Ireland skipper leaves international future hanging after Six Nations win

Ireland skipper Peter O’Mahony has hinted that he might retire from international rugby after leading the side to the 2024 Six Nations Championship.

O’Mahony was influential as Ireland beat Scotland 17-13 in a hard fought round five match in Dublin.

Irish skipper leaves international future hanging

After the match O’Mahony said that he wasn’t sure if this was his last hurrah.

“I don’t know,” O’Mahony said as per the BBC.

“I have a few chats to have with family and stuff the next couple of weeks and if it was my last one it’s not a bad one to go out on.

“[It’s been] one of the tougher weeks of my career for lots of different reasons.”

O’Mahony hinted that a Six Nations win would be a great final push but would not overshadow championship celebrations in Dublin.

“If it was my last one, it wasn’t a bad one to go out on,” he said.

“I can hang the jersey in a good place, if it was. But I’ll have that chat next week.”

Six Nations championship is nothing to sniff at

O’Mahony, who assumed the captaincy for the Six Nations, said that he would never take a championship win for granted.

“It’s a rare feeling,” admitted O’Mahony, who lifted the trophy with Tadhg Furlong, whose father passed away late last year.

“I was talking to Willie Bennett, who’s leaving us. He’s been around for 35 years with the Irish team.

“He said there’s been big chunks of that where we haven’t been competing for championships and chunks of my career were the same.

“Last games that were dead rubbers so to be in it, to be winning championships like that is not something we’d ever take for granted.”

Wooden spoon Wales

Elsewhere on the final day of the Six Nations, Wales were consigned to the wooden spoon.

Wales coach Warren Gatland revealed that he offered to resign after guiding the team to a winless championship.

According to Planet Rugby, Gatland said when asked if he remained committed to Wales: “Yes, absolutely. I’ve made that commitment. I just said to Abi (WRU chief executive Abi Tierney) in the changing room ‘If you want me to resign, I’m quite happy to do that’. She said ‘Like hell, that’s the last thing I want, that’s what I’m really afraid of’.

“We’re gutted and we are hurting as players and coaches – and I know the fans are hurting,” he said.

“We’re probably a little bit rock bottom at the moment, but I do see light at the end of the tunnel. I see some excellent players who with time are going to be fantastic internationals.

“We’ve got a huge amount of inexperienced players who haven’t played a lot of regional rugby. We’re exposing them at Test level, which is a bit of a challenge.

“This rebuild isn’t harder than we thought, we knew the inexperience we had in the squad and the players we asked to step up to leadership roles. For us it’s about taking the good out of the games and showing what we need to do.

“I can’t question the effort of the boys and in fairness to Italy we didn’t put them under a huge amount of pressure and they managed the game well.”

England eye Six Nations resurgence

England skipper Jamie George feels that his team are on the up despite a last-gasp loss to France to conclude their championship.

“I believe we have the players to do something very special things with this English team and that’s a really exciting place to be,” said George as per the Guardian.

“I think we’ve made huge strides. We spoke before the tournament about reconnecting with fans, putting a smile on their faces and we’ve certainly done that. Ultimately, we’re going to be disappointed as we came into this tournament believing we were going to win it. We’ve shown in parts we’re a good enough team to do that. Overall I’m so excited about what the future holds for English rugby.

“I just think we’re on an upward trajectory. There’s a lot of talk about our attack and scoring tries and all that kind of thing but not many teams come and front up to the set piece of France like we did. The set piece is in a really good place. The attack is building nicely…and defensively it’s coming together nicely. We didn’t find a way to win tonight and that’s got to be something we look at going forward but we can be really happy with the way we’re going.”