Ireland frozen out as Italian hopes go for a Burton

England are two fifths of the way to a Grand Slam; or, more probably, two fifths of the way to winning two Six Nations matches out of five.  Saturday's win in the Roman snow showed a certain degree of character but little else.  When they meet a team better at scoring tries than Scotland – which is to say, anybody else – or with a better fly half than the Italians – see above – they might find themselves in a spot of bother.


If Italy had a fly half capable of playing at anything on speaking terms with international standard, they would have walloped England, who froze figuratively as well as quite literally on what passed for the pitch at the Stadio Olimpico.


At least England have a coach who can make effective substitutions.  After 51 minutes, Ben Morgan and Lee Dickson replaced Phil Dowson at Number 8 and Ben Youngs at scrum half to good effect.  Youngs, who looks like a scrum half who could do with being taken out of the limelight for a while, had looked a shadow of his former self.  The introduction of Dickson gave England a sort of purpose and organization in attack lacking in the first half; though again they were dependent on a charge-down try from fly-half Charlie Hodgson to seal a narrow victory.

Hodgson played well enough to give Toby Flood cause for concern that he will not cheerfully walk straight back into the team when he is up to Test match fitness.  He played flat, with discipline and a little vision; admittedly modest virtues, yet utterly beyond poor old Kristopher Burton.  Burton was born in Brisbane yet, had he remained in Australia, would have no more chance of being selected for the Wallabies as Libby Kennedy.

He was replaced at fly-half by Tobias Botes, whose Wikipedia article states that he normally plays as a scrum half.  He ought to stick to the day job as his kicking was worse than Burton's, and that was some achievement.  In the 2009 meeting at Twickenham, flanker Mauro Bergamasco was shoe-horned in at scrum-half and had a nightmare, gifting a first Test try to Riki Flutey and passing the ball with a level of inaccuracy which would shame a boy on the playing fields of Ampleforth College.  No longer are those forty minutes of misadventure the worst individual performance by an Italian in the Six Nations championship.

England, alas, cannot play Scotland's backs and Italy's half-backs every week.  Wales, who made light work of an ill-disciplined Scotland side at the Millennium Stadium, will be favourites to complete a Triple Crown at Twickenham on 25 February

There was only slightly less good rugby played at the Stade de France, and only because there was no rugby at all; not even of any kind.  Match referee Dave Pearson took the sensible decision to call off the match due to a dangerously frozen pitch.

All of which was very fine and proper, but the knowledge that many of the fans travelling from Ireland or the south of France will be neither able to afford nor inclined to return when the match in eventually staged – it is expected to be re-arranged for the weekend of 2-3 March – does give call to some pertinent questions.

Not least, why, having experienced the freezing Parisian weather every night of the last week, could the authorities not have foreseen such problems?  As the Stade de France has no under-soil heating (it is built on an old methane field, so it isn't just Twickenham that's built on old farts, &c. and so on…) it was never likely that the pitch would be playable for a kick-off at 9pm local time.  France must not be allowed to schedule a Six Nations match at the stadium so late in the evening again.

Could the kick-off time have been brought forward?  The details of the question are not known to your humble servant, so we will draw a veil over it – not that doing so to the St-Denis pitch did it any good.  If France are to win the Grand Slam, they will probably have to do so playing four Tests in four weeks.