Week one - now there's a turn up for the books

In order of play - Ireland were pretty dire against a determined but limited Italy. EOS has got to be a little more bold in his selection. I can't believe people are getting excited about the possible return of O'Connell. Good player that he is, you need a bit more to get excited about than that. Italy are not going to be pushovers this tournament, especially at home. They have a strong pack and exceptional back row. They now have a fantastic coach as well.

I don't even know where to start with England v Wales. England looked pretty reasonable in the first half, although the quality of support running for line breaks was diabolical and we did only score from the ubiquitous cross field kick. At the breakdown and in the tight we bullied them off the park. Then absolute madness set in. For me the telling passage was when we shovelled the ball backwards and mostly along the floor from sheidan to gommers to vickery to balshaw, any of whom should have just shut up shop and taken the hit rahther than offloading. It looked panicked and must have been a huge boost for the leekists. After that you needed cool heads and leaders. There was enough experience out there but it seemed to count for nothing. I firmly believe your captain should play 80 mins unless dead. If we have a position whereby the captain is not perceived to be far enough ahead of his competitor for the spot that he regularly gets subbed on 60 mins, he shouldn't be captain.

Well done to Wales for hanging in there and exploiting the terror that England created for themselves.

I had high hopes for Scotland this year. I thought they had a settled team and some good players. They were awful against France and really need to work hard to put in a performance against Wales. As for France, it was hard to tell how good they were against a team as poor as Scotland were on the day.

One weekend down and all to play for.