The Six Nations - England (A Post-Mortem)

About this episode

The episode discusses the disappointing performance of the England rugby team in the Six Nations and explores the cultural factors affecting English rugby.

Six Nations - England (A Post-Mortem) We don't usually do retrospectives on the Almanac. The vast majority of sporting engagement in our modern world is built around the sharing of opinion, frustration or adulation of thing's that have just happened, and it's normally not our style. But today, we make an exception as we release our final Six Nations episode, decidedly after the fact, and with its subject this season's championships biggest disappointment - England. What is wrong with English rugby union currently? Four games ago England were unbeaten for a dozen matches and seemed on top of the world, and then it all came crashing down. But were the signs there before the fall? Did the run flatter to decieve and is the drop less surprising than the run itself? And what is it about the English psyche, and our culture, that stops us embracing the kind of innovation that has made France and Ireland so successful, and has itself been the bedrock of English success in so many sports historically? From old farts in boardrooms to robotic coaches, uninspiring anthems to deep seated cultural conservatism - and arguably arrogance - about yet another sport we invented that the world simply…

Topics covered

• Six Nations
• English rugby union
• sports culture
• innovation in sports

Keywords

• retrospective
• England rugby
• sports history
• cultural conservatism

Mentioned in this episode

Places: England, France, Ireland

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