If you live in the United States, it’s easier than ever to catch the action because BBC America is covering a match each week. Setanta Sports is also covering the competition in the US as the network enters its last month on the air in the United States, but BBC America is available to a lot more US households as it is not a paid subscription channel.

If you’d rather give yourself a bit more control over the tournament’s outcome, you can play it yourself with the BBC’s online Six Nations game. The game is a very simple one you can play with your Web browser, but it is surprisingly addictive. Beware–you may be surprised to find yourself spending hours enjoying the various “drills” and trying to top your score in the simulated matches.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

While you wait for the tournament to start tomorrow, here are some highlights from its last two incarnations:

2009:

2008:

Considering that logic, the format of July’s two biggest three-match series in rugby league and rugby union might seem a bit odd to Americans. The British and Irish Lions tour culminates in a best-of-three test match series against the hosting nation, and the State of Origin interstate series is a best-of-three as well. This year, both series were “clinched” after two matches. On the Lions’ tour, South Africa won two in a row against the visitors while Queensland won the first two Origin matches against New South Wales. That left the final matches of both series with the derogatory “dead rubber” title. Competitors and fans were left with two matches that meant nothing to the series outcome.

One might ask: “Why bother playing them if they don’t matter?” The dead rubbers don’t matter to the series, sure, but have a look at these clips from the third matches of the two series and see if you think they didn’t matter:

British and Irish Lions match three:

State of Origin match three:

Dead rubbers indeed!

• The sides were locked at twenty-six points apiece after regulation, so two ten-minute extra periods were played.
• With the draw unbroken after extra time, the number of tries scored in the match was the next tiebreaker. This was moot, however, as each side had scored two tries during the match.
• each side nominated five kickers to attempt one placekick at goal each from the 22-meter line in front of the posts.
• After each side made four goals, the kicking competition went into “sudden-death” mode (wherein the first side to miss a goal loses, so long as the other side made a goal in the same round) with a new set of kickers. In the third round of this segment, Cardiff flanker Martyn Williams pushed an attempt wide to end the marathon and send Leicester into the final to be played in a couple of weeks.

The format was unpopular with many given that it forced players specializing in things other than goalkicking to do as much with the match at stake, but it was still exciting. Aside from the tense finish, the match also served to answer a few fans’ curiosity regarding how a tie is resolved in a knockout match after extra time.

Or did it? Actually, even though the format seen last weekend is used in the Heineken Cup, the format will be reconsidered next year. Further, other competitions don’t do it the same way, so seeing the shoot-out last weekend actually tells very little about how the matter is settled throughout the sport.

If you’ve read this far, we assume you’re interested in hearing how all of the competitions settle a draw in playoff situations where a winner must be determined, so here’s a partial list of competitions and their tiebreaking methods:

• The Guinness Premiership (England’s top domestic competition) has a similar format as the Heineken Cup, but the kicks vary in placement by round with some in front of the posts, some 15 meters from the left and right touch lines, and some 5 meters from each touch line.
• In the Super 14 (featuring top sides from New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa), two formats are used, on for the semifinals and one for the finals. In the semis, the sides play two ten-minute extra time periods, after which the deadlock is broken by number of tries scored in the semifinal. After that, though, the similarities with the Heineken Cup and Guiness Premiership end, as the winner is decided by who finished higher during the regular season. The final works the same for the most part, except that the championship is shared as a draw after two periods of extra time if the scored are still level.
• The Magners League (featuring top sides from Ireland, Wales, and Scotland) doesn’t have to deal with the issue, as they don’t have knockout matches and determine their winner after the regular schedule. This year, in fact, Munster clinched the title two matches left to play
• We couldn’t find a clear statement of the American Super League’s format, but we know from the 2008 final that “sudden-death” extra time is played after two extra time periods until one side scores to win.
• The tiebreaker methods used in the Top 14 (France’s top domestic competion) and Super 10 (Italy’s top domestic competition) elude Armchair Playmaker’s limited translation resources. Readers who are more adept at French and Italian are encouraged to chime in!

How do they handle it in rugby league? We’ll spare you the details, but note that for most competitions a “golden point” sudden-death period is either played after 80 minutes (as is done in the National Rugby League in every match) or after two short two extra time periods. The golden point seems to work pretty well–in fact, Leicester seems to support the idea after suffering through the alternative.

Hopefully, that satisfies your curiosity about how a draw is avoided when a draw will not do. Meanwhile, here are a few views of last weekend’s historic moment:

Here’s how the cameras caught it:

And here’s how it looked from at least one spot in the crowd:

We’re not sure it’s fair to focus on a missed goal from a player of Martyn Williams’ stature, especially considering that he probably never expected to be kicking at goal that day, so we’ll end here with a cheerier moment from early in Williams’ standout career (this one from more than a decade ago, before he ever donned a Cardiff shirt):

So far, Ireland has won all four of their Six Nations matches so far and scored 46 more points than their opponents in those matches, while Wales has won three of the four matches and scored 21 more points than their opponents. If Ireland loses this weekend, the tournament is decided by total points difference throughout the tournament. For example, if Wales wins by 12 this weekend, both sides will have won four of five matches, and Ireland will have a points difference of 34 points, while Wales will have a points difference of 33 points. In that case, a beaten Ireland walks off the ground with the tournament trophy.

In Cardiff.

Awkward…

A similar situation happened last season, when Wales beat France on the last weekend of the Six Nations for an unbeaten “Grand Slam” tournament victory, but Wales had only needed to lose by less than 20 points to win the tournament.

Of course, one could argue that this setup is fine, as Wales can still control their fate by putting a 13-point (or more) beating on Ireland (just as Ireland can render the issue moot by beating Wales), but it’s a little bit strange to walk out on the ground with the scoreboard effectively reading “Ireland 13, Wales 0″ as far the Six Nations tournament stakes are concerned. Also, the general practice of points differential as a tie-breaker might encourage teams to pour on the points against weaker opponents when a match have already been decided. That seems to be against the spirit of the sport.

Why not make head-to-head matches the first tiebreaker instead? In other words, if two teams each win four of the five matches (or some similar, but less likely combination of equal win-loss records at the top of the table), the first tiebreaker could be head-to-head results–namely which team won when they played one another. Points differential could be the next tiebreaker, such as if three teams all went 4-1 in the tournament and each had beaten only one of the other two teams (for example, if France beat Ireland, Ireland beat Wales, and Wales beat France, but all three sides had won their other matches). Making head-to-head results the primary tiebreaker wouldn’t make score differential unimportant, but it would make it a lot harder to lose a match to a team, then walk off with the tournament trophy while your victorious opponent claims the runners-up crown.

Of course, Armchair Playmaker won’t advocate tipping the scales against Ireland on a day when even the fountains at the U.S. White House are dyed green, but head-to-head might be the way to go as a general practice.

That said, we have a sneaking suspicion that the Six Nations organizers are looking to Armchair Playmaker for insight on how to run their operation. So let’s look at some Irish rugby highlights from recents years to commemorate their likely Six Nations win:

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Considering the possibilty of such a momentous event, we’ll recap the tour in the form of Jed Thian’s short and comedic Alternative Rugby Commentary preview videos (Caution: Rude language and profanity):

First, Scotland fell:

Next, Ireland succumbed:

Last weekend, NZ topped Wales:

Now, only England stands in the way. We’ll see what happens:

To the dedicated European Rugby Union fan, this is old news. To a more casual observer, though, the question might be: What are all of these comps, and why are the same sides in them? For that casual observer, we offer a run-down of the labyrinthine structure of the European rugby union competitions. Get comfortable. This is going to take a while.

Okay, let’s start with the top domestic comps:

The Guinness Premiership (henceforth GP) is the top professional competition in England. It features 12 sides, all English. In the past, it’s been known by other names due to sponsorship, such as the Zurich Premiership. The side that claims the wooden spoon in this competition is relegated to play in the lower National Division One competition the following year, while the National Division One champ is promoted to the GP. Incidentally, the National Division One is made up of professional and semi-professional sides, and the next levels are National Division Two and National Division Three (the latter of which is divided into North and South).

In France, the top professional domestic competition is the aptly named Top 14. If you need further explanation as to how many sides compete in it, you would make a great rugby league prop forward. The bottom two sides in this comp each year slide down to Rugby Pro D2, who sends its top two sides up to the Top 14. Both of these levels of competition are managed by Ligue Nationale de Rugby, which translates to “National Rugby League,” a name that might remind some of the shameful history of the French Rugby Federation’s collaboration with the Vichy regime to wipe out rugby league in France.

But we digress. Anyway, Ireland (both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland), Scotland, and Wales all compete together in their top professional competition, the Magners League, so it’s more of a quasi-domestic competition. There are currently ten sides in the Magners League: Four Irish (including Northern Ireland), Four Welsh, and two Scottish. Because the sides in this competition are regional and provincial sides, there is no promotion or relegation system (though sides are occasionally eliminated by restructuring implemented by their overseeing unions). Not too long ago, it was called the Celtic League.

In Italy, the Super 10 is the top rugby union level. There does not appear to be a standard system of promotion and relegation with the next level, the 12-team Serie A.

If you got all that, then it’s time to share the multinational competitions that sides rom more than one of these comps play in:

The Heineken Cup/H-Cup features 24 sides from the above domestic competitions (based on the previous year’s results), which are arranged into six pools of four who play six pool matchs plus quarterfinal, semifinal, and final knockout rounds. The GP and Top 14 each put their top six sides in it, and the top three Irish, top three Welsh, and top two Scottish sides from the Magners League go in as well. One more entrant comes from France, England or Italy (whichever of the three nations produced the top finisher among them the previous year), and the last is from a play-in round between the top Super 10 and Magners League sides who have not already qualified. At this point, you may want to rest up before reading further.

The European Challenge Cup is the next level of pan-European competition. It’s essentially a second-tier Heineken Cup. All of the sides from the GP, Magners League, and Top 14 that don’t make it to the Heineken Cup go into the European Challenge Cup, as do four clubs from the Super 10 that didn’t make the Heineken Cup. Then, just to mix things up, they chuck in a Romanian side, Bucureşti, which is formed specially for the European Challenge Cup. Five pools of four sides each are formed and each side plays six pool matches to determine who makes the quarterfinal knockout rounds, which are followed by semis and the final. Oh, and among its previous names is the Parker Pen Cup.

Ok, we’re almost done. The EDF Energy Cup involves only the 12 GP sides and the four Welsh teams from the Magners League, which is why it’s also called the Anglo-Welsh Cup. Not long ago, it was the Powergen Cup. Four pools of four sides each (three English, one Welsh) are formed, each side plays three pool matches, and each pool winner makes the semifinals to see who moves on to the final.

So there you have it. A lot of clubs from a fair few nations playing ina lot of competitions. The last source of occasional confusion comes from the timing of the comps. They all overlap wildly. In 2007-2008, for example, the Heineken Cup started pool matches in November (not counting the play-in round in May) and will end this weekend. The European Challenge Cup runs a similar schedule, which started last November and ends 25 May with a Bath v. Worcester final. The EDF Energy Cup began last October and ended in April (the Neath-Swansea Ospreys beat Leicester in the final) The GP started last September and will end next weekend, and the Magners League started at the end of August and ended on 10 May (Leinster won it based on table results as there are no knockout matches).

The Top 14 started in October and will end in June, and the Super 10 started in October and will end this weekend. This year was a little out of the ordinary due to the World Cup, but you get the idea.

If you can keep all of that sorted, you’re up on rugby union in Europe. If you can’t, I don’t think you’re alone.