Now for the Women's Six Nations 2021...

With the men’s Six Nations done and dusted, we can all now move on to the women’s version of the competition which starts this weekend, having been re-scheduled from its customary February/March slot.

In many ways it is great that the women’s Six Nations is now a standalone competition and hopefully it will get plenty of attention as a result. I will certainly be tuning in.

As well as the change to the schedule, the championship also adopts a truncated format this year – with two pools of three – England/Scotland/Italy and France/Ireland/Wales – playing pool matches over three weekends before culminating in a “Finals” day on 24th April. 

As exciting as all this is, frankly anything other than an England vs France play off final will come as a major surprise given the disparity in resources between the nations, England and France having the only fully professional and semi-professional squads respectively.

Such disparity is clearly an issue for the powers-that-be to resolve if they want a viable, credible competition going forward, but for now let’s just enjoy the spectacle…

Total Flanker – the older I get, the better I was