Sport Comment: Not just good, but also good to watch
IF FORTUNE favours the brave then it’s up to England to be bold in Rome next week. It is not beyond the realms of possibility for Stuart Lancaster’s team to rack up 50 points against an Italian side who will be hugely dispirited by the way they capitulated in the second half against Ireland on Saturday.
And there is absolutely no guarantee that Ireland will win in Paris given the fact that they have a pitiful record in the French capital of a solitary victory in four decades.
But even if Brian O’Driscoll signs off his stellar career with a narrow triumph, providing England go for the jugular from the word go they could still sneak over the line on points difference.
Win the Six Nations or not, though, there is a real spring in the English step and with good reason. They are good. And more than that, they are good to watch.
TOTAL RUGBY
Through rose-tinted glasses there is a temptation to believe that the World Cup-winning team set the rugby world alight but pragmatism was their middle name, with only the occasional flash of Jason Robinson exhilaration. This team has a vitality that in rugby terms has the air of the Dutch football team of the Johan Cruyff era.
Total rugby has been the sole preserve of the All Blacks over the years but the try that Luther Burrell so nearly scored in the closing moments was typical of the way that the likes of Courtney Lawes have the ability to do the hard graft in the set and morph into sevens players in the loose.
Jonathan Davies said – with a mischievous smile on his face on the BBC yesterday – that if England harbour serious aspirations about winning the World Cup on these shores next year then they have to win by 40 points in Italy because that is what the planet’s greatest sides, such as New Zealand and South Africa, would aspire to.
CRUCIAL
What price, then, a dramatic finale whereby England prevail in Rome by enough to usurp Ireland’s points difference advantage only for O’Driscoll to score the winning and crucial try in the final minute of his final international?
Surely even the most one-eyed of Englishman wouldn’t begrudge the record-breaking Ireland and Lions great that kind of send off.