NESS TESS 0.0 England and Italy's! reinventions the biggest surprises of a vintage year

Wales have good reason to worry about the future while mistakes at crucial times cost Scotland more success

- Robert Kitson

At first glance not an awful lot changed during the men's Six Nations championship this year. Ireland and France occupied the table's top two positions, as they did in 2023, with Wales and Italy in the bottom two and England and Scotland once again the meat in the club sandwich. Ireland, for the third year in a row, had the meanest defence and only the winless Welsh, strangely, managed to score more tries than last year.

Yet if this was not a vintage Six Nations in all respects, the old tournament is enjoying a refreshing renaissance. The competition is now so tight that 10 of the 15 matches were decided by four points or fewer, including all three of the final-round games.

If Netflix cannot create an award winning series from the stunning "Super Saturday" footage alone it should abandon its fly-on-the-wall cameras and walk away.

Because, if the ultimate definition of sporting appeal is to wake up the following morning and wish the tournament could instantly kick off all over again, the 2024 Six Nations passed the time honoured test. Maybe that is what the organisers had in mind when they scheduled the women's Six Nations to start this weekend. The entertainment bar, either way, has suddenly been set pretty high.

Games of rugby do not come much more rollicking than France's 33-31 thriller against England in Lyon, up there with the barely believable 38-38 Calcutta Cup draw at Twickenham in 2019 for fluctuating thrills and spills. Nor do they come more head-clutching than Italy's agonising draw with France - complete with the ball falling off the tee as Paolo Garbisi prepared to land the winning kick or Scotland's controversial near miss against the same opponents. Had Sam Skinner's disallowed "try" been awarded, the tournament might have panned out very differently.