In January spring still feels far away, never mind the summer beyond it. But the start of the Six Nations, like the first green shoots, is a sign they are on their way. The tournament starts with the first snowdrops and finishes with the first swallows. When this year’s edition is over, the World Cup will be only six months and six days away, and the six teams, their players and coaches, will have a handful of August warm-ups left to finish getting ready for the tournament they have been working towards these last four years and which, if they win it, will define their playing lives. It is a thought that sharpens the mind.
Right now the World Cup is not a topic either Joe Schmidt or Eddie Jones wants to dwell on. During the Six Nations launch last Wednesday both men said they were too busy planning for their opening game of the tournament, when their teams play each other in Dublin, to spare talk or thought on anything after. “I’m not looking as far as the World Cup. I’m not really even looking as far as Scotland,” said Schmidt. Ireland travel up to Murrayfield in the second week. It felt as if he and Jones were both protesting just a touch too much. Whoever wins will be laying down an ante for everyone else to match.
Ireland start as favourites, for the first match and the championship. They are at an all-time high in the world rankings after their famous first home win against New Zealand. Officially they are still a point-and-some behind the All Blacks but Steve Hansen, New Zealand’s head coach, says the 16-9 win made them the lineal champions. “As of now, Ireland are the No 1 team in the world, so that the result makes them favourites for the World Cup.” Hansen, like Jones and everyone else, knows that the Irish have never been so far as the semi-finals before and was happy to heap a little extra pressure on.
“Well, they’ve got to carry it, mate, haven’t they?” Jones said, with a wicked little grin, when he was asked whether the stress would get to the Irish. “We’ll have to wait and see how they go.” Judging by the way their captain, Rory Best, was talking, they will handle it just fine.
Best said that in their own minds Ireland were favourites for last year’s championship too and, while all this hype is “something we can’t get away from because we hear so much about it,” he does not see why this year’s championship will be any different “just because it’s being shouted a little bit louder from external sources”.
There was a certain steady confidence about Schmidt, too, and his matter-of-fact evaluation of England’s strengths. Unlike Jones, Schmidt does not like, or need, to play mind games. “It’s always hard with Eddie, because you don’t know if what he’s saying is what he’s really thinking so there’s a bit of double jeopardy,” Schmidt said. He is betting Jones is not bluffing when he talks about how brutal the match is going to be. “I do think that power game is something they may well bring to Dublin.” He winced as he listed off a few of the threats: Billy, Mako, Maro, Manu. “I’m just thinking of bruises, really.”
As for England, Jones said the match “isn’t about making statements”. But after a year in which they seemed to take three steps back, England could surely use the sort of resounding performance that would show they are right back on track, whatever he says. “I’ve been in four World Cups,” Jones continued, “and the only thing that matters at the World Cup is how you are at the World Cup. How you are now doesn’t affect how you are at the World Cup. So the only thing we’re worried about now is being at our best for Ireland. That’s the only thing that concerns us.”
Warren Gatland, who seems so at ease at the start of his last year in charge of Wales, was the one coach who was willing to admit he was thinking about the bigger picture. “While the focus is on having a good Six Nations, it’s also on thinking about the end of the year.” Wales start away in France and Gatland has said over and over again that, if they win in Paris, he thinks Wales will take the title too because “traditionally we’re a team that, the more momentum and confidence we get early in this tournament, the stronger we get towards the end of it.”
After they play France Wales are taking 31 players to a six-day camp in Nice before their second game, against Italy in Rome, “to replicate what’s going to happen in the World Cup”. Wales have won nine Tests in a row now and risen to third in the rankings. All the while Gatland has been busy thinking about what went wrong in 2015. He says he has fixed it this time around. “We were decimated by injury in 2015,” he said, “and we spoke then about the plan for 2019. Twelve months ago I made a lot of changes when we played Italy and I was accused of being disrespectful but I was thinking about the bigger picture and the World Cup 2019. It was the same when we played South Africa in Washington, Argentina and Tonga last year.”
Gatland says his squad have the strength in depth to cope. We will soon find out if he is right, because Wales have got the longest injury list of anyone. If he is, Wales look well placed. Remember, Gatland says, they were close enough last year: “If Stockdale hadn’t intercepted that pass…” He was thinking of the match they lost in Dublin: “… you could have had a different winner in the Six Nations.”
First, though, France. “Warren’s created continuity, stability, coherence,” says Jacques Brunel, sounding envious. It is not so much that no one knows what to expect of the French, more that French do not know what to expect of themselves. When asked if he knew who was likely to be in his World Cup squad, Brunel shrugged, sighed and said no. “We don’t have really an idea. I could tell you a skeleton of what the team will be, then we’ll have to flesh the rest out.” With five uncapped players in his Six Nations squad, it feels as if he is hoping it will all fall together at the last minute.
In Edinburgh the Italians are desperate to prove they are on the same level as the Scots, while the Scots are desperate to prove they are not. “Italy always believe they can beat us, and the players understand that,” says Greig Laidlaw, “but we’ll reiterate it.” His opposing captain, Sergio Parisse, promised his team are not “coming to Murrayfield just to watch Scotland play rugby”. For the Scots, though, the real problem is not what happens at Murrayfield, where they have lost only one Six Nations game in three years, but away from it, where they have won only two in the same time, and both in Rome.
Leave the last word for Brunel. “Who’s going to win? Every year, you ask me this question, every year I say the same thing. This is January, the tournament is about to begin, nobody knows who is going to win.”