Sports Blog 12/02/2015: Tournament Preview – Six Nations 2015 Round 2, Saturday 14th to Sunday 15th February 2015

Last weekend’s Six Nations matches proceeded largely as expected, with only England’s win in Cardiff anything near a surprise. However, round 2 sees a couple of tight games as the tournament begins to hot up.

Valentine’s Day afternoon sees England host Italy at 2.30pm as Stuart Lancaster attempts to continue England’s strong start to the competition. Their impressive win against Wales, in Cardiff, was the best possible start for England’s Six Nations campaign, seeing their Outright Index spread betting quote rise to 44-47 from 34-37. After braving an aggressive Cardiff crowd to come out of the Millennium Stadium with a victory, England go into the second round with perhaps the easiest fixture of the weekend.

England proved their resilience after coming back from 10-0 against Wales to secure a win and go to Twickenham unchanged; yet this strength will likely go untested on Saturday. Italy have never beaten England in 15 Six Nations games, and were comfortably swatted away by Ireland in Rome. Italy coach Jacque Brunel has announced 4 changes ahead of the game, with Marco Bortolami returning from injury alongside starts for Mauro Bergamasco, Giovambattista Venditti and Alberto de Marchi. Yet despite these changes, Brunel’s side seem doomed to be the perpetual whipping boys of the Six Nations; or, at least, our Spreadex clients feel this way, fancying an England/Italy Supremacy spread betting quote of 30-33 with a Total Points spread of 49-52.



We then turn our attentions to Dublin, as France face Ireland at the Aviva Stadium at 5pm. With both sides securing wins last weekend, this match is going to be a tense affair with Grand Slam hopes set to end for one of them by Saturday evening. Ireland are at 7/2 fixed odds to get a Grand Slam and increased their Outright Index to 37-40 compared to France’s 14/1 and 22-25 respectively, providing an insight into the way this weekend’s game might play out. Joe Schmidt is set to recall Johnny Sexton, Sean O’Brien and Jamie Heaslip in a boost to Ireland’s defence that wasn’t needed against an underwhelming Italy, but that may be the key difference when they face the feisty French side.

France had a tougher time than expected against Scotland, but a well-fought win in Paris got them the 2 points they needed. They will be looking once more to Camille Lopez, who kicked up a storm against Scotland, pushing him to be the top scorer of the weekend with 15 points. France have the past form against Ireland, with 8 wins compared to 5 in past tournaments; however, if Scotland could give this French side a run for their money, then Ireland could easily go one better at home. Our Spreadex clients seem to think so, favouring Ireland in narrow Ireland/France Supremacy spread betting quote of 6-9, with a Total Points spread of 36-39.



Finally, Sunday sees Wales visit Murrayfield to face Scotland at 3pm, as both sides try to get their first points of the tournament. Scotland can feel justly unlucky to have not got anything against France, and will go into the game on Sunday with a renewed sense of faith in their abilities. That is, they will if they can put to be the ghost of the 51-3 thwacking Wales gave them in 2014’s competition to bed. The Scots’ will look to Stuart Hogg, who ran the most metres out of any player last weekend, to make the difference and build on the progress they saw in Paris.

Just as Scotland are gaining confidence, Wales might be losing theirs, as they spent the week making headlines for all the wrong reasons. The issues with the Welsh crowd tarnished what was otherwise an excellent first game for the tournament; however, this paled in comparison with the trouble surrounding George North. The controversial decision to leave the player on the pitch, despite multiple head knocks that at one point saw North out cold, has seen the Welsh rugby coaches and doctors heavily criticised for putting a potential win over the safety of the player. With new reports showing that rugby concussion cases have tripled in the past 3 years, the irresponsibly actions of the Welsh coaching staff has marred the start to Wales’ tournament, and may have affected moral as the week went on.

Unsurprisingly, and to North’s own disappointment, the left winger will be replaced by Liam Williams on Sunday, as Wales try and downplay the issue. This was not the only bad news; out of the six teams, Wales missed the most tackles of the weekend in their game against England, and despite their 11 head-to-head wins in comparison to Scotland’s 3, the latter will enter Murrayfield on Sunday feeling confident they can capitalise on this Welsh weakness. Despite our Spreadex traders still looking at Wales for the win, the spread is very narrow at a Wales/Scotland Supremacy quote of just 2-5, with a Total Points spread of 36-39.