In the professional era, there is a common denominator that suggests France and Ireland might be worth backing
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ll that performance data, all those fixture permutations. All the gym sessions and marginal selections. Not to mention all those finger-in-the-wind tournament previews. But what if identifying the winner of the 2026 Six Nations basically involves overlooking all of that – and is shaped by an underlying factor so simple that it is staring everybody in the face?
Interested in finding out what this magic bullet might be? OK, here goes. Without cheating (or consulting your new friend Monsieur AI), spot the common link in the following sequence of years: 2022, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002, 1998, 1994, 1990, 1984, 1981, 1978, 1975, 1972, 1969 and 1967? Tricky, isn’t it? Even years, odd years, irregular gaps … if you were a statistician seeking a mathematical pattern you would be sat there gazing at the numbers for a long time.
Keen-eyed students of the game, however, may already have spotted the connection. All the above are the years in which the Five or Six Nations championship took place directly after a British & Irish Lions tour. And the strange-but-true punchline: how many times in those 16 tournaments following a Lions tour have England secured the title? The answer is a stone-cold zero.
