Paul Rees looks back on a rugby year which was very good for some, but not so good for others...

At the end of the 2019 World Cup, England looked well set for the new decade.
They may have been well beaten in the final by South Africa, but they had the youngest squad in Japan of all the leading unions and the manner in which they had dismantled Australia and New Zealand in the knock-out stages suggested that in the second half of Eddie Jones’s reign as head coach they would be the team to beat in Europe.
Three years on, the only Tier 1 nations that have not defeated them since Japan are It...