SOMETIMES there is no justice. Promotion was the last thing France deserved after their ill-controlled display against Ireland in Paris last Saturday yet their win lifted them to third place in the global rankings, shunting England back down to fourth.
France have been the disappointment of the RBS Six Nations Championship so far, even allowing for the absence through injury of such luminaries as Yannick Jauzion and Damien Traille. If they are going to make a sustained assault on the World Cup in their own country next year, their squad will have to cope with such problems and just at the moment, there is much work to do.
They have been unlucky with injuries but so has everyone else. England could observe, but have not, that they would have enjoyed the services during the Six Nations of Richard Hill and Phil Vickery, of Iain Balshaw and Pat Sanderson, but they have the hand that fate has dealt them and, so far, have made a decent fist of their two games without ever suggesting their place at the head of the table has a degree of permanency.
It has been an instructive first fortnight and a wonderful advert for the championship in terms of sporting surprises and a distinctly higher standard than last season’s tournament achieved. Much of that is because of the rise of the two countries whose place at the foot of the table had almost been taken for granted: Scotland and Italy.
The upturn in Scottish fortunes under Frank Hadden’s coaching will be greeted with far more general delight than that of the SRU’s financial director. His side are playing with a far more discernible character and no little skill; if they cannot be grand-slam contenders this season, they suggest the capacity to be the championship’s surprise packet and will endeavour to prove it when England come calling at Murrayfield on February 25.
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That element of character is an important defining quality. Different countries play in different ways, and if England’s methodology does not always excite, that is an expression of the national temperament. At the moment Andy Robinson’s team is groping its way towards its own style, so four wins out of five games this season is a worthy return for a side that still has a distance to travel.
What, I wonder, would Robinson, the England head coach, have done had Sanderson, the Worcester flanker, not fallen prey to a damaged back? His displays in the autumn would have placed him in the starting back row alongside Martin Corry and either Lewis Moody or Joe Worsley, so would that have left a vacancy on the bench for Lawrence Dallaglio? That, Robinson would say, is a hypothetical question that he does not need to answer, but the presence among his replacements of the prowling Dallaglio, as well as another World Cup winner, Matt Dawson, turns up the heat on the young — and not so young — pretenders.
Robinson has emphasised the value of a bench with genuine impact but it also gives him the chance to encourage the raw hands such as Harry Ellis, Andrew Sheridan and Matt Stevens, content in the knowledge that he has a reservoir of experience to hand if he needs it. Behind them are younger men serving their time in the A squad or, in the case of Mathew Tait, in the sevens squad.
Tait, the Newcastle Falcons centre capped prematurely against Wales in 2005, has blossomed on the sevens circuit and will surely be preserved for the Commonwealth Games next month. But given the presence in Melbourne of such XV-a-side personalities as Chris Latham, Lote Tuqiri and Matt Giteau — all named yesterday in Australia’s sevens squad for the Games — that experience alone will make Tait a better player.
What Robinson has to do is ensure he does not close the door to potential World Cup talent emerging over the next 18 months. Josh Lewsey only became an England regular nine months before the 2003 World Cup and has been at the heart of the side ever since — and is optimistic that the shoulder strain which kept him out of last Saturday’s game in Rome will have disappeared in time for the Murrayfield match. Spotting the next Lewsey must also be part of Robinson’s brief.