Nations Championship Round 5 Preview: France and South Africa Meet With the Tables Tight at the Top

Paris stages the clash that could settle who leads each hemisphere, while Cardiff, Dublin, Twickenham and Murrayfield all carry a different kind of pressure. With one round to follow before the finals weekend, every result now moves a position that matters.

The table is close enough in the north that one round can reorder it. France lead on 17 points after four matches, with England and Ireland both on 15 and Scotland on 11. Wales have 10, and Italy, pointless and carrying a points difference of minus 153, are playing for pride and for whatever they can take from a hard schedule. In the south the picture is starker at the top: South Africa and New Zealand are both unbeaten with 20 points, separated only by points difference (plus 140 against plus 73), while Australia, Argentina and Japan are bunched between eight and five points and Fiji have yet to score a point in the table. With the finals weekend at Twickenham on 27, 28 and 29 November, where a team finishes in its table matters as much as whether it wins.

The round opens in Paris on Friday night with the two sides who sit at the head of their respective tables, and it closes at Murrayfield on Sunday. In between come four Saturday fixtures that show the range of the competition: a New Zealand side that has beaten Australia twice and Scotland in the last month visiting Cardiff, England and Ireland chasing France at the top of the north against Japan and Fiji respectively, and Italy facing an Argentina side that has made only one win out of four count. The favourites in most of these matches are clear, so the interest lies in margins and in what each side takes into the final round. Points difference has already separated sides on level points, and it will do so again.