50 Fun Facts About Six Nations

What befell the six-sided Six Nations trophy after round three in 2026, forcing a replica to be presented?

It was damaged by fire and retired from ceremonial use, so the 2026 winners lifted a replica and a new trophy was commissioned for 2027. The 2015 original stood 75 cm tall in sterling silver.

Whose last-kick penalty in Paris beat England 48–46 in March 2026 and earned France a second straight title?

Thomas Ramos, the championship's top scorer for a fourth year running, landed the kick that edged Ireland out of the title by two table points.

Which two forwards were punished in 1988 for playing football with the Calcutta Cup along Edinburgh's Princes Street?

Dean Richards and John Jeffrey knocked the 1878 trophy about after a few drinks; Jeffrey got a six-month ban from the Scottish union while Richards was suspended for one match.

Italy's 23–18 win in Rome in 2026, their first ever over England, ended how many straight defeats in the fixture?

32 consecutive defeats had included every meeting since Italy joined the championship in 2000, and the upset helped push England down to fifth, matching their worst finish of the Six Nations era.

Why was the 2026 opener between France and Ireland played on a Thursday night, a first for the championship?

A Winter Olympics ceremony clash pushed the game to Thursday 5 February, and France won it 36–14 at the Stade de France to start their title run.

Which Ireland fly-half holds the Six Nations career points record with 566, completed during the 2023 Grand Slam season?

Johnny Sexton captained that 2023 side and had been named World Rugby Player of the Year in 2018, the second Irishman to win it after Keith Wood.

Which Ireland centre holds the championship try record with 26, having passed Scotland's Ian Smith in 2011?

Brian O'Driscoll's try against England in 2011 broke a mark Ian Smith had held for 78 years, and he retired in 2014 with 141 caps, then a world record.

Under the bonus-point system introduced in 2017, how many extra table points does a Grand Slam earn?

Three extra points lift a perfect season to at least 23, beyond the 22 a team that lost once could collect, so a Grand Slam winner can never finish second.

Italy finished bottom of the table in how many of the 27 Six Nations championships played from 2000 to 2026?

18 wooden spoons include 12 whitewashes, yet only England and Ireland have never finished last in the Six Nations era.

Which France wing scored a record nine tries in the 2026 championship, four of them in the last match in Paris?

Louis Bielle-Biarrey beat his own record of eight from 2025 and was named Player of the Championship in both years.

The original championship trophy, first presented in 1993, carried how many side panels?

15 panels, one per player in a team, were the work of eight silversmiths at London firm William Comyns, and a concealed drawer in the mahogany base held six alternative finials, one emblem per nation.

The three handles on the 1993 championship trophy, designed by James Brent-Ward, represented which people?

The match officials, a referee and two touch judges, each got a handle on a bowl that held 3.75 litres of champagne.

France were expelled from the Five Nations after the 1931 tournament over allegations of what in their domestic game?

Professionalism allegations and administrative failings kept France out until 1947, so the four Home Nations played alone again through the 1930s.

Why was England left out of the 1888 and 1889 Home Nations championships, five years after the tournament began?

Refusing to join the IRFB, the international board founded in 1887 that became World Rugby, left England outside the game's new governing body and outside the championship.

Because no silverware existed for it until 2006, the Triple Crown was sometimes known by what nickname?

The invisible cup gained a body when sponsor RBS commissioned Hamilton & Inches to make a Triple Crown Trophy, first presented to Ireland in 2006.

In 1975 retired Durham miner Dave Merrington carved an unofficial Triple Crown trophy, now at Twickenham, from what?

A lump of coal hewn from the Haig Colliery in Cumbria became a crown on a four-sided base bearing a rose, a shamrock, a thistle and the Prince of Wales's feathers.

Before 1994, what happened when two or more teams finished the Five Nations level on match points?

The title was shared, so England's Triple Crown sides of 1954 and 1960 had to split the championship with France; since 1994 level teams are separated on points scored and conceded, then tries.

How many Grand Slams had been completed by the end of 2026, from Wales's first in 1908 to Ireland's in 2023?

42 slams split as England 13, Wales 12, France 10, Ireland 4 and Scotland 3, while Italy are still waiting for a first.

Which Scottish ex-teacher, 'the voice of rugby', commentated on the championship for the BBC until retiring in 2002?

Bill McLaren made his BBC radio debut on Scotland's 12–0 loss to Wales in 1953 and switched to television six years later.

Scotland's last championship, the 1999 Five Nations, saw them finish above England on which tiebreaker?

Points difference carried Scotland past England, who were beaten by Wales in the final match at Wembley after leading with 80 minutes gone.

Whose last-minute try at Wembley in 1999, converted by Neil Jenkins, denied England a Five Nations Grand Slam?

Scott Gibbs shrugged off several tacklers from about 20 metres out with the clock past 80 minutes, and Wales's one-point win handed the championship to Scotland.

Which Scotland captain chose the slow walk onto Murrayfield before the 1990 Grand Slam decider against England?

David Sole's side won 13–7 for a third Five Nations slam, and by 2026 Scotland had still not managed another.

Which anthem was sung without incident at Croke Park in 2007, scene of the Bloody Sunday shootings of 1920?

God Save the Queen passed off peacefully and Ireland then beat England 43–13, their biggest ever win over England.

England's refusal to shift from Ireland's 'lucky' side in 2003 forced President Mary McAleese to do what?

Walk on the grass she did, because the red carpet no longer reached the Irish line-up; the IRFU sent her a written apology the next day and England won the Grand Slam.

Whose late drop goal in Cardiff sealed Ireland's 2009 Grand Slam, their first since 1948?

Ronan O'Gara's kick made it 17–15 before Stephen Jones missed a long penalty for Wales, ending a 61-year wait for a second Irish slam.

Ireland's 2018 Grand Slam began with an 83rd-minute drop goal in Paris that came after how many phases of play?

41 phases ended in a 15–13 win, and Ireland went on to become the first team to collect the three-point bonus for a Grand Slam.

Whose try in the final two minutes in Cardiff in 2022 ended Italy's run of 36 straight Six Nations defeats?

Edoardo Padovani turned a 21–15 deficit into Italy's first championship win since they beat Scotland in Edinburgh in 2015.

By what record score did Wales beat England in Cardiff in 2013, snatching the title and denying them a Grand Slam?

30–3 remains Wales's biggest win over England, built on Leigh Halfpenny's penalties and two second-half tries from wing Alex Cuthbert after a 9–3 half-time lead.

Scotland hit six unanswered tries from 31–0 down at Twickenham in 2019 before England's late try rescued what score?

38–38 let Scotland keep the Calcutta Cup as holders, after England had led 31–0 barely half an hour in.

Italy's first Six Nations home, the Stadio Flaminio used from 2000 to 2011, was built for which event?

The 1960 Olympic football tournament got a 24,000-seat ground across the Tiber that later failed Six Nations stadium guidelines, so Italy moved to the Stadio Olimpico in 2012.

What attendance did Murrayfield record for Scotland against Wales on 1 March 1975, a European record that still stands?

104,000 saw Scotland win 12–10, and the figure stood as a world record for any rugby match until 1999.

The Aviva Stadium, opened in May 2010, was built on the site of which ground, the world's oldest Test rugby venue?

Lansdowne Road staged its first international, against England, in 1878 and was demolished in 2007, sending Ireland to Croke Park for the 2007 to 2010 championships.

The Millennium Stadium became the Principality Stadium in 2016 under a ten-year naming deal with what kind of business?

A building society, the Principality, bought the rights in a deal announced in September 2015, and some fans objected on social media.

Italy's first Six Nations match at the Stadio Olimpico, against England in 2012, was played on a pitch in what state?

Frozen after snowfall hit Rome the day before, the surface did not stop England winning 19–15 after trailing for almost an hour.

Which broadcaster showed England's home championship matches live from 1997 to 2002, leaving the BBC with highlights?

Sky Sports held those Twickenham games until the BBC regained every match from 2003 to 2015, after which the BBC shared the tournament with ITV.

Which prize, shaped like a horned Viking helmet, has been played for by England and Ireland since 1988?

The Millennium Trophy, made for Dublin's 1988 millennial celebrations by American silversmith Charles Zanoni in his studio in Bray, County Wicklow, had been won 21 times by England to Ireland's 18 by 2026.

Which former France flanker turned sculptor designed the Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy, first awarded in 2007?

Jean-Pierre Rives's design marked the bicentenary of Garibaldi's birth, and France had won the trophy seventeen times to Italy's two by 2026.

The Auld Alliance Trophy, contested since 2018, honours French and Scottish rugby players killed in which conflict?

The First World War claimed both nations' last pre-war captains, Eric Milroy and Marcel Burgun, whose names are engraved on the silver beside poppies and cornflowers.

The Scotland–Wales cup created in 2018 and named for lock Doddie Weir raises awareness of which illness?

Motor neurone disease was diagnosed in Weir in 2016 and killed him in 2022 aged 52; he joked that the cup's big handles emulated his massive ears.

Which Italy forward made a record 69 Six Nations appearances between 2004 and 2019?

Sergio Parisse, born in Argentina to Italian parents, finished two clear of Ireland prop Cian Healy and Wales lock Alun Wyn Jones, who made 67 each.

How many points did Jonny Wilkinson score against Italy in 2001, still the most by one player in a championship match?

35 points overtook the record of his Newcastle mentor Rob Andrew, in a season Wilkinson finished with a record 89.

Which Scotland player's five tries against Wales in 1887 remain the record for a single championship match?

George Campbell Lindsay's five tries have stood for well over a century; the Six Nations-era best is four, first achieved by Chris Ashton against Italy in 2011.

Which sponsor name replaced RBS for the single season of 2018, while the Royal Bank of Scotland brand was being retired?

NatWest 6 Nations filled a one-year extension agreed at a reduced rate after organisers struggled to find a new sponsor, before Guinness arrived for 2019.

Why were Ireland's three 2001 matches against the Home Nations postponed until September and October?

A foot-and-mouth outbreak restricted travel across Britain, and Ireland then beat England 20–14 in October to deny them a Grand Slam at the final hurdle for a third straight year.

England's Red Roses' run of consecutive Women's Six Nations Grand Slams, unbroken through 2026, began in which year?

2022 started the streak, which by 2026 stood at five and had taken England to 20 Grand Slams and 22 titles in the 31 championships played since the women's Home Nations began in 1996.

France's 1977 Grand Slam used the same fifteen players in all four matches and conceded not a single what?

Try-less opponents across a whole slam had only been managed once before, by England in 1913, and France's 58 points was the lowest total of any four-point-try-era slam winner.

The Six Nations age-grade championship adopted its current U20 format in 2008 after four editions at which level?

Under-21 gave way to under-20 in 2008, when England won the first edition on the way to ten of the first twenty-one titles.

Which bank became the championship's first title sponsor in 1999, fronting the Five and then Six Nations until 2002?

Lloyds TSB branded the final Five Nations and the first three Six Nations; before 1999 the tournament had never carried a title sponsor.

With French law banning alcohol sponsorship in sport, what word replaces Guinness on the tournament's French logo?

Greatness sits in the same colour and typeface as the Guinness wordmark, a workaround for the Loi Évin that has applied since the brewer took over in 2019.

France's 2021 match against Scotland was pushed back to the Friday after the final round because of what?

A COVID-19 outbreak in the French camp meant France needed a bonus-point win by at least 21 points to overtake Wales for the title, and they fell short.