The arrival of spring was enough to make even a curmudgeonly character like Philip Larkin raise a smile. “It will be spring soon,” the famously glum old English poet wrote in Coming. “And I, whose childhood is a forgotten boredom, feel like a child who comes on a scene of adult reconciling, and can understand nothing but the unusual laughter, and starts to be happy.”
It was to the sweet sounds of the thrush in the lengthening evenings that Larkin was responding, but fans of rugby – and Larkin, it would seem, was one – may just recognise the same sense of unexpected glee. It is easy to be a cynic about the state of elite sport, to be melancholic about the great game of yesteryear or fearful for the future, but this Six Nations has proved again what a beguilingly beautiful thing rugby’s grand old championship can be.
