Until 3pm Sunday, Hope Lives!

This is optimism’s optimum moment. Twelve hours from now everything will change. That’s when, alas, France will most probably begin to take control of this afternoon’s encounter with Scotland at Murrayfield. And yet, stubbornly and despite logic that dictates Chris Cusiter’s boys have just a one in four chance of prevailing, hope still flowers.

That’s partly because no-one looked very good today. Beat France and all sorts of things suddenly seem possible. Unlikely? For sure, but this is the time for dreaming. Italy were an affront to rugby and a sad one too; Ireland were pretty poor on Saturday and I still think that David Wallace’s best days are behind him (despite his rather strange Man of the Match award yesterday) and that Johnny Sexton is now a better fly-half than Ronan O’Gara.

Sadly, Wales can only get better. But will they? Shane Williams is done and without Matthew Rees and Gethin Jenkins they’re weak up-front.