6N 26.1 & 2

I used to have a routine for Five/Six Nations rugby matches. I would usually be playing at my own low level (to take a week off would have been an act of sacrilege) so I would set the video recorder to tape the England game. Now that of itself was a considerable act - there was none of this single-button-programming, much less catch-up services on which you could rely. But the next consideration was this - I don't like to watch sporting events when the result is known to me. So I would play my game (please bear in mind that pitches were far muddier in those days) and then retrieve my car keys from a secret location, clamber into my car and drive home to a hot bath, all without being fore-warned of the result. Then I could enjoy the match at leisure.

I mention this because it serves to remind me just how much magic adhered to the old championship. It felt somehow attached to the amateur game I loved so much. Those days are gone and I have no wish to sound like one of the much maligned old farts who used to run the game. Yes the opportunities to play the game for a living are nice for a tiny minority but the 'product' (as one must so odiously term it) is dangerously lacking in romance. One has only to look at the crumbling edifice of that once enviable structure, Welsh rugby, to know that something is wrong. All of which, in a counter-intuitive manner (certainly for an English patriot like the Pig), makes the result of the Calcutta Cup match last Saturday rather grand. The much (and deservedly so after the Italy defeat) Scots simply ploughed the shell-shocked English into the Murrayfield turf. Galling for the English, yes, but, in the final analysis, rather splendid and redolent of an earlier age.

Don't worry lads, it's only a game

But now let's get to the problems of the England team. Maro Itoje -a titan but one who is coming off a draining Lions Tour as captain and a draining personal tragedy (the loss of his mother). Should we be surprised that he looks drained? Sam Underhill - an old-fashioned sort of a player. He had a bad game - that just doesn't happen. He deserves another chance. I would pair him at flanker with Henry Pollock. Let's address the elephant in the room - Pollock gives every impression of being a bit of a gobshite - but he's our gobshite and just at the moment the force seems to be with him. The centres are a conundrum. There is no disgrace in being outplayed by Jones and Tuipolotu, a pair who rather inconveniently (for the English) overcame their previous torpor with a relish. Don't worry lads, it's only a game - as Ray Prosser used to say, 'Well what the f*** do we have points for?' Big Fat Pig will watch with renewed interest as the defeated England and the (for once) deflated Irish meet this weekend.

France? brilliant.