SIX NATIONS PREVIEW: Will an English resurgence be the story of the spring?

1 ENGLAND

The World Cup was a disaster from the hosts’ perspective, with their failure to make it out of the group stage costing Stuart Lancaster his job and heralding another period of soul-searching about the future direction of the English game.

Those questions are important, but new head coach Eddie Jones won’t be getting caught up in them. For Jones, the Six Nations is about getting back to winning ways. A record of one Six Nations triumph since the World Cup victory in 2003 is as much of an embarrassment to England as anything that went wrong in the autumn.

Jones’ first challenge is to translate the fine form of some of England’s key players in the European Champions Cup onto the international stage, but the new boss has eschewed the temptation to drive a horse-and-cart through Lancaster’s selection policy.

Chris Robshaw might have lost the captaincy to Dylan Hartley, but he will still be there in the back row. Owen Farrell is set to partner Jonathan Joseph at centre, enabling George Ford to start at fly-half, while the likes of Dan Cole and Mike Brown will continue to play key roles.

There will be a right time to introduce outstanding youngsters Maro Itoje and Elliot Daly at some stage in the next two months, but Jones has clearly concluded the bear-pit of Murrayfield on the opening weekend of competition is not it.

An away game in Scotland represents a daunting start, but hardly an unwinnable one. Succeed tomorrow, and with home games against Wales and Ireland to come, the rest of the tournament should unfold invitingly.

2 WALES

Of all the hard luck stories to emerge from the World Cup, Wales’ was surely the most traumatic. By the end of the tournament, Warren Gatland was struggling to cobble together enough fit players to make a team, so with most of his injured players available ahead of Sunday’s appetising opener in Dublin, Wales will have high hopes of repeating their post-World Cup Grand Slams from 2008 and 2012.

Gatland certainly presides over the most settled squad in the tournament, and while that is not always a good thing, Welsh stability could be a key asset when other teams are experiencing a considerable state of flux.

The Welsh back row remains the envy of most of the rest of the world, with Sam Warburton, Dan Lydiate and Toby Faletau forming a unit that is the closest thing the Northern Hemisphere has to the New Zealand and Australian back rows that dominated at the breakdown in the autumn.

The return of the influential Jonathan Davies is a major bonus, although it is at least partially offset by the continued absence of Leigh Halfpenny. At least, in Dan Biggar, Wales boast a replacement kicker who is every bit as reliable.

If there is a Welsh Achilles heel it is probably a failure to turn possession and territorial dominance into tries. Wales know how to win tight matches, but given their quality, it can still be argued that they’re involved in too many of them.

That has to be a concern with trips to Ireland and England on the agenda, although as the World Cup win at Twickenham proved, it’s extremely dangerous to write Wales off even if their backs are to the wall.

3 IRELAND

It’s not just England who are embarking on a new dawn this spring – the same applies to Ireland, even if it is the personnel who are changing rather than the head coach.

Joe Schmidt remains in position, and is desperate to push his claims to be the next leader of the British and Irish Lions, and it is easy to forget that Ireland go into this year’s tournament having won the last two editions. No team has ever won three successive Six Nations titles.

This will be Ireland’s first campaign without either Brian O’Driscoll or Paul O’Connell since 1999, and that has to be a concern. With Peter O’Mahony also unavailable, and Cian Healy and Mike Ross set to miss the first two rounds, the front five looks vulnerable.

CJ Stander, Tommy O’Donnell and Josh van der Flier look exciting prospects in the back row, but the Irish pack, so long one of their strengths, is something of an unknown quantity this time around.

Schmidt will be relying on a small core of experienced performers – the likes of Jamie Heaslip, Conor Murray, Jonathan Sexton and Rob Kearney – to lead his rebuilding project, but the poor form of the Irish provinces in Europe hardly inspires confidence.

If Ireland are to achieve anything, it is imperative they off see off Wales on Sunday, something they do not have a particularly good record for doing on home soil in recent years. With trips to Paris and Twickenham next in line, Ireland need to hit the ground running.

4 SCOTLAND

They might have gone out at the quarter-finals, but the World Cup actually contained plenty of positives from a Scotland perspective. Had a controversial refereeing call gone their way, they would almost certainly have beaten Australia in the last eight, and their rip-roaring pool decider with Samoa displayed an attacking verve that had previously been absent from their game.

Can they translate that into the Six Nations, a tournament that has seen them fail to live up to raised expectations on so many occasions in the last few seasons? So often touted as the dark horses; so often out of the race after the first couple of flights.

Vern Cotter has moulded a squad with solid foundations and a smattering of stardust around the edges. Greg Laidlaw and Finn Russell form one of the most exciting half-back pairings in the championship, Jonny and Richie Gray remain formidable presences at the line-out and in the likes of Ross Ford and WP Nel, Scotland boast a scrummaging unit capable of holding its own against anyone.

Defence is a worry, with the Scots having conceded 14 tries in five games at the World Cup. In developing a team that likes to play things loose, Cotter has strayed from some of the doggedness that characterised the great Scottish sides of the past.

There’ll be no shortage of fighting spirit tomorrow though, and a home game against an experimental England might just represent the ideal opportunity for Scotland to finally make a statement of intent.

Lose though – and against an English side with plenty of attacking options behind the scrum, that has to be a strong possibility – and attention will immediately switch to avoiding the wooden spoon.

5 FRANCE

What on earth has happened to French rugby? The sight of the All Blacks cutting loose in that unforgettable World Cup quarter-final was an exhilarating one, but the flip side was that France were embarrassed in a manner that few foresaw.

Guy Noves has replaced Philippe Saint-Andre, who was unable to finish higher than fourth in any of the last four Six Nations, but the structural problems blighting French rugby remain. The French club sides might be among the richest in the world, but precious little of their money is being spent on developing domestic talent.

Noves has spoken about returning some structure and devilment to the French game, and with that in mind, his choice of hooker Guilhem Guirado as his new captain is instructive. If France can get the basics right this spring, that will at least represent progress.

Louis Picamoles, still one of the best number eights in the world game, will be key to that process, although what on earth will happen in the backline remains anyone’s guess. Finding a midfield partner for Wesley Fofana remains a key challenge.

As ever, much of what happens with France will depend on the collective mood. It is a cliché to claim that you never know what you’re going to get – in recent years, the paucity of the national side’s performances has been a constant – but the prevailing mood music remains a key determinant of French fortunes.

With that in mind, an opening game against Italy is either an inviting introduction or a huge banana skin. It should be the former, but the following weekend’s game with Ireland will provide a truer reflection of where things are at.

6 ITALY

Are we at a turning point for Italy’s future in the Six Nations? The Azurri have been an established part of the championship since 2000, but the performance of the likes of Georgia and Romania at the last World Cup have led some to question whether their continued presence should be a given.

It is hard to say that Italy have progressed in the last 16 years, so might it not be better for them to play in a second-tier competition, with the winners earning the right to compete in the following season’s Six Nations? We are not there yet, but at some stage we might be.

The best way to silence such talk would be for Italy to force themselves into the top half of the table, but such a scenario looks as far away as ever.

Sergio Parisse remains a reassuring presence, and is still Italy’s sole world-class player, but an already shaky squad has been weakened further by the absence of Tommaso Allan, Michele Rizzo and Quintin Geldenhuys through injury.

Jacques Brunel has named ten uncapped players in his squad, so there is clearly a desire to start doing things differently, and it will be interesting to see how two South Africa-born players, Andries van Schalkwyk and Abraham Steyn, fare in Italian blue.

Italy’s best chance of success could come tomorrow, when they head to Paris for the tournament opener. Lose that, and they might well be relying on a home win over Scotland to avoid yet another whitewash.