Going Green?
FRANK KEATING Rugby union's Six Nations tournament begins this weekend with Ireland the soothsayers' hot fancy to achieve its first Grand Slam in all of 58 years and England inked in for the wooden spoon. I'd be mighty surprised if either forecast came to pass. This Saturday, France play in Rome, Scotland at Twickenham, and by Sunday evening in Cardiff, after Wales and Ireland have been pulled apart, I daresay a totally reverse set of overall odds will be decorating the bookmakers' blackboards.
This 2007 tournament is an overture-andbeginners run-through for the World Cup in France in the autumn when England will be defending their title. The lilywhites may have gormlessly suffered eight defeats in their last nine matches, but under an apparently bold new management such stats will be irrelevant if they can put together two or three confident, even stylish, victories this month. New coach, new captain, new start — for the only year to peak is World Cup year. At the same time, while Ireland's thrilling regulars grow old together, wise enough to know two scintillating November victories — genuine Gaelic grandeur in the gales — against South Africa and Australia will also count for nought should overconfidence (or their olde-tyme insecurities) pervade their February endeavours. There is also, for Ireland, serious history and the Croke Park factor: the team has left their ramshackle, raucously partisan Dublin home at Lansdowne, which is being rebuilt, and moved across town to Croke Park, high and handsome headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association which, for a century, has had no truck with the `foreign' English game. Will Ireland's rugby feel at ease? Will the extra 34,000 spectators — mighty Croke has a capacity of 82,000 to Lansdowne's 48,000 — dissipate the cosy, clannish, colosseum effect the rugby fellows have been used to? Will Molly Malone, for instance, sweetly sing home the boys at Croke? We shall know soon enough: Ireland play France there next Saturday and England on 24 February.
It will be instructive today to see how the Scots go at Twickenham; I sense a bracing breeziness about the Blues this year: well, as long as the splendid Paterson blows strong. As ever pre-start, Wales have been zestfully full of hot air; today is lift-off and for real; we shall see; certainly they have unearthed a cool, callow customer in Hook. It is time for Italy to show — and, mon dieu, it goes without saying that the French are desperately flailing around for a half-decent fly-half to lead their parade: no one has since darling little dancer Castagneide was full of the joys. For all rugby's slick, packaged new age, no team this weekend will field a player remotely worth a place in their country's all-time XV. Except Ireland. I reckon a third of this current Irish side would make their all-star XV of my three-score span — crucially, too, as the very spine at full-back, centre, fly-halt and lock. How's this for a dandy combo of the green generations: Geordan Murphy, Tony O'Reilly, Brian O'Driscoll, Mike Gibson, Simon Geoghegan, Ronan O'Gara, Andy Mulligan, Syd Millar, Keith Wood, Ray McLoughlin, Donncha O'Callaghan, Paul O'Connell, John O'Driscoll, Ken Goodall, Fergus Slattery?
Pick holes in that XV, and savour the litany of saints on the bench: Kyle and Kiernan, Keane and Kennedy, Campbell, Ward and Willie-John, not forgetting that immortal back-row of 1948: McKay, O'Brien, and McCarthy. No wonder Ireland begin this February as favourites.
Previous page