Six Nations needs no hype - it’s all genuine – and raw – emotion

IF Eddie Jones was not warned by his RFU minders about the pitfalls of buying a standard class rail ticket from Edinburgh to Manchester the morning after a Calcutta Cup match, then he ought to have been. First, there was a good chance of him not getting a seat – a fellow scribe spent five hours standing from Edinburgh to St Pancras the same day – and second, he might well have found it occupied by an inebriated oaf on a mission to tell him where to stick his broken chariot. Unfortunately, he managed to attract the attention of not just one oaf, but several – and it was accompanied by the attempts to intimidate and the threat of violence long associated with British football hooligan culture. It will also have alerted England’s Australian coach, and his Kiwi-born centre, Ben Te’o, that while there is an edge to sporting rivalry Down Under – typified by sledging – it is not regularly accompanied by the threat of a gang attack. Australian sporting culture is by no means genteel, but it does not carry the same weight of national rivalry and, sometimes, when idiots get involved, the brute antagonism that exists in the UK. I was intrigued by Te’o’s comments ahead of England’s visit to Murrayfield about none of Rugby Union’s hostile environments eclipsing NRL’s State of Origin matches. Having been at a couple of them my impression is that while they might not be tame on the pitch, there is no real friction between Aussies from NSW and Queensland. It’s all hype. England against Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France needs no hype. Te’o says the history is pretty irrelevant – Eddie Jones can tell him different.