He knows he cannot win the Six Nations, but he is in no doubt that his side will give France a proper run for their euros at Murrayfield this weekend.On the face of it, the French should not be overly concerned about forthcoming events in Edinburgh. Hadden is realistic and optimistic in equal measure, a paragon of rugby sanity. He understands the need to build from the bottom up rather than the other way round, hence his decision to scrap a good 50 per cent of the training days put in place by his discredited predecessor, Matt Williams, in favour of more competitive activity at club level. Indeed, they have suffered horribly in recent seasons: playing numbers down, gate receipts down, disillusion sky-high. Yet they may have struck gold by appointing Frank Hadden as national coach. Newcastle United and Aston Villa are the best placed to break into the top half, but they currently have to bridge a five-point gap with the 10th-placed side. If Fulham have a decent run-in there is every chance that London and the North-west will continue to fill the top 13 places until the end of the season.Of course, there are quirks that partly explain this season’s geographical make-up.

Three species of vulture which are dying out faster than any other bird species could be extinct within five years because of the widespread use of a painkiller to treat cattle in India and Pakistan. This year, they are keeping their fancies to themselves.By contrast, the Scots have not been heard shouting the odds for a decade or more – not since Gregor Townsend and Rob Wainwright were in their pomp. They scrambled a victory over England at Lansdowne Road, but only with the aid of an errant referee, and by the time they succumbed to both France and Wales they looked like a side who had peaked some way short of the summit. That notion was reinforced when a handful of their regular Test hands – Paul O’Connell and Gordon D’Arcy, Ronan O’Gara and Geordan Murphy – failed to seize the day with the Lions in New Zealand. Suddenly, they looked like a flock of sheep in sheep’s clothing.Over the last few weeks, though, the Irish have dragged themselves back up to speed with some blinding performances at Heineken Cup level. Munster’s forwards have been cracking opposition heads with the savage enthusiasm of old, Leinster’s backs have been running rings round everyone, set free from their chains by the super-smart Australian coach Michael Cheika. There are fresh faces in the ?te squad – the Munster hooker Jerry Flannery, the Wasps scrum-half Eoin Reddan, the Ulster backs Andrew Trimble and Tommy Bowe – and fresh ideas, too Last year, the Irish fancied themselves and said so.

Both the Irish and the Scots – yes, the Scots – are nicely positioned to make their rivals sit up and take notice. They may not have the wherewithal to win the title – both teams have three away fixtures, which makes life extremely difficult – but their failures are likely to be far more honourable than those of 12 months ago.Not for the first time in their rugby history, Ireland struggled to cope with positive expectation, as opposed to expectation of the negative variety, last time out. The Welsh have a reputation for thinking on their feet when it comes to rugby, but there are only so many personnel problems they can absorb.All the same, there are good reasons to believe that this year’s competition, which starts with the whimper of an Ireland-Italy match in Dublin on Saturday lunchtime before deafening the lot of us with the almighty bang of an England-Wales contest in London two hours later, will be every bit as unpredictable as last season’s, but for more satisfying reasons. Ian Evans, the vigorous young Ospreys lock, is also banned, and there are concerns that Dafydd Jones, the Llanelli Scarlets flanker, will go the same way, having been sent off at the weekend.

Gavin Henson, ignored by the Big Brother producers despite a C-list celebrity status that should have guaranteed him the keys to the house, is currently serving time and will not be around to torment England with his goal-kicking, as he did in 2005. The Welsh, on the other hand, have only two outright tournament victories to their name since 1979. It is not the record of a global power.There are injuries, too Lots of them And suspensions. France were supreme in the years leading into the 1999 World Cup and duly reached the final by putting the All Blacks to the sword at Twickenham; England won three titles in four years before going the whole hog in Australia in 2003. It was not a fluke, exactly; teams do not deliver second-half displays of great courage and no little brilliance against the Tricolores in Paris without having something of the real McCoy about them. Yet it is difficult to recall the 2005 jamboree without reaching the conclusion that both France and England aimed 12-bore rifles in a southerly direction and blew their own feet to smithereens.Besides, teams of the highest quality perform well in this tournament season on season, not once in a blue moon. Didn’t Wales win the tournament last season, Grand-Slamming and clean-sweeping their way through the championship with performances rich in wit and imagination? Indeed they did, but on reflection, the resurgence of the Red Dragonhood was the product of a very peculiar competition.

If only the Celts could find a way of dragging themselves another couple of steps up the mountainside, God would be in his heaven and all would be right with the world.
Hang on a darned minute, you say. Why not have a game a day from Monday through Saturday, with an omnibus fixture on the Sabbath? Up here in the north, meanwhile, less continues to equal more, with tickets for the vast majority of Six Nations matches rarer than radium. England and France, gorging themselves on the succulent flesh of their extraordinarily competitive domestic leagues, look well set for a strong showing, both now and in 2007. They already play each other too often, the All Blacks and Springboks and Wallabies, and as they are about to start playing each other more often than ever before, it will not be long before the Blacks and the Boks find themselves doing their stuff before half-full stadiums in Auckland and Johannesburg. The Tri-Nations has moved from a home-and-away format to a home-away-and-back-again programme, largely at the behest of the broadcasting community.

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