Six Nations Rugby 2007

This Saturday sees the start of one of the highlights of the annual sporting calendar in Britain, the Six Nations Rugby Championship. Its a competition between the national teams of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France and Italy where each team plays the other once.

It originally started in 1883 as a tournament involving the British ‘home’ nations, France joined in 1910 and the Five Nations competition was played until 2000 when rugby in Italy had progressed enough for them to take part. The matches take place in February and March and using England as an example, this year they’ll play Scotland, Italy and France at home and Ireland and Wales away. Next year the fixtures will be reversed.

England and France, the two countries with the biggest pool of players to choose from, have tended to dominate the championship over the last decade, although this year Ireland are the favourites and have been playing well. A unique thing about rugby is that Ireland plays with a united team from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, in football they have separate teams. There’s also no national anthem played for Ireland at away matches, instead a song was written for the unified team called Ireland’s Call which is sung. At home games in Ireland the Republic’s anthem and Ireland’s Call are both played.

If a team wins all five of their matches they are said to have won the Grand Slam, if one of the British home countries beats the other three they win the Triple Crown. Wales was the last team to win the Grand Slam in 2005.

England start their Six Nations with the home game against Scotland at Twickenham in West London at 4pm this Saturday afternoon. This game is played for the Calcutta Cup which commemorates a match played on Christmas Day 1872 in Calcutta between a team of English expats and one made up of Scots, Irish and Welsh.

Twickenham is a great stadium to watch a game at but the Scotland one will be sold out by now, these matches are also really popular with corporate groups getting block tickets. Looking at the Rugby Football Union website there are tickets available for the following Saturday’s (10 February) game with Italy.

Whether you get to see any of the Six Nations matches live or not you’ll definitely catch some on tv in bars and pubs over five weekends between now and 17 March. Here’s the full schedule
Saturday, 03 February 2007
England v Scotland 4pm
Italy v France 1.30pm
Sunday, 04 February 2007
Wales v Ireland 3pm

Saturday, 10 February 2007
England v Italy 1.30pm
Scotland v Wales 3.30pm
Sunday, 11 February 2007
Ireland v France 3pm

Saturday, 24 February 2007
France v Wales 8pm
Ireland v England 5.30pm
Scotland v Italy 3pm

Saturday, 10 March 2007
Italy v Wales 3.30pm
Scotland v Ireland 1.30pm
Sunday, 11 March 2007
England v France 3pm

Saturday, 17 March 2007
France v Scotland 3.30pm
Italy v Ireland 1.30pm
Wales v England 5.30pm