Did absence make the heart grow fonder, or did the delay deliver a vintage summer of rugby? We had to wait for Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales to embark on their only extended trips of this World Cup cycle, but this was a July that contained everything: history, mystery, drama and diversion.
It ended split almost impossibly evenly down the middle: two overall triumphs taken by sides from the north, two by those south of the equator, with the aggregate score across 12 encounters tilted in favour of the travelling sides by just a single conversion. The individual contests may not have always crackled but each series remained firmly in the balance deep into their deciders, and fears after the opening weekend that weary northern hemisphere legs may provide flat contests were unfounded.
