yes, France were reduced to 14 men thanks to Jonathan Danty’s yellow card being upgraded to a red but playing shorthanded often galvinises a side. Look what 14 man England did against Argentina in the World Cup and you would back a 14 man French team, at its best, to beat Italy at full strength nine times out of 10. The coach will step down, surely, at the end of the season and you wonder what that means for defensive guru Shaun Edwards who seems to have lost his mojo? Has that World Cup exit holed the fragile French psyche below the water line or is everyone in blue simply pining for the talismanic Antoine Dupont who, incidentally, helped France to a bronze medal in the Vancouver SVNS (as we are obliged to call it now).

Christophe Ridley blew the game in Lille and had the Englishman refereed the Scotland v France game a couple of weeks back I suspect that Gregor Townsend’s team would have won. The English referee awarded a try to France that was similar to the Scots’ one that was disallowed in that the French player was short to begin with before dragging the ball over the line. Ridley is a good referee, I am not arguing his merits, simply pointing out the bleeding obvious, every referee is different and teams have to manage that on top of everything else that goes on. Ridley is quick and decisive but he perhaps erred amongst the pandemonium at the end of the match. He probably should have given Paolo Garbisi another chance to kick that late penalty because the French replacement prop, Sébastien Taofifénua, the smaller of the two brothers can you believe, charged Garbisi, if only for a few metres, which is not allowed. That incident occurred after one of his teammates (I didn’t catch the number) also charged Garbisi as the Italian fly-half was replacing the ball onto the kicking tee. That too is forbidden and only added further pressure on the kicker. Another referee might have allowed Garbisi to re-take the penalty, not that it helps Italy now, but why have laws if your match officials won’t uphold them?

Dr James Robson has been in and around Scottish rugby for so long that he treated me back in the days of black and white television. He steps down at the end of the season and Saturday marked his final home game. There were great pictures of him on the players’ shoulders waving the Calcutta Cup. A great guy, ‘Robbo’ would slip me some ibuprofen when I turned up with a hangover for a Sunday squad session, a not uncommon event back in the amateur era. In 1994 I broke my leg at Cardiff. Well, to be exact Phil Davies broke my leg for me, but accidentally he assured me. I hobbled off the field and groaned for a bit on the sidelines. Who, I asked Robbo, was taking my place in the backrow? “Doddie,” he replied. The big man was a world class lock but not quite so proficient in the third-row. “I’ll try and run it off,” I replied. I failed, obviously. And in case you are thinking that I am boasting about being a very brave soldier, I am pretty sure that Ian ‘Mouse’ McLauchlan played most of a Test match with a broken fibula in the days before replacements were allowed. I will ask him on Saturday at the 40th anniversary dinner of Islay Rugby Club.