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No England player picked as six Welsh, five Irish, three Scots and one French make the Six Nations Team of the Championship

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Six title-winning Wales players – and none from fifth place England – have gained selection in the Guinness Six Nations Team of the Championship following a fans’ vote. Ireland had five representatives, Scotland three and France one after the votes were counted and the XV revealed this week.

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The tournament ended in a welter of excitement last Friday with Scotland beating France away for the first time in 22 years and handing the championship title to Wales, who has let slip the Grand Slam with their agonising defeat in Paris a week earlier.

Former England and Lions winger Ugo Monye provided a shortlist of players up for Team of the Tournament selection and 1.3 million people cast their vote for the XV.

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Wyn Jones, Ken Owens, Alun Wyn Jones, Taulupe Faletau, George North and Louis Rees-Zammit were the six Wales players picked from the Six Nations champions – and it would be a surprise if all of these do not make the Lions squad later this year.

Hamish Watson, the flanker was also voted player of the championship on Friday, Duhan van der Merwe and Stuart Hogg were the three Scots in the team. Tadhg Furlong, Tadhg Beirne, CJ Stander, Johnny Sexton and Robbie Henshaw make up the Irish contingent, with Beirne and Henshaw also nominated for player of the championship.

The 2020 player of the championship and a nomination for the 2021 award, Antoine Dupont, was the only Frenchman in the XV, which may come as a surprise as France finished the championship in second place. Fly-half Matthieu Jalibert was a high performer for Les Bleus but he missed the final match and was ousted by Sexton, who made a surge in the final two rounds against Scotland and England.

No players from England or wooden spoon winners Italy made the team, which was expected. Only Tom Curry and Anthony Watson would perhaps have stood a chance of making the XV following an underwhelming campaign by Eddie Jones’ side.

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TL 52 minutes ago
Joe Schmidt bows out on a high - but can the Wallabies escape 'the twilight zone'?

All of that seems fair enough, aside from the 10 criticism: Lynagh was injured so not up for selection this year + missed most of SR, Noah went to Japan league 2, maybe an argument for bringing him back in early, but we had Carter. Dono and Meredith (who looks decent enough). Definitely not a straightforward call. Edmed was an experiment that didn’t bear fruit, I’m happy to forgive him that one though, because he did what Cheik and Rennie didn’t do, which was consistently look to develop young 10s in the face of criticism (Rennie’s chopping and changing wasn’t great for Noah, and it was back to the future too often for Cheik, which hurt our development pathways e.g. Mack Mason, Jack Maddocks, and too often gambling on people out of position—more than Joe!). Tane is one specific failed experiment. l just wish we had a more scrupulous punditry when it comes to the recent past (your obvs not in the crosshairs here, it’s the Aussie media). TBH, I worry about the identity piece: feel it should be the salt on the meal, rather than the meal. The Reds are full of Aussie identity but they play the most hairpulling rugby at times and the identity seems to excuse this, while the Brums with less talent and less of an identity in the Australian mould over perform. To be optimistic, maybe it does look a little like the Ireland transition with Les coming in a bit like Farrell, seemingly more of a emotive, man motivator type than the technician Joe. What would have been fantastic and helped everything also was for RA not to burn bridges with Lancaster and be able to get him back and have the Tahs cooking, that is one big piece of the puzzle (the Tahs) that will make our national coach’s job a lot easier.

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