Twenty Years Of Wonder As Six Nations Sparkles On

Brendan Gallagher looks back at the glories – and grumbles – from the start of the great tournament

With the Six Nations almost upon us and all the debate and argument that will engender we should pause first to consider the first 20 years of the tournament around which the European season is still based.

It’s as old as the Millennium but retains a shiny new feel despite being a direct descendent of the old Four and then Five Nations tournaments. It has given us a new rugby venue – the Olympic Stadium Rome – and a new stadium in the Aviva in Dublin, while it’s worth remembering the Principality in Cardiff and the Stade de France in Paris, had only been up and running for two years when the tournament kicked off.

With Twickenham being upgraded and Murrayfield still looking good it’s difficult to think of any sporting tournament in the world that enjoys such week-in, week-out grandeur.

The old Five Nations was restructured amid much fanfare to belatedly accommodate Italy who had been banging the door down for five or six years and if that hasn’t really worked out for the Italians – yet – it has certainly changed the ambience and rhythm of the tournament for the better. It has become much less of a stag do, the genie is out of the bottle.

Wives and girlfriends, having sampled the delights of a rugby weekend in Rome, quickly becoming determined not to miss out on the other five venues. Ryanair and Easyjet executives surely toast the tournament every time their annual bonus drops into their accounts.

What else has changed? The growth of technology has grown massively, especially in the last decade, and has become part of the Six Nations experience although you can only reflect on what might have been in one or two instances before its use had been fully developed and refined.