New captain may not have a job by the end of this season but might have been born to lead the side against France on Friday
It could have been the World Cup final, but France and Ireland are just going to have to settle for the opening match of the Six Nations. The parts they played in a weekend in Paris in October helped raise the Rugby World Cup to heights it would not reach again, coaxing from the actual finalists levels of performance they would not reach again, either.
Little consolation that it was not enough, but when on Friday night France and Ireland meet in Marseille, the other city to host World Cup quarter-finals (and there were other quarter-finals that weekend – look them up), rugby connoisseurs the world over will be fixated. And yet there is enough different about both teams, as there is about this entire Six Nations, to render any considerations of past performance even more obsolete than usual.