Dammit. At least England didn’t win.
Heading into the final round of this year’s Six Nations, Ireland needed a win over Italy and lots of help from above to get back to the top of the table and take an unprecedented third consecutive continental championship. The Irish did their part, creaking past Italy, 22-17, for a bonus-point win in Rome. The gods? Not so much. So there will be no three-peat. Tres bien, France.
Ireland came into this year’s tournament as the two-time defending champs, and on the cusp of history: No team had ever won three outright Six Nations championships in a row, even though the tournament for Europe’s finest national teams has been held annually since 1883. The chatter about rugby immortality got louder when Ireland opened with a 27-22 win over England that was more one-sided than the final margin indicates. But Ireland took their foot off the despicable visitors’ neck at game’s end, allowing the English two garbage-time tries that got them a bonus point in their loss that would end up impacting the final tournament table. And then Ireland began getting old right in front of the world, or at least the portion that pays attention to rugby.
Along with being the highest-ranked team in the tournament, Ireland was also the oldest, with a roster averaging nearly 29.5 years. And hell if the Irish didn’t seem more over the hill with each passing round! Sure, they did just enough to keep hope alive by getting past Wales and Scotland on the road. But then Ireland stank up the joint while getting utterly stomped by France a week ago in Dublin, 42-27, a game in which the home squad’s one-man youth movement, 22-year-old fly-half Sam Prendergast, showed his greenness at the worst time ever. That loss meant both the French and evil English leapt over Ireland on the tournament table, and took Ireland’s Six Nations destiny out of her hands.
All six teams played their final-round games on Saturday, making for an awesomely long and awesomely awesome day of rugby. Ireland-Italy in Rome opened the slate. Alas, even with title mathematically within Ireland's reach as the match began, the day ended up being more a celebration of what Irish rugby was than what it is or will be. A trio of very grizzled Irish idols with nearly 400 caps between them, Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray, and Cian Healy, had announced before the match that this would be their swan song playing for dear old Ireland. And interim head coach Simon Easterby disclosed last week he’d be benching pitiable Prendergast, thought of as the future of the franchise before the tournament, and handing the No. 10 jersey back to veteran Jack Crowley.
From kickoff, the defending champs played as if weighed down both by last week’s loss and the uncertainty ahead. The box score makes it seem as if the highlight of the day came via hooker Dan Sheehan’s three tries. But a more somber hat trick you’ll likely never see on the international rugby set. The visiting fans in the grandstand made less noise for any of Sheehan's scores than they did when O’Mahony, a 35-year-old back row who is central casting’s idea of what a retiring rugger should look like, shed his warmups on the sideline in the second half and was put back in for one last dance. Irish fans who’d booked their trip to Rome hoping they’d be cheering the lads in green on to a landmark Six Nations title were left saluting O’Mahony and his mates for getting on with their lives.
As for the game: Ireland was helped immensely by the two yellow cards and a red assessed to Italy on the day. Yet despite playing with a man advantage for darn near half the match, the plucky Roman rivals, who hadn’t beaten the Irish in a Six Nations clash in more than a decade, kept things close.
This time around it was Crowley’s turn to stink: He missed three of his four conversion kicks on the day. His final muff, after Sheehan’s third try put Ireland up, 22-10, opened the door for Italy to pull off a massive upset. A try by Italian scrum half Stephen Varney, plus the conversion, brought the home side within five points. And then the officials threw Italy a bone by wiping out an Irish try when an assistant referee ruled wing James Lowe had stepped on the touch line before making a fabulous assist. Replays all showed that Lowe, who missed the France tilt with back spasms but showed his value upon his return, had actually stayed in bounds, but somehow the bogus call stood. That kept Italy alive, and the hosts were actually tush-pushing toward what would be a game-winning score in the closing moments when hooker Giacomo Nicotera was rightly penalized for a dirty ruck clear out. Prendergast, who Easterby put back on the pitch because of Crowley’s lousy play, kicked the ball out of bounds to get the full-time whistle and seal Ireland's win.
And so Ireland, for all its disorganization and dispirited play, nonetheless escaped Rome with a bonus-point win, courtesy of four tries on the day. And with those five points, the Six Nations table once again had Ireland in the top spot over France and England. Barely, and only briefly, as things turned out.
To stay in first, Ireland needed woeful Wales to beat the English in Cardiff. That wasn’t likely to happen. And it didn’t. Not even close. Evil England won, 68-14, scoring a tournament-record 10 tries along the way. In sewing up another Wooden Spoon, given each year to the last place squad, the Welsh suffered what was called their largest-ever margin of defeat at home. Woeful Wales, who replaced their head coach in the middle of this year’s tournament, have now lost 17 games in a row, called the longest losing streak by any national team in rugby’s professional era. Yet despite their team’s past and present miseries, the home fans that packed Principality Stadium spent all 80 lousy minutes cheering and drinking, though not necessarily in that order.
The bonus-point blowout put the English in first place with only one game left in the tournament: France vs. Scotland on Saturday night in Paris. Only folks who hadn’t read last week’s brilliant, devastating and oh-so-timely New Yorker story from Fintan O’Toole on the 1841 Irish potato famine (the print headline, “Indescribable,” gives away some of its awesomeness) or are otherwise unaware of evil England’s comportment through the centuries weren’t rooting like hell for France to win, if for no other reason to prevent all the king’s men and their fans from celebrating anything. Nothing against the Scots, who have also suffered for so long under the thumb of the failed imperialist nation where rugby was invented. Thankfully, evil England’s stay at the top of the Six Nations table was as brief as Ireland’s.
Because in the climatic closer, France took care of business in a workmanlike home win over Scotland, 35-16, to capture this year’s Six Nations title. The French played without scrum half Antoine Dupont, their captain and a guy billed as the best player the game had ever seen. Dupont suffered ruptured cruciate ligaments in his right knee while hanging around a pile against Ireland and was ruled out for the tournament. With Maxime Lucu running the show in Dupont’s absence, the first half featured very little of what a TV commentator called the “glamor and glitz” expected from the overdog hosts. French fullback Thomas Ramos made some history in the 25th minute by converting a penalty to put his side up 13-3 and become his nation’s all-time leading scorer. Yet the Scots were somehow down by just three points, 16-13, at the break.
But the talent disparity became blatantly obvious coming out of the locker room. Once French center Yoram Moefana took a wide pass from Gael Fickou and dove into the try zone in the 62nd minute, his side had a 35-16 lead and the bonus point that would ultimately be the difference between France and evil England in the final tournament table. Vivre la différence!
France’s outright championship was its 19th Six Nations title.
Alas, that garbage-time bonus point that Ireland gifted evil England in Dublin in the opener ended up giving them second place overall. Ireland finished third. Good thing nobody gives a damn who comes in second in Six Nations. Besides, it’s hurling season!
