AFTER 78 minutes and 19 seconds of Sunday’s final Five Nations gathering at Wembley the former Wales captain Eddie Butler informed Bill McLaren – and, by extension, millions of television viewers – that he considered England favourites to win this year’s World Cup. He might, of course, have added: “By the time we stop speaking, he’ll probably be 100 per-cent unfit.” Guscott pulled out the following morning.ABIDING MEMORY OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP: FIVE DRUNKEN WELSHMENNo, not a tight five of drunken Welshmen, but a quintet of tired and emotional red-shirted supporters who serenaded the working press long into Sunday evening with endless choruses of a new Stereophonics number entitled “As Long As We Beat The English.” Well, it was better than “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”.TOP POINT SCORERSN Jenkins (Wales) 64J Wilkinson (England) 60D Humphreys (Ireland) 51K Logan (Scotland) 37T Castaignede (France) 28A Tait (Scotland) 25E Ntamack (France) 20G Townsend (Scotland) 20FIVE NATIONS TITLESEngland 22Wales 22Scotland 14France 12Ireland 10. Either way, it looked pretty daft.STRAW-CLUTCHING QUOTE OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP: CLIVE WOODWARD”As we speak, Jeremy Guscott is 100 per-cent fit,” said the England coach last Wednesday on announcing his side for the Wales match. The cynics among us still suspect one of two things: one, that it was an attempt to introduce “player branding” through the back door or, two, that it was a clever French plot to get Keith Wood playing in a blue shirt. His voice now hoarse, he suffered the remaining 66 minutes of Scottish humiliation in silence.SPONSORS’ BLUNDER OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP: LANSDOWNE ROADAll that rain, all that paint, all that embarrassment.

So primal was the Ibanez scream that it lifted him clean off his feet. Rugby is its true self only when the beauty shares centre stage with the beast.
ANGUISHED CRY OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP: RAPHAEL IBANEZThe French captain let rip at Philippe Carbonneau as Gregor Townsend bisected the two of them en route to the Tricolore line for Scotland’s third try in five unfathomable minutes. The France-Wales match certainly had a tingle about it, but the whole point about Wembley on Sunday was that the players not only ran, but tackled. GAME OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP: WALES V ENGLAND

“But what about those try-laden classics at the Stade de France?” you ask It depends what you mean by classic. It was raised by Gerald Davies in another newspaper a couple of weeks ago.

His view, and that of several other former Lions he had spoken to, was that a more stringent qualification process for players is needed than the one applied to the Five (or soon to be Six) Nations’ Championship and the World Cup.Can a player be an honorary Welshman, Scotsman or Irishman for one rugby purpose, but not for another? At any rate there is a perfectly good Lions replacement for John Leslie in Scott Gibbs, who now joins the pantheon.. All the indications are that they will want to play, their respective British Isles countries will pick them and New Zealand or South Africa (whence some players hail also) will raise no objections.The second difficulty concerns the next Lions tour, if it ever takes place. They may well find themselves playing for Scotland or Wales against what is in reality their native land. But other players such as Shane Howarth and Brett Sinkinson for Wales, Glenn Metcalfe and the Leslie brothers for Scotland – true New Zealanders all – present two difficulties.The first concerns the World Cup. Tony Horton, like him, learnt his propping in South Africa: that did not make him any the less an Englishman. He should still be looking for at least one wing.Rogers I consider to be a legitimate Welsh selection.