It feels like a victory worthy of King Pyrrhus with England collecting the Six Nations championship trophy after suffering defeat to Ireland, thus depriving themselves of a Grand Slam. It feels a bit hollow now, and it's reminiscent of England's performance a decade ago when they went a number of years in the position of winning the Grand Slam before losing the final match, but if offered this position before the Six Nations started they would have been delighted. Ironically England's competition has been the reverse of last year where they started poor but improved compared to this campaign where they struggled in the last few matches. Those last few matches probably put England's team into perspective: they are not as bad as we thought they were but they are not as good as we thought they were becoming. Now at least there is the possibility of England building on what they have achieved so far without the ridiculous talk of them being World Cup potential winners adding unnecessary pressure.

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   By contrast the England cricket team have been completely inconsistent but thanks to other teams performing as the form book expects they have qualified for the quarter finals of the World Cup. They are certainly not doing it the easy way and it is certainly entertaining in a perverse sort of way but is it too much to hope for a nice straight forward win.