The Scots will be anguished for choosing this as the moment to lose to Italy, and Irish eyes will be crying about a lost historic second successive Grand Slam opportunity. But the penultimate round of the Six Nations was marked by positive revelations for the global game.

Let’s start with Italy, who played in front of a crowd of 70,000 in Rome, the biggest attendance at the venue for many years. That positive turnout was easy to understand: the most recent time Italy played they drew away with France, and they were unlucky to only draw...

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