Nations Championship school reports: Grading every country from head boy Springboks to the pupil in detention
The Springboks were top of the class this month while Italy are in trouble with the headmaster.
Twelve nations, three rounds, one end-of-term report card. Grades reflect the whole month’s work, conduct included, and parents’ evening is at Twickenham in late November.
South Africa: A+
Head boy, and despite the grumblings about bullying, the classroom can’t deny it.
Three wins from three, 130 points scored, a final-day shutout, and the unnerving habit of handing homework to four new pupils in the last week of term and watching them all get distinctions. Rotated three fly-halves, three number eight and three looseheads without the standard slipping, found a prefect nobody had heard of in Paul de Villiers, and finished with Wales held to nil in the rain.
Only critique from the staff room: occasionally toys with the food before eating it. University material, and the university in question meets New Zealand over four Tests soon enough.
New Zealand: A
Top of the class in everything except tidiness. Three from three, a national try-scoring record for Jordan, the 10-year fly-half argument seemingly settled by young Master Love, and an Eden Park report that reads “does not tolerate visitors”.
Marked down a notch because the France exam was passed by two marks after nearly falling asleep in the final section, and because the new form teacher’s methods are still bedding in. Effort exemplary, attention span improving, prefect Savea a calming influence on the younger boys. Would benefit from not making everything so dramatic.
France: A-
The exchange student who arrived speaking better English than the class. Sat all three exams overseas, passed two, and failed the hardest by two points against the top boy in a paper most of the school would have handed back blank.
Broke the school record for a win in Australia, strolled Tokyo, and did it all whilst the substitute teacher rotated half the register. Young Attissogbé and Grandidier-Nkanang suggest the family has more where this came from. Conduct excellent, though Meafou is asked to stop leaning on the smaller desks.
England: B
A genuinely confusing term. Beaten up behind the bike sheds at Ellis Park in week one, responded by scoring 73 on the smallest boy in class, then produced the term’s gutsiest away result in Santiago whilst collecting four yellow cards and twice playing with 13, which is why the grade reads B rather than the A- the results deserve.
The staff note real progress in Smith, F., Feyi-Waboso and Earl, and the class did cheer everyone up by avenging the football XI inside a week.
Conduct, however, remains the family weakness, and no amount of talent excuses spending a fifth of a Test in the naughty corner.
Ireland: B-
Started term as everyone’s tip for head boy and finished it hiding behind the gymnasium. Won in Sydney, dealt with Japan, then arrived at Eden Park with a 100 per cent record and left having been given 40 points and a lesson in ruck speed.
Coasting on last year’s reputation, and the staff also note with a raised eyebrow that Ireland somehow arranged for their away trip to Japan to take place in Australia; the geography homework appears to have been copied from a travel agent. Enormous ability, diminishing evidence of appetite. Must rediscover both before the resits.
Scotland: B-
The pupil whose homework is forever finished by his friends.
A genuinely excellent away win in Córdoba, seven tries and all, then a competitive defeat to South Africa in Pretoria, then a Murrayfield afternoon rescued from 17-7 down entirely by the substitutes’ bench, with Dobie, Schoeman and Cummings marching in like the cavalry while the starters studied their boots.
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Star pupil Russell attended one class all term, excelled, and was excused for wedding planning. The report writes itself: capable of anything, dependent on who else turns up, and B- is generous on the grounds of that day in Argentina.
Argentina: C-
Temperament remains a concern. Lost both home exams, beat Wales convincingly in between, and saved the term’s cruellest twist for the final day, producing their best rugby of the month with 14 men before a TMO ruled the equalising score into touch after the bell.
The card count in Santiago went both ways, but a team this talented losing twice at home in front of its own parents is a C- term whatever the mitigation, and the staff suspect the whole school’s attention was on the football anyway. Piccardo and Oviedo are pupils to build a class around. The discipline must be built first.
Japan: C+
New pupil settling in well, with one glorious exception. Beat Italy for a first-ever win in a tournament of this standing, unearthed the term’s outstanding PE performance in captain Dearns, a lock producing back-row numbers all month, and competed gamely before conceding 78 points across the Ireland and France exams.
The school also apologises for the administrative error by which Japan’s home fixture against Ireland was staged in New South Wales; the headmaster has received Mr Jones’s letter and notes its tone. Genuine promise, needs a stronger front five, and deserves better from the timetable.
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Australia: C-
Easily distracted after half-time. Led Ireland at the interval and lost, led France at the interval and lost by 16, then celebrated the retiring House Master by scoring 57 against the boy already in detention, which flattered the term considerably.
McReight, Bell and young Canham, whose four tries from the second-row included a final-day hat-trick, kept the report from sliding further, but two blown leads in a home term is careless work from a family with this history. Mr Schmidt leaves with the class’s thanks; Mr Kiss inherits a talented group that keeps falling asleep at 40 minutes.
Wales: D+
Tries hard, bullied terribly by the bigger boys.
Beat Fiji in Cardiff with genuine spirit and two tries from the admirable Morgan, (who will make a fine Head Boy in the fullness of time), competed for an hour in San Juan, and then ran into South Africa, against whom the last two meetings have now produced 116 unanswered points, the scrum folding like a wet tissue and the scoreboard reading nil.
The staff wish to praise the effort, which never once dipped, whilst noting gently that effort is not a set-piece. Brings a note from home most weeks. The November term offers no easier reading, and the union might consider that the boy needs feeding.
Fiji: D
A term of boarding school with no trips home, and it showed. Winless, humiliated 73-8 in Liverpool on the term’s darkest afternoon, and never once allowed to play in front of their own supporters, all three “home” fixtures having been staged in Britain for commercial reasons the pupils did not set.
And yet the final week revealed the real child: 17-7 up on Scotland at half-time, Tuisova rearranging ribcages, Ravutaumada dancing, the whole class briefly playing the rugby everyone came to see. Attitude much improved in the final term. Somebody let them host a match.
Italy: E
See me.
Three defeats, a solitary bright afternoon from Menoncello in Wellington, and a final day in Perth in which the tackling was left on the bus, 57 points conceded to an Australian side that had won nothing all month. The gap between Italy’s Six Nations improvement and this July suggests a pupil who only works for certain teachers, and the exclusion of hungrier boys from this school makes the term’s effort harder to forgive.
Detention, and the resit could scarcely be less kind: he world champions await in the November term, and promotion and relegation does not arrive to concentrate minds until 2030.