Sorry end for North as Italy hand wooden spoon to Wales

WHEN the anguish over the first Welsh whitewash in a generation dies down, George North will be entitled to ask a rhetorical question: "What did I do to deserve this?"

- PETER JACKSON

More poignantly still, he will wonder why, after all those glory days of World Cups, Lions tours and Grand Slams, the gods sitting in conclave on Mount Olympus decreed that they would saddle him with a role from history as honourable as it was utterly hopeless.

In the best of all Welsh worlds, Boy George would have been granted one last stampede in a winning cause. Instead he found himself cast in a 21st century Six Nations version of The Boy On The Burning Deck.

Like the eponymous hero of the ageless poem inspired by the Battle of the Nile during the Anglo-French war of three centuries ago, North had been given early notice that his final voyage through the tempests of Test rugby was not going to end well. Truth to tell, it could hardly have been much worse.

The tears during the he shed anthem stemmed from patriotic pride and the knowledge that this would be the last time. All too soon, he would be confronted by another reality, that Wales were about to have the stuffing knocked out of them by superior opponents.

The latest in a distinguished list of retirees will not need to watch the nastiest of video nasties to be reminded of the exact moment when he and the rest of the crew sensed their stricken boat would finish up impaled on the rocks.

Italy had been cruising in such calm waters from the start that they had reason to feel shortchanged by nothing more than Paolo Garbisi's two penalties. Monty Ioane changed that, coming off his blindside wing to glide through a gap between North and another back in a defence pummelled into submission.