LONG READ The Six Nations deep dive: How France has the North playing Super Rugby

The Six Nations has finished, but the reverberations of a competition with the highest scoring profile in its illustrious history continue to be felt even now. Everyone is still getting their breath back after 111 tries scored in 15 games.

It is no coincidence Fabien Galthié’s France have won the past two tournaments, because they epitomise the new joie de vivre of a competition which has always lived in the shadow of Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship for pure rugby excitement.

If you walked north of rugby’s great divide, you could expect set-piece authority and game-management smarts, with the occasional try-scoring flourish. That is manifestly no longer the case. The Six Nations has emerged from the shadows and moved out into a brilliant sunlit world of unadulterated attacking exhilaration.

For Les Bleus, strait-laced Anglo-Saxon perfection has never been never the aim, and rugby is not precision drilling. The French notion of ‘total football’ is to score six tries when their opponents convert four or five, it subsists in the joy of the shootout. This is something more than being comfortable in chaos. The present-day Tricolores revel in bedlam.

The new amour fou drags everything and everyone into its orbit. Scotland and England felt compelled to leave their normal working rugby lives behind them and indulge the lover’s quarrel with France. Twenty-six tries in the last two rounds of the competition tell the tale of all those who fell head over heels. In the not so recent past, that would have been enough try-scoring substance for an entire championship up north.

Is it enough to win a World Cup? Who knows? And frankly, who cares? As Arnaud Beurdely proclaimed in Midi Olympique, for French supporters “the [TV] viewership figures reflect a nation’s declaration of love for its team. The surge of enthusiasm grows stronger each time. Eight million people tuned in to the Crunch match on France 2 [versus England], peaking at 9.5 million. This impressive figure brings the overall audience for Les Bleus in this Six Nations to over 35 million viewers.”

Those who refuse the French proposition tend to die a lonely death, like Ireland in the first round. The men in green perished without firing a shot of their own, but returned to the Emerald Isle happily infected by the French virus for the remainder of the competition. By round three against England at Twickenham, the lover’s fever was raging, and nobody was talking about the creaks and groans of old age anymore.

A base statistical comparison between the Six Nations over the past two seasons and the 2025 Rugby Championship suggests a role reversal where the rugby played north of the equator is becoming a new version of Super Rugby in its pomp.

Up north, the ball is in play for longer and the try-scoring profile seems to be burgeoning with every passing season, and the impression is confirmed by refereeing trends.

The new Six Nations is steadily working its way down from the 20 penalties per game threshold, while the last iteration of the Rugby Championship still remained above it.

There is further statistical reinforcement in the kicking game, and the relationship between the number of rucks set and offloads completed.

This Six Nations began with an obsession with the kicking game, and after round one the average number of kicks per game stood at a massive 79. The spell cast by the kicking game rapidly wore off for the remaining four rounds, and England’s grip on the tactical format of matches fell away quite dramatically with it. By the final round of play, the men in white had no choice but to join the revellers and indulge the party spirit at Stade de France.

The north is currently running ahead of the south in both of the key attacking categories of ruck-building and offloading, and this is coupled with far less reliance on set-piece to provide the platform from which to launch attacking sorties.

Northern hemisphere rugby is not only getting more comfortable in chaos, it is beginning to relish those countering scenarios which derive from a change of possession as much, if not more, than its cousins in the south.

The implicit suggestion of an equatorial role reversal is brought to life by the stats surrounding set-piece.

There is actually more competition for ball at source in the south than the north, where the retention of own-throw lineouts has become more routine. The importance of the scrum in the Rugby Championship was also far more pointed.

England had by far the most dominant scrum at the Six Nations, but it never enabled them to regulate the pulse of the game. South Africa’s dominance at scrum-time keyed their ability to score tries and control the tempo.

Games involving the Springboks came in at a mere 34.5 minutes of average ball-in-play time at the Rugby Championship, well below the BIP in matches featuring the other three teams in the tournament. The world champions prefer an explosive, staccato rhythm similar to American football and they thrive on it.

Their November victory over France contained only 32 minutes of ball-in-play time, and that stat alone is sufficient to tell you who took home the winner’s spoils. However hard they tried, Galthié’s charges were unable to seduce the Bokke, to persuade them to surrender to a wild fling in the most romantic city in the world. Is France in a better position to do it now? That is the big head-scratcher.

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Who makes a team of the tournament based on the raw stats? The 23-man squad is dominated by Frenchmen.

1. Jean-Baptiste Gros [FRA] – The Toulon loose-head is an elite defender, averaging more tackles per game than any other starting prop in the comp [16.6] while leading all comers in dominant tackles [3.5 per 80 minutes]. The glue that holds the Bleus tight five together.
2. Giacomo Nicotera [ITA] – One of the three best scrummaging hookers in the tournament with a huge engine in open play, averaging 16 tackles per game and 123 ruck involvements on both sides of the ball.
3. Joe Heyes [ENG] – Asked to play 10-15 extra starting minutes compared to November, but rose to the challenge. Anchored the England scrum effort while contributing over a century of cleanouts.
4. Mickael Guillard [FRA] – A force of nature who averaged more tackles than any other second row bar Wales’ Dafydd Jenkins [18.6 per game], with six dominant hits. He also found time to contribute 16 carries for 80m and three offloads in attack. The best young tight forward in Europe.
5. Ollie Chessum [ENG] – Impossible to ignore the Leicester man’s figures as a rock-solid lineout target, with 32 wins [11 more anyone else] and two more pilfers thrown into the mix, allied to line-leading on defence and 228 running metres with ball in hand.
6. Tadhg Beirne [IRE] – A ‘Test match animal’ with a big-game temperament, if ever there was one. Ireland’s premier lineout target [14 wins] while pilfering the most breakdown ball of any player in the competition [seven steals]. Too darn good to leave out.
7. Oscar Jégou [FRA] – It may seem steepling praise, but Jégou could just prove to be the second coming of Olivier Magne. Is there anything the young man cannot do? Like Guillard, he averaged over 18 tackles per 80, with three breakdown pilfers, 140 carrying metres and 13 lineout takes to boot.
8. Ben Earl [ENG] – The Saracens converted number seven led all forward ball-carriers for the third successive season with 21 runs for 117 metres per 80, trucking the ball up a massive 30 more times and 166m more than the next forward, with 17 breaks or tackle busts to boot. All-action, high-quality.
9. Jamison Gibson-Park [IRE] – Rebounded from an ordinary autumn to hit peak form in the second half of the tournament. Taken in isolation, Antoine Dupont’s stats are more impressive but the ex-Hurricane was more pivotal to Ireland’s revival, and probably the most accurate box-kicker in the championship.
10. Matthieu Jalibert [FRA] – Finn Russell may still be the more complete outside-half and the better goal-kicker, but it was impossible to look past Jalibert’s creative pyrotechnics on attack – 3.4 offloads, 2.8 break assists, and 1.5 try assists for every 80 he played.
11. Louis Bielle-Biarrey [FRA] – Who else? Quite simply, the most lethal line-breaker and finisher in the tournament.
12. Stuart McCloskey [IRE] – The big Ulsterman stood strong in an Irish midfield lacking the veteran assurance of Bundee Aki and/or Robbie Henshaw. A real workhorse with the most runs [63] for the most metres [463] of any back bar Tommaso Menoncello. Topped up the attacking stats with seven basketball offloads to ensure attacking continuity.
13. Tommaso Menoncello [ITA] – The star centre of the tourney, and as brutally powerful in centre-field as Bielle-Biarrey is quicksilver-slippery on the edge. His 39 carries went for eye-popping 15.4m per run, with 10 clean breaks and 21 other tackle busts. Almost impossible to stop at the first point of contact.
14. Kyle Steyn [SCO] – The best high-ball reclaimer in the air whether chasing or receiving, with 26 tackle busts and 10 dominant hits fully justifying his selection ahead of his more monstrous rival Duhan van der Merwe.
15. Thomas Ramos [FRA] – Dead-eyed in the goal-kicking stakes with an 88% conversion rate, and the main support for Jalibert as a playmaker with 2.2 combined break/try assists per 80 and 20 open-field kicks supplementing the UBB man’s 27.
16. Jamie George [ENG]
17. Rhys Carre [WAL]
18. Simone Ferrari [ITA]
19. Charles Ollivon [FRA]
20. Aaron Wainwright [WAL]
21. Antoine Dupont [FRA]
22. Finn Russell [SCO]
23. Louis Rees-Zammit [WAL]