It’s exactly two years since I attended a Six Nations match I wasn’t at all sure I should be at. This is what I had written earlier in preview: ‘First, the bad news… as yet unspoken, is the possible abandonment of the game owing to coronavirus. The Scottish RU is taking exceptional emergency steps to reduce its effects for their home games against France.’
This was England v Wales at the Stoop 2020, Round Four of the championship. Quins were looking forward to a 5-figure crowd. In the event some 6,000 turned up. We didn’t hear of any severe consequences for spectators, but later events were to show it might have been better to call everything off.
Uniquely, Italy met England at Parma in Round Five 280 days after the tournament started. It was their first home match.
A torrent of water has swept under the rugby bridge in the intervening two years. As we have all had to learn a new vocabulary and new meanings – coronavirus, Covid-19, lockdown, bubble, isolation, herd immunity – so the game was deeply affected by the pandemic. Entire nations had to give the game up for one or even two full years.
Temporary regulations were introduced on medical advice to reduce the chances of infection, but many thoughtful people wondered if mitigation was the correct answer; the only safe escape route was to abandon the game entirely for an age.
So most rugby players were deprived of their favourite pastime. This had a devastating effect on the funding of the game: empty stadiums became the norm for the few games that survived, and absent spectators meant empty money-boxes for treasurers.
As we look back from our vantage-point of March 2022, we can see the extreme variety of effects the pandemic has had on different nations. But first, it must be recognised that our troubles are by no means over. We can only hope that the worst is behind us.
The international results of the past two years must be taken with a pinch of salt. Each national side has had to face its own problems. The pandemic continues to affect the peoples of the world at different times and with varying severity. The Rugby World Cup had to be delayed a year, and the qualifying stages underwent postponement after postponement. World Rugby deserves congratulations on getting them completed.
And that reminds us of important personnel changes. We have a new CEO of WR, Alan Gilpin, and a new Director of Women’s Rugby, Sally Horrox.
Hopes for the coming Six Nations
That 2020 6N Championship finished with only one team completing all five matches, and they were… England. They were allowed to claim the victor’s laurel, as they won all their matches.
The 2021 Championship was cunningly reshaped to reduce the number of games and the amount of travel. It was a cunning plan that worked thoroughly well. It’s one big selling point was the introduction of a ‘final’. This brought a storm of approval, but the 6N board has wisely refused to repeat the idea. There is scope for proper knock-out competitions later, when the famed global calendar is finalised. A European Cup at club level is long overdue.
We can only hope the coming 2022 version of the 6N will prove less troubled by events beyond its control. The best of luck to all six teams.
