Rugby Union – 2015 Six Nations Championship Odds

This year’s Six Nations Championship will take place from February 6 – March 21. As in past years, the annual rugby tournament will feature England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales vying for one of international rugby’s biggest prizes.

England is favored to win the tournament, listed at +175 in the odds.  Since the tournament expanded to six teams in 2000, England has won four titles; but the squad hasn’t won since 2011, and only has one title since 2003.

Though they’re favored in the odds, this year’s tournament will not feature an easy road for England. The team will be missing second row Courtney Lawes (Northampton) due to ankle surgery; he should be back at some point in the tournament, but there isn’t a specific date.

“This ankle has not settled down so I think he’ll probably need to have a little bit of surgery,” Northampton rugby director Jim Mallinder said. “It is just a little bit of bone that chipped off Courtney’s ankle in the Leicester game.  He would be expected to get back playing while the Six Nations is still going on. It is a blow for … him and England because he is a key player.”

Full-back Ben Foden has also been ruled out for England.

The defending champions from Ireland are second in the Six Nations odds at +188. Wales is third at +350, while France (+600), Scotland (+3300), and Italy (+50000) round out the competitors.

Italy has never won the tournament in its 15 years of competition. However, Scotland has the longest drought, as they haven’t won since 1990.

The Scottish are long shots to break their drought, in part, due to an arm injury to fly-half Duncan Weir.  He underwent surgery on his right bicep and will be out of action for four months.

France, which owns the most Six Nations wins (five), has struggled a bit of late and dropped to seventh in the World Rugby Rankings. They edged out Australia two matches ago (29-26), but then lost to Argentina (18-13) in their latest fixture. They were also shutout (6-0) and then massacred (39-13) in the Wallabies’ visit to France in June.

With France playing inconsistently, and England suffering from key injuries, Wales at +350 could be good value.

(Photo credit: ArunMarsh (Arun Marsh) profile (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)