Robert Kitson attempts to distill the excitement of the Six Nations in The Guardian.
"The secret of the Six Nations is beautifully simple. To southern hemisphere eyes it must be strange to hear people in the north rhapsodising about a competition frequently played in freezing temperatures with excessive amounts of kicking between sides who, for the most part, remain unlikely to thrash the world's best. To which there is only one answer: get yourself up here, buy a ticket to the Millennium Stadium or Croke Park and study the faces of players and spectators during the anthems. The formula remains unchanging but the possibilities are endless.
"Snow or ice notwithstanding, it also generates more heat than any comparable annual international tournament in any other sport. If you had to boil it down to a single word it would be "Passion". It is the P-word which, for example, still tempts Welshmen to Scotland days in advance of a Six Nations game at Murrayfield.
"When I lived in Edinburgh in the 1980s you would start noticing middle-aged men in red and white scarves, buttonhole daffodils already the worse for wear, swaying down Princes Street on the Monday afternoon before a Saturday fixture. By any standards that's a hell of a long pre-match session.
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