SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP 2008 REVIEW:Innovation reaped rich rewards for Wales and they can get even better, writes Gerry Thornley
A GOOD tournament, but not a great tournament, this was a transitional Six Nations with, as ever, plenty of variety, unpredictability and a fitting climax. Perceptions though, are very much coloured by, well, the colour of your team's jersey. In Wales, the 2008 RBS Six Nations will rightly be deemed a vintage year, but less so everywhere else.
Maybe it's the weighty diet of three matches in a row last Saturday, but the sameness of the rugby did start to leave one a little cold, even if the intensity, quality and high stakes of the Wales v France game undoubtedly made it the pick of Super Saturday.
Nor, judging by the first few weeks of the Super 14, are the Experimental Law Variations liable to improve the product. If anything they seem set to make the game even more samey, a surfeit of tap penalties to the exclusion of setpieces making comparisons with Rugby League even more obvious.
It's hard to find even one coach or player on this side of the rugby-playing globe with the remotest enthusiasm for the ELVs.
Wales and France undoubtedly played with the most positive intentions throughout the Six Nations, and on last Saturday's evidence alone the Welsh were fully deserving of their 10th Grand Slam. It would also have discredited the tournament hugely if Marc Lièvremont and his coaching staff - who ought to have been wearing stethoscopes and white coats rather than their nifty blue polos and blazers - had won the tournament while treating it as a laboratory experiment.
As Irish fans in attendance at the Millennium Stadium denouement in 2005 can testify, Cardiff must have been quite a spot on Saturday night. It's not strictly true to say Wales have effectively revived the offloading game honed by Scott Johnson in 2005 and added a near-impenetrable (Shaun Edwards) rush defence.
Undoubtedly the skills developed by Johnson circa 2005 remain a core feature of the current Welsh set-up, many of whose players remain from four years ago, but Mike Ruddock also deserves credit for the solidity of the Welsh setpiece and forward play.
In truth, Wales sought to avoid contact wherever possible in 2005 by offloading before and in the tackle - the abiding memory is of swarms of red jerseys attacking in clusters. This time around, as is the way of Warren Gatland's teams, their game is based much more on collisions and on winning those collisions. It is a subtle but very significant difference.
Under Gatland, Wales have effectively eschewed kicking to touch, not only keeping Scotland, Ireland and France down to fewer than 10 lineouts in their last three games but also ensuring the ball stays in play longer.
Their astute kicking game has the added variety of either Stephen Jones or James Hook at outhalf along with the rejuvenated Gavin Henson at centre and Lee Byrne at fullback. Under Gareth Jenkins, neither of the latter two even went to the World Cup.
Attacks win audience figures and defences win championships; so goes the Gatland-Edwards mantra as pinned against the dressing-room wall when Wasps beat Toulouse in the 2004 Heineken Cup final. And never was that more in evidence than on Saturday evening.
Punishing training sessions, often conducted at test-match intensity and lasting for no more than 40 minutes, have set the tone, and their vastly improved fitness levels are reflected in those remarkable scoring statistics. Their combined first-half points aggregate is 41 for and 42 against, whereas their second-half points differential is 107-24.
By contrast, whereas Ireland scored 46 points and conceded 44 in the first halves of their five games, thereafter they scored 47 and conceded 55.
In making bright, fired-up starts before losing their way against Italy, Wales and England, Ireland's performances mirrored those of the World Cup.
Saturday's win over France, probably Wales's most searching examination of the championship, was founded on a huge defensive effort to keep the French tryless and also provided the platform for Shane Williams's breakthrough and record-breaking try.
How apt that the player of the tournament should break the Welsh record on such an occasion.
In five games they conceded just two tries, beating the record set by England in 2002 and 2003, and fittingly too, Gatland's persuasive powers in luring Martyn Williams out of retirement were rewarded when he scored the Slam-clinching try. The ubiquitous Williams showed opensides may be an endangered species but most good teams still have one.
In the wake of Ireland's World Cup exit, the IRFU's CEO, Philip Browne, was slightly derisive of the Welsh union's actions in swiftly removing Jenkins.
"You can look across the water in Wales, where decisions have been made in relation to their coach," he commented. "Wales are going into a situation where they have had 12 or 14 coaches in the last 21 years. I don't think that is necessarily good for Irish rugby to go down that road. We believe in continuity."
For all Ireland's undoubted consistency under Eddie O'Sullivan, one ventures the players and supporters alike would happily exchange three Triple Crowns for the two Grand Slams won by the Welsh, never mind the World Cup and Grand Slam won by England or the two Grand Slams and two Six Nation titles won by France in the last seven years.
Wales look set to become even stronger; the French have undoubtedly learned plenty from this tournament; and the other new broom and Nick Mallett's Italy are "only" a good pair of half-backs away from being a fine team.
The old brooms have not advanced. Brian Ashton's selection strategy and the harmony of their coaching ticket are still unconvincing, and Frank Hadden doesn't look as if he can take Scotland to the next level.
This, sadly, has been a predictably damaging Six Nations campaign for Ireland, both in its physical toll and, more so, for the confidence of the players; leaving the provinces to pick up the pieces.
It's striking to note that the most enthusiastic performances - even allowing for our tendency to cut young newcomers more slack - have come from the likes of Jamie Heaslip, Rob Kearney, Tommy Bowe, Tony Buckley and, on Saturday, in a typically bright arrival, Luke Fitzgerald. Significantly too, none of those were picked in the 30-man World Cup squad.
Judging by his comments and body language since the morning after the defeat to Wales, it looks as if senior IRFU personnel indicated to O'Sullivan they would not be fulfilling the new four-year deal. One ventures though that they will still submit his name as their nomination to coach the Lions to South Africa next year.
Saturday's more considered IRFU statement was a far cry from Browne's infamous comment post-World Cup describing that failed campaign as "a blip". The IRFU chief executive also adamantly stood over that four-year deal by saying, "We're very happy with that decision and in our view he is still the best man for that job."
Admittedly, the tone had changed slightly in November when Browne, pushed out in the front line while others hid behind the IRFU umbrella, said: "We will not be held to ransom by contracts or anything else."
Blame for the current problems and a world ranking that has slumped to eighth lies firstly with the IRFU. They talk of four-year cycles but pay only lip service to the concept. Last August, the head coach and his back-up coaches were already under contract until the end of this season, besides which the acid test of the last four-year cycle - namely the 2007 World Cup - had yet to kick-off.
The future looks red, as distinct from orange, and certainly not green, but there remains a strong-enough core of the current Irish crop, along with a trickle if not a flood of promising talent coming through, for Ireland to remain more competitive - for the next couple of years at least - than might appear likely right now.
Longer term, the auguries are less encouraging. Arguably, the problems go way deeper than the appointment of a new head coach, as the results of the A and under-21 sides this year testify.
The decline of the club game, the way Connacht are a "development" province in name but scarcely in practice, and the stagnancy in the coaching ladder that key IRFU personnel have allowed to develop also need addressing.
Bringing Conor O'Shea back from exile as director of rugby would be another step in the right direction.
Team of the tournament
15 Lee Byrne ... (Wales)
14 Vincent Clerc ... (France)
13 Tom Shanklin ... (Wales)
12 Gavin Henson ... (Wales)
11 Shane Williams ... (Wales)
10 Ronan O'Gara ... (Ireland)
9 Mike Blair ... (Scotland)
1 Andrew Sheridan ... (England)
2 Dimitri Szarzewski ... (France)
3 Martin Castrogiovanni ... (Italy)
4 Ian Gough ... (Wales)
5 Alun Wyn-Jones ... (Wales)
6 Alasdair Strokosch ... (Scotland)
7 Martyn Williams ... (Wales)
8 Ryan Jones ... (Wales)
THE HIGHS, THE LOWS, HITS AND MISSES
PLAYER OF THE TOURNAMENT
Shane Williams:Not just the tries, even the match-winning ones against Ireland and France, but the moments that turned games, like the quick tap against England and the chip and gather from his own line against Ireland, moments that kick-started Wales's comebacks in both matches.
There was a hum of expectation every time he was on the ball. Though physically bulkier and stronger now (he seems to be carved out of stone compared to the whippet of a few years ago), he also gives hope to all the little guys and shows that modern rugby doesn't have to be the exclusive preserve of behemoths.
COACHES OF THE TOURNAMENT
Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards:Every Gatland decision seemed to work: persuading Martyn Williams out of retirement, giving the captaincy to Ryan Jones, picking 13 Ospreys against England, maintaining competition for places thereafter, rotating outhalves, and perhaps most of all, persuading Edwards to join the ticket, as the concession of a miserly two tries and 66 points underlined.
IRISH PLAYER OF THE TOURNAMENT
John Hayes: Let's hear it for The Bull, bulwark of the Irish for nine Six Nations campaigns and yet never once the recipient of a "man of the match" for province or country. Nothing passed him around the fringes and the scrum has never been more solid. Not many tightheads will be able to tell their grandchildren they came away from Paris with a penalty try off a scrum.
TRIES OF THE TOURNAMENT
Lee Byrne for Wales v England:Brilliantly set up by James Hook with a sway of the hips, a dummy and a perfectly timed pass to take out three white shirts in a fairly narrow blindside corridor.
In a stunning foretaste of what's to come from himself, François Trinh-Duc and Danny Cipriani - the new wave of outhalves that Scotland, Italy and quite possibly in a few years' time Ireland would pay for.
Vincent Clerc for France v Scotland:Clerc and his fellow orange-booted musketeer Cedric Heymans working their unstructured, heads-up, devilishly fiendish exchanges as if joined at the hip was one of the abiding images of the tournament, never more so than when Jean-Baptiste Elissalde and Trinh-Duc worked the blindside in midfield.
Tommy Bowe's first try v Scotland:Brian O'Driscoll latching onto turnover ball, Geordan Murphy reading what was unfolding with a brilliant line and offload, Ronan O'Gara's deft underarm transfer, Andrew Trimble's straight line and pass, and Bowe stepping inside to score. It showed what Ireland are still capable of.
BLOWN TRIES OF THE TOURNAMENT
Gonzalo Canale:Not once but twice.
BIGGEST HITTER OF THE TOURNAMENT
Jamie Noon: Notably in forcing the turnover that led to Paul Sackey's match-winning try in Paris.
BEST QUOTE OF THE TOURNAMENT
He is a clown, he was grotesque, he was ridiculous, provocative: Marc Lièvremont on England's willing pantomime villain Mark Regan.
BLOWN GASKET OF THE TOURNAMENT
Nick Mallet:Not once but twice.
KEY MOMENT OF THE TOURNAMENT
Huw Bennett getting his arm underneath the ball to prevent Paul Sackey putting England 23-6 up at half-time in the opening round at home to Wales.
TACKLE OF THE TOURNAMENT
Mike Philips on Shane Horgan. Ouch!
WORST MOMENT OF THE TOURNAMENT
Brian O'Driscoll being helped off and sitting, distraught, on the bench after tearing his hamstring against Wales. Ireland's greatest player of the modern era or perhaps any era, has one Celtic League title and three Triple Crowns from a career that, as with his team-mates, should have yielded more. The hope persists that, rested from the fray, and perhaps from the captaincy, tangible reward from a rejuvenated career still awaits.
APRÈS-TOURNAMENT PREDICTIONS
Wales to beat South Africa away; England to pick a proper left winger; France to treat next year's Six Nations as a proper tournament; Ireland to apply a new broom; Scotland to revive Nick de Luca; and Italy to find an outhalf.
