2000 Years of History and Rivalry

[falcons1988]

Hi
Just a philosophical question.
What makes the 6 Nations generally such an exciting tournament?

Just think what would the tournament be like should the Germans be good enough...

I just want to stimulate polite debate on the aforementioned question.

Please keep it clean.

 

[Thingimubob]

Rivalry. Simple as that, lot of historical rivalry between all of the home nations and then with France and Italy now too. Big part of it is you only get to play your rivals once a year, meaning you have to wait for a whole new tournament for revenge if you lose.

Also, I'm assuming you mention the Germans due to the English's perceived rivalry with Germany in football/sports in general? Always find that funny since the Germans don't see you lot as big rivals at all! You mention the 1966 world cup to them, and the most you'll get out of them is 'Oh that's the one the English won right?' and only if they know their football well! The Dutch however, they bloody hate 'em, they are 'the big one' if they are ever drawn against each other. Not overly fond of the Italians though, that's mostly due to them knocking Germany out of a lot of world cups/euro championships.

 

[SelimNiai]

Its also the only competitive International rugby the NH teams get between World Cups. The Autumn/Summer Games, as important as they are, are just friendlies and are played for form and pride.

I suspect our SA, NZ, Argie and Aussie colleagues feel the same about the Rugby Championsip.

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

Actually i don't much care for the Rugby championship. I prefer old fashioned tours but TBF with Argentina now joining it makes for much more interesting viewing than the TriNations. Only playing each other once home and away rather than playing each other 3 times (or if your talking about NZ vs Aus 4 times!!!) each year gets old. Even when you're winning!

Just a pity NZ got sooo many chances at us while we were down (after re-admission and with the SARU/ANC circus in between). We had a pretty good run against them up to professionalism and have struggled to keep up since.

 

[powerfulduck]

As the ***le suggests it's the history & rivalry. England could play Scotland in tiddlywinks and somewhere it would induce heated discussion. Myself i'm not to fussed about the celts I tend to support them when their not playing England, France is more of the glamour tie in my view.