Originally Posted by
irishfeen:
“I forgot in all the excitement earlier to say fair play to England for their effort in pushing us all the way ... Ireland and England have been on a totally different level to the rest in this championship, I said after the Eng v Ire match that one of the two would win it and that prediction was never in doubt.
This championship has set it up lovely for next year.. both could potentially peak together and fight out the 6 nations tooth and nail - and then of course there is the RWC, both Ireland and England showed how they can compete with NZ... England ran them close and we should have beat them in Dublin.
RWC Final of Ireland v England anyone? - now that would be a sight to behold 
And finally - Major respect to Stuart Lancaster, its easy to show respect in victory but its shear class in defeat.”
Congrats to Ireland. Worthy winners in Paris where England failed. Pleased for BOD...amazing career with so many highs and wonderful memories he has given to so many fans around the world.
Small margins though. England undone by the bounce of the ball and a little bit of brilliance against France. Missed out on a few points against Scotland and Italy which could have made the difference but it has been a largely positive tournament for England so I'm still pretty happy. We're playing some positive rugby, looking to move the ball through the hands from deep. Pleasing to see, but we need to tidy it up and work on accuracy as well as some scrum issues.
Hats off to Lancaster. He is a very likeable bloke and he has worked very hard to change the team ethic for England. Sincere and classy. Still think he needs to review the sub policy though. It backfired against France and didn't help against Italy. I get the feeling he just wanted to bring the whole bench on considering the match was done and dusted but it disrupted the team. Only Tuilagi made a positive impact and he came on for the wrong player. It's best to get these things ironed out now than a must win match in the RWC so as long as he learns from it, it's all good.
Mixed tournament for Wales. A couple of very disappointing results in between good and mediocre ones. If Gatland embraced a more expansive game plan along with the direct running from big ball carriers, you get the feeling that Wales would be very hard to stop. That is their problem though so I'm not gonna worry about that.
That RWC group is going to be something else though!
Congrats again to Ireland. They need to blood some new players soon and BOD's boots are going to be very difficult to fill. D'Arcy and POC are getting on too but under Schmidt (superb coach), I think they can push on to even greater things.
I've thoroughly enjoyed this 6Ns! Some matches may have been a little one sided on the scoreboards but the winners of those matches have deserved it and some other matches have been decided by the tiniest of margins.
Great stuff!