July 11: The Six Nations Championship, still unable to finalise a new television deal, suffered a fresh setback when its first and only title sponsor Lloyds TSB ended a five-year deal.
The prospect of working up the Six Nations table in reverse order is altogether too depressing. Not with regard to the Italians at the bottom, but the Welsh above them.
Clive Woodward accused his side of lacking spark in a brutal postmortem yesterday of England's failure for a fourth successive year to win the grand slam.