Eric Peters is a senior associate in investment at King Sturge. He is a former Bath and Harlequins No 8 as well as Scotland captain and was vice-captain to Gary Armstrong when Scotland last won the championship (the last Five Nations) in 1999
Looking back at last week's blog postings nobody got too much wrong and only then when they followed their allegiances, Wales unfortunately did not beat England and a Scotland win did not quite materialise.4
The Irish won as expected but will be disappointed that they did not capitalise on first half domination with some tries. However, the Italians have great spirit and that showed in the second-half in the way they held out. Nick Mallet needs an 80 minute performance from them to win particularly this week. Undoubtedly the Irish will need to improve on last week's performance if they are to beat the French in Paris. As I've written before home advantage will be a huge factor in the tournament and it will be a tall order for the Irish to win at the weekend. Brian O'Driscoll will probably need a hatrick performace like in 2000 to get the result!
Unfortunately for the Scottish, a highly "focused" French team turned up at Murrayfield. The Scottish desperately missed prop forward Euan Murray and the French dominated the scrum. Few if any sides can win a match when they are under so much pressure in the scrum as it puts them completely on the back foot. France play with a 'rush' defence and the way to beat this is either turning their defence by chipping in behind or getting it wide quickly but they need to use dummy runners to commit the outside defenders which they failed to do and France's backs could then drift accross and nullify Scotland's back play. I was disappointed with Scottish back play overall. Dan Parks has come in now at number 10 ahead of Phil Godman and will clearly provide more of a kicking game against Wales at the weekend.
Welsh aspirations for a win against England on Saturday were not helped by the late pull out of players in the front row as well as Alun Wyn Jones's moment of "stupidity". It was not a great performance from England but they will be pleased with a win and the potential of more to come from their backline. They didn't really create the space in the backs they wanted out wide and they will hope that bringing Flutey back in will lead to improved play against Italy. England scored more from broken play and on a positive note Danny Care took the right options and his sniping was effective with the support runners being there to finish tries off.
Looking to the Wales/Scotland game in Cardiff at the weekend, England put Wales under a lot of pressure at the line out and while there is no one in the Scottish line-out as adept as Scott Murray used to be at exploiting weaknesses here, Scotland will surely need to target this area. That said Wales are bound to step up this part of their game on Saturday. Euan Murray will come back to shore up the Scottish scrum but it will be hard work, with Wales strong favourites playing at the Millennium Stadium. Scotland will fancy they can gain parity with Wales in the pack but i sadly i think the Welsh have more firepower in the backs and it is from here that they should win the match.
With regards to the France Ireland game, you never know with the French how they will perform on the day but they look very focused and Lievremont appears to be settling on a fixed team as the World Cup nears. Only two players, the wingers, have been changed and only because of injury. I think they are likely to win at home.
When it comes to Italy versus England in Rome it is a big call for Italy to beat England, but if England try and throw the ball wide early before establishing themselves firmly on the scoreboard then there could be an upset. I think you will see a conservative England performance with Wilkinson kicking them into a lead before they try anything particularly creative. I predict an England win, but it won't be pretty.
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