Beware the feel-good Six Nations

By CHRIS HEWETT

The World Cup generated its share of oratory, from Rupeni Caucaunibuca's grovelling apology for thumping Olivier Magne during the Fiji-France match in Brisbane - "I am just a poor boy from a small village," and so on - to Clive Woodward's state-of-the-nation address in semifinal week, when he said that England were "not Torvill and Dean" and wanted wins, not marks out of 10.

But the most significant words of all were muttered by the New Zealanders, in the depths of their depression.

John Mitchell and Robbie Deans, soon to lose their livelihoods as All Black coaches, publicly acknowledged that the greatest rugby nation on earth had become too insular and narrow-minded in its outlook, that there had been a failure to recognise that teams from the far side of the equator were playing rugby of championship-winning quality, and that they should travel more frequently to Europe in search of enlightenment.

And by expressing those sentiments, they accepted that the twin pillars of the southern game, the Super 12 and Tri-Nations tournaments, were not the superior products they once thought them to be.

Super 12 has its moments. When the Brumbies or the Blues are in full flight they play some of the most imaginative rugby known to man, but the Heineken Cup is more pragmatic, more physical and more partisan.

The Tri-Nations, meanwhile, is in trouble - a three-team tournament with two of its teams, the Wallabies and the Springboks, in decline.

Compared with the Six Nations' Championship, which begins in Paris and Cardiff tomorrow and continues between the ambitious Italians and a Wilkinson-less England on Monday, it is a greying victim of its own familiarity.

There is nothing familiar about this Six Nations; not with England playing as world champions, with the Welsh in the throes of a revival and the Scots operating under a new regime that pairs Matt Williams, a highly articulate Australian, with Todd Blackadder, a former All Black captain.

As Woodward said at the tournament launch in London, six teams are twice the spectacle of three, especially when the really intense rugby is being played up north rather than down south.

He was not alone in suggesting that the balance of power shifted towards Europe during the World Cup. Eddie O'Sullivan, of Ireland, described the Six Nations as the No 2 tournament in the game, and his views mirrored those of his predecessor, the Wasps' coach, Warren Gatland, who believes the powers-that-be in his native New Zealand have allowed All Black rugby to become cocooned in a superiority complex of its own imagining.

As long ago as last summer, before England beat New Zealand in Wellington, Gatland said: "My fear is that the people here [in New Zealand] do not realise just how strong club rugby in England has become.

"By not taking the trouble to find out, they've left themselves open to an unpleasant shock."

If this Six Nations marks the start of a new World Cup cycle, it is also an end in itself.

For England, nothing less than the championship title will be satisfactory; for France, the same applies, and to that end, Bernard Laporte has recalled the likes of the 30-year-old Thomas Lievremont to his squad - the decision of a man thinking ahead, but to next week rather than 2007.

The Italians still see themselves as a work in progress, but have very definite aims. John Kirwan, their stiletto-sharp coach, has stipulated two wins from five outings as a minimum requirement.

The World Cup has given the Six Nations a new set of reasons to feel good about itself.

- INDEPENDENT