{"id":314002,"date":"2026-02-24T02:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T02:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/314002\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T02:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T02:51:10","slug":"ruaidhri-oconnor-state-of-the-unions-how-the-six-nations-are-feeling-about-themselves-after-three-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/314002\/","title":{"rendered":"R\u00faaidhr\u00ed O\u2019Connor: State of the unions \u2013 how the six nations are feeling about themselves after three rounds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"England captain Maro Itoje leaves the pitch upon being substituted during the Six Nations defeat to Ireland at Twickenham, England. Photo by Brendan Moran\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Sports3364695.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">England captain Maro Itoje leaves the pitch upon being substituted during the Six Nations defeat to Ireland at Twickenham, England. Photo by Brendan Moran\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It feels a long time since we were making our pre-Six Nations predictions and for most of us it\u2019d be better if those projections stayed buried deep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">This has been the first Six Nations without a break between rounds two and three and it\u2019s been all the better for the new schedule, with the tournament having a real momentum as a result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England captain Maro Itoje leaves the pitch upon being substituted during the Six Nations defeat to Ireland at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,16766,112],"class_list":["post-314002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ruaidhri-oconnor","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}