Six Nations Championship:The GAA and Croke Park were the talk of the RBS Six Nations launch in the exclusive, snow-covered surrounds of the Hurlingham Club in London yesterday. Thanks in the main to the advent of the Jones's Road venue as one of the competition's stadia this season, it is expected that attendance figures for this year's championship will exceed one million for the first time ever.
Tournament organisers and sponsors were eager to proclaim last year's Six Nations as the best attended international sports event in the world, with average attendances of 60,643 eclipsing, for example, the football World Cup, which last summer had average attendances of 52,401.
In the absence of Lansdowne Road, the capacity for Ireland's games rises from 49,000 to 82,500 - the fourth largest sports stadium in Europe. Looking ahead to the Ireland-France game in Croke Park in round two, small wonder then that the chairman of the Six Nations, Jacques Laurans, felt moved to comment: "I would like to thank the GAA for their generosity in hosting this historic occasion."
He said that passing the one million landmark represented "a symbolic milestone" for the Six Nations. "More importantly, it is proof positive of the huge demand that exists for this great tournament. We suspect that we could sell our seats twice over."
Exceptions to this notion would be Edinburgh and Rome, although the Scottish RFU last night confirmed the last 5,000 tickets for the Scotland-Ireland game, which went on sale yesterday, were snapped up inside an hour. This makes the Irish game the only one of their three home games (they also host Wales and Italy) thus far to be a sell-out.
Such was the repeated questioning of the respective coaches and captains from the rival countries at yesterday's lengthy round of interviews, that Croke Park became almost the dominant theme of the day. Even more unsettling, when asked, the likes of English captain Phil Vickery, Welsh coach Gareth Jenkins, Scottish coach Frank Haden, Italian coach Pierre Berbizier all unhesitatingly plumped for Ireland as the pre-tournament favourites.
The last time Ireland were in this position, two seasons ago, weary anti-climactic defeats to France and Wales saw them fall away to third. The latter game also saw Wales crowned Grand Slam champions and after the injury-riddled convulsion and fall from from grace last year, the Welsh are buoyant again.
Back to something like full-strength, with key men such as Ryan Jones back in harness, their new coach Gareth Jenkins has boldly declared his target is for Wales to play 17 internationals in 2007 as part of their declared ambition to win the World Cup.
Wales host Ireland in their opening game on February 3rd and for Jenkins it's a case of bring it on. "If you'd asked me to pick the game to open our Six Nations campaign this season it would have been this one. Ireland are very much the team to beat this year, they will come to us as firm favourites and it's probably the toughest start to the year we could have been given."
The opening match of the tournament will be between Italy and France in the Stadio Flaminio in Rome on Saturday week, February 3rd, for which the newly made Garibaldi Trophy - to be awarded annually to the winners of this fixture - will be on offer aside from the two points.
The trophy has been designed and created by the great former French flanker Jean-Pierre Rives.
