Panic Pandemic

One round in, and 6N players are dropping like flies. For once, it is England who bear the brunt of the plague - not content with robbing them of four starters during the first game, the crock-fates have now targetted Tom Rees and Phil Vickery, leaving the team to face Italy with a decidedly patchwork feel.

Wales have got off lightly this time around, though the loss of Alun-Wyn Jones will hurt. More prominent in Welsh pre-game natter has been the refreshing approach of Warren Gatland; dropping under-performing players from a winning team, and publically explaining why. It sounds common-sense enough, but in Wales, it's little short of revolutionary. Meanwhile, big things are hoped for from Jamie Roberts on his first cap.

There was precious little attacking threat offered by Scotland last weekend, and stripping their XV of both Rory Lamont and Simon Webster has hardly made them look more formidable. This is precisely the problem for Wales, of course - they will now be comfortable favourites for Saturday's game, a position traditionally injurious to Welsh prospects. But a mental toughening is exactly what Gatland has targetted for this squad, so how they deal with justified expectations will be the key factor of their weekend.

19:26 - The Great Strike

The Head had a shocker - the heart is on a roll. Quite how exactly Wales triumphed at Twickenham could probably be the basis of a PhD thesis, if not a whole book. The beating they took in that first half could surely only lead to another of those cricket scores, to which we have become numb? England's superiority - whether at set-piece, in their game-management, or in the incisiveness of their running - was so absolute that many Welsh fans must surely have been tempted to hit the M4 a full 50 minutes early?


And yet, inexplicably - gloriously - England threw it away. The Twickenham shooting party blew both its own feet off. Having clung on heroically, Wales were still there to pick up the pieces and exorcise a 20-year ghost with 20 minutes of punishingly clinical, intelligent rugby. Having been toyed with for an hour, they finished by dismissing England's last desperate twitches with something approaching contempt. It was rarely pretty, but it was in its own way magnificent.

Most encouraging of all the wonders of the day, however, was to hear Warren Gatland's sober reflections. Quick to point out how awful Wales had been for long periods, and equally quick to praise his battered warriors for getting off the ropes and landing the knockout. The sense of a man with his head screwed on only grows. He knows how often Wales have blown a good start in this tournament, and he knows we won't get another gift like this one.

The Calm...

"So it's that time again; the team has been mulled over, the fly-half debate has polarised us, those without ferry tickets have booked their seats in the local, and the butterflies begin. In our heads, the voice of bitter experience tells us to expect little, to enjoy the moment, to be philosophical. But deep in our hearts breathes a dream of the impossible, and it just won't go away. It is our hearts laid bare, it is our Heaven and our Hell, but still they tell us, it's only a game. And a game with stupid-shaped balls, at that. What do they know?"

I wrote the above for Gwl@d's front page, the day before 6N kick-off in 2002. I haven't yet found better way to express how these few days always feel. A little more than 24 hours after I typed the above, Ireland put a half-century of points past Wales to end Graham Henry's shift at the wheel. I remember still feeling numb as I typed;

"The home crowd's joy carried overtones of disbelief, but the aftershock of this result in Wales can only be fearfully imagined. Wales were quite simply atrocious, and finding the will to carry on will be enough of a challenge for the coaches and the team, let alone the transformation required to rescue yet another Six Nations crisis."

and positively undead while responding, weeks later, to England's emulation of the feat:

"There is not much more to say about England's frankly ridiculous superiority. Wales gave it pretty much everything, but not only weren't they good enough, they weren't even on Planet Good Enough. It's less painful - but ultimately more wounding - because it's not a surprise."

Six years, a few more stuffings, and an increasingly incongruous Grand Slam later, and fear of another dose of that unpalatable (not to mention ineffective) medicine leaves a knot in the stomach. But next to it is that other knot, the red one, the one that hopes, and dreams, and reaches out of the stomach for the heart. It gets you every time. It tells you that this year, this time, it'll be different. And no matter how many times it is wrong, we remember the times it was right. That is our curse, our blessing, and our battle-cry as we head for the pub, the bus... or the away dressing room.

Club vs Country?

RBS 6 Nations Rugby : Ospreys dominate Wales team

You've got to hand it to Warren Gatland - make a thoroughly conservative team selection, but make it look like a revolution - thirteen Ospreys players in the starting lineup.

It's throwing down a marker, allright. It's thinking the unthinkable; pick your first XV, and if they're all from the same place, so be it. A Welshman could never, in a million years, get away with it.

Whether Gatland gets away with it on the field, remains to be seen. On paper, there seems no reason why Wales can't compete a Twickenham, or even (gasp!) win. In terms of experience, the back rows are ludicrously mis-matched in Wales' favour; the half-backs look sharper; there are three lineout options; and if the back three look defensively suspect, so do England's.

But despite all that, scour the press and you won't find a single pundit predicting a Welsh victory. Not one. The reason is not a balanced assessment of the teams' relative qualities - it is, quite simply, History. Time and again Wales have gone to Twickenham with genuine hope. Time and again, they have left in shattered ignominy. In the previous decade of this fixture, they have conceded an average of 47 points, and scored an average of 16. The Welsh "Twickers Collapse" has become a tradition, and seems irrespective of the perceived quality of the side that takes the field.

So, where will it all go wrong this time? Certainly, in the front row, it looks like the same old story of Shermans vs King Tigers - the scrum will be torrid for Wales. If Gavin Henson has forgotten anything about Six Nations rugby, Toby Flood seems well set to remind him. Paul Sackey and Dave Strettle have the pace to at least match Mark Jones and Shane Williams. And if Gatland truly imagines that a bombardment of fullback Iain Balshaw can make the difference, he must know something about Lee Byrne that few others have spotted.

Still, its nothing if not intriguing. And even if the story stays the same on Saturday, in the long term, the new Welsh management team look to have their eyes on the ball. That in itself is worth celebrating.

Nil Is The New Three

Gone are the days, it seems, where an overwhelmed side would post a plaintive 3 points on the board just to prove they'd turned up. The new fashion - debuted by Wales in Australia, gloriously sported by England in the World Cup - is to let a doughnut tell its own story. In the weekend's Heineken Cup action, the Dragons and the Scarlets earned an ignominious double-oh that signified anything but a license to thrill; while Bristol, having enjoyed their 17-0 stuffing of Stade Francais earlier, showed the Memorial Ground faithful the sharp end of the same scoreline in a meek defeat to the Blues. Cardiff's finest, though, inexplicably recalled the hounds before the eminently achievable home quarter-final draw was secured, and now must go to Toulouse. Ouch.

The Ospreys made heavy weather of things at Bourgoin, looking superior but never comfortable thoughout. The result, however, was everything they could have hoped for in the end. Top seeds or not, Saracens don't look like the worst away draw this year. Timely displays of form from Ryan Jones, Sonny Parker and Gavin Henson added to the satisfaction of the weekend, but none so much as the blistering form of Martyn Williams for the Blues, days after being coaxed out of an international retirement that nearly everyone agreed was premature. Arguably the best openside flanker in Britain, Williams remains vital to Wales' prospects in the medium term, and his return could hardly be more welcome - provided he can keep that look out of his eye this time...

Uncharted Waters

For all our frailties, Welsh Rugby stands on the brink of a modest first; two teams in the last eight of the European Cup. Naysayers will point to the undeniable truth that we have ridden this far on the backs of a phalanx of Southern Hemisphere forward talent; Rush, Tiatia, Tito, Hola...

But that's not quite the whole story, and there has been a Welsh flavour. The emergence of Jamie Roberts as a prospect so hot that he's being touted to hold the line at Twickenham; the effervescent displays by Gareth Williams, beguiling us to believe that we might finally have found a hooker; and the treat of yet another moment of individual inspiration from Gavin "What's He Ever Done?" Henson, which broke the backs of Gloucester.

But individuals aside, fans have genuinely begun to detect a change - a hint of steely resolve, of intransigence, of cold pragmatism. Are we kidding ourselves? Or are our professional teams finally, finally getting it? Wouldn't that be great?

The Blues and the Ospreys face one more test each - in England and France respectively - before they must face the even trickier task of avoiding each other in the quarter-final draw. Well, let's be optimistic, eh?

Scrappy New Year

The Celtic League has not, it would be fair to say, had a great Christmas. The standard of Rugby over the holidays was consistently dire, with the Welsh regions major offenders.

This week, the Ospreys' second-string once again gave fans more to cheer than the firsts have managed of late - ultimately leaving the RDS empty-handed, but having performed creditably against a full-strength Leinster outfit. The Blues, meanwhile, were outdone at water polo by Edinburgh - and you have to say that Phil Godman's 35m drop-goal, off that quagmire, was a thing of wonder and a worthy matchwinner. That it should have come to that, however, is simply unacceptable. It was left to the Dragons again to provide Welsh cheer; a valuable away win in Glasgow confirming them as our best performers of the holiday period.

Elsewhere, sad to note that superfrog Christophe Dominici has retired from international rugby. One of the game's true characters, his heady mix of the sublime (shredding the All Blacks in RWC99) and ridiculous (remember his comedy in-goal fumble against Italy?) will certainly be missed. Bon chance, boyo!