LONDON town is covered in snow and the lawns of the Hurlingham Club are picture perfect. One of the many groundsmen of this exclusive little sports and social club, tucked rather sweetly between the King's Road in Chelsea and the River Thames, eyes the canvas laid out in front of him but seems reluctant to disturb the air of tranquillity about the place. Footprints on the snow just would not do on a morning like this. Inside the lugubrious main building, the great, the good and the half decent of Six Nations rugby are chatting over a cup of something hot. Philippe Saint-Andre talks to Keith Wood in the corner, Ieaun Evans talks to anybody who'll talk back and Matt Dawson wanders around the place with a scarf the size of a tablecloth.

But these figures from the past are merely the entrees. Inside one of the conference rooms, a few minutes before 10 o'clock, the coaches and the captains of the Six Nations rotate, like an airport carousel, between the various press groupings to air their thoughts.

The hustings for the 2007 RBS Six Nations Championship are underway. It's time they all went about persuading us of their worth.

First to the table are the Italian party.

What strikes you first about them is not Pierre Berbezier's snazzy pin-stripe suit, nor the impressive physical presence of Marco Bortolami, but the fact that the Frenchmen and the Italian sit down without an interpreter. Last year, there was a rather fetching lady sitting between the pair of them, deciphering their strange words, but now both appear utterly comfortable with their English.

"We only played for 60 minutes last year in most games, " says the second-row, "and what we have to do now is play for 80 and get results. We have a saying in Italy that a win helps to win and that's what we want to do this season."

Everyone nods with the wisdom of that Italian aphorism and the Scots, up next, are living proof of it. Last season they beat France and England at home in the space of two weeks, a far cry from the previous year when all they could manage was a penalty goal extravaganza against Italy. The theme of Frank Hadden's speech is "sustaining progress", and although it's not believed to be based on the 2003 social partnership agreement back home, when the coach talks of having "a lot done, more to do", you have to imagine he has some interest in the Irish political scene. Having improved the Scottish set-piece immeasurably since the days of Matt Williams, Hadden's next trick is to somehow make his side's pleasurable touchline-to-touchline play a bit more dangerous.

"We didn't score enough tries last year for the amount of possession we had and that's something we're keenly aware of, " says the coach.

Next to make their case are the bubbly Welsh duo of Gareth Jenkins and Stephen Jones, who seem in rare form. It could just be because nobody's talking about them, nobody's building them up as potential Six Nation's winners. "All the pressure's on Eddie O'Sullivan, definitely, " says Jenkins, halfsinging, half-talking, as only a Llanelli man can do. Both voices at the table suggest that because of last year's poor showing, due to a crippling injury list and the unseemly departure of Mike Ruddock, the pressure is off Wales to an extent, and now, with harmony throughout the camp and a full roster from which to choose from, they can get back to the heady days of 2005, when their brand of off-load rugby wowed the continent.

They've concentrated heavily on improving their work at the contact area, having been given a lesson in the art against the All Blacks at the end of November, but much of what goes on over the next seven weeks, Jenkins believes, will hinge on their Millennium Stadium opener against Ireland.

"It's about momentum, it's about winning all the games to go and win it, and the first game is the most important of all, " says the coach, heading into his first Six Nations. "If we win next Sunday, we can go on and win the Six Nations. If we don't, it'll be near impossible to do so."

Bernard Laporte, meanwhile, flanked by Fabien Pelous and an interpreter with an Irish lilt in her voice, doesn't appear to be at all bothered by such logic when he has his say at the table. He looks like an academic with his, you guessed it, pin-striped suit and round spectacles sitting atop his nose, but he complains like a little boy who thinks everybody else is luckier than him. "The amount of foreign players in France is a problem, " he moans. "I saw a match between Bayonne and Stade Francais and there were only 11 French players on the field. You shouldn't have all these players coming in to French clubs at the expense of French players." It's a topic he brings up again and again across his arguments, while Pelous, a little bored by his coach's excuses, sits there arranging his nails and generally preening himself. Laporte's only offering towards the Six Nation's suggests that France's priorities lie elsewhere this year. "We've got to try as many players as possible, " he suggests, "but as defending champions, we've always got to try and win the tournament." Without a definite number eight, or out-half for that matter, filling gaps will be his main priority.

Which is not the way Eddie O'Sullivan views life. Winning the next game has always been his priority and the Six Nations is his World Cup, until the World Cup comes around, if you know what we mean. He's also one of the pin-striped brigade today - in the best-looking suit of them all dare we say - but he's left fiddling with the string of a dictaphone on the table in front of him as Brian O'Driscoll spells out Ireland's vision for the next seven weeks. "Being favourites is just a tag, " says the captain. "It's not as though we go around patting ourselves on the back in the team hotel because we're favourites. We've been that team before. Two years ago we were favourites and we dipped below our standards for two games and Wales went on and won the Slam. That's just how it is, you have to play well for five games and that's why it's so difficult to win the Grand Slam. There's no massive science to it."

Ireland certainly appear to be a more developed side than any other in the competition right now but that could change over the next seven weeks. To maintain their primacy in the pecking order heading towards the World Cup, they'll need to stay close to injuryfree but even that might not be enough. The tricky nature of their fixture list doesn't aid their cause one bit, nor does the way the Munster pack were so comprehensively dismantled last weekend. In saying that, however, the Irish front row has always found a way of surviving at international level, and you seriously doubt that the likes of Paul O'Connell, Donncha O'Callaghan and Denis Leamy will stand for being set on the back foot like they were against Leicester.

You'd imagine, too, that Ronan O'Gara and the rest of the backs (we'd like to see Denis Hickie and Geordan Murphy start on the wings against Wales, but it's likely that Andrew Trimble will be selected ahead of one of them, probably Murphy) will be given the licence to play the same heads-up rugby that saw them excel in November, and if it all comes together, there's no reason why they can't win the damn thing.

Which is something that can equally be said of England, despite their dismal record of late.

Rob Andrew (Brian Ashton is where he should be, on the training pitch) and Phil Vickery front up to talk up team England and they appear keen to learn from the lessons of the past rather than forget them. "I don't necessarily think we need to forget about what's happened, " says the prop. "Just because things haven't gone well doesn't mean you should forget about things and disregard them. In the back of the mind, people should realise that we have had a bad run and there's nothing wrong in revisiting it because we just haven't been good enough."

Vickery talks the talk about how his side are going to "roll up their sleeves and bloody fight" but if he thinks that's the problem, he's straying down the wrong path. The first thing England need to do is get their best XV on the pitch, and not select whoever happens to be flavour of the month in the English Premiership. They then need to operate a gameplan that suits their player's skills set, let's say, something akin to the power play of 2003 with a touch more variety. If they can cook that up over the next two weeks, and beat both Scotland and Italy at home in their opening fixtures, they're going to be a threat, despite their November form.

The arguments presented, it's time to draw some conclusions. Pin-striped suits, it's clear, are seriously in vogue for authority figures, the Italian contingent's English lessons have been highly successful and Frank Hadden has been reading too much political literature for his own good. Bernard Laporte, it would seem, has become the extreme right's latest recruit and Wales appear giddy with excitement about the whole thing. England, meanwhile, are going to feed off the hurt of the past to fuel their future, while Ireland have slapped the favourites tag firmly on their backs without promising to do anything with it. Rummaging through it all, you sense that the Wales-Ireland game in Cardiff will decide the 2007 championship. If Ireland win, they'll be extremely difficult to stop, and while Wales's path may not be as clear if they emerge victorious next weekend, they have the talent within their ranks push on. Head on the block, we'll say Wales, if only because they have Ireland at home Debate concluded. And the snow has melted outside.

2007 FIXTURES Saturday 3 February Italy v France, 1.30, Stadio Flaminio; England v Scotland, 4.00, Twickenham Sunday 4 February Wales v Ireland, 3.00, Millennium Stadium Saturday 10 February England v Italy, 1.30, Twickenham; Scotland v Wales, 3.30, Murray"eld Sunday 11 February Ireland v France, 3.00, Croke Park Saturday 24 February Scotland v Italy, 3.00, Murray"eld;

Ireland v England, 5.30, Croke Park; France v Wales, 8.00, Stade de France Saturday 10 March Scotland v Ireland, 1.30, Murray"eld;

Italy v Wales, 3.30, Stadio Flaminio Sunday 11 March England v France, 3.00, Twickenham Saturday 17 March Italy v Ireland, 1.30, Stadio Flaminio; France v Scotland, 3.30, Stade de France; Wales v England, 5.30, Millennium Stadium HOW THEY FINISHED LAST YEAR PWDL F A Pts France 540114885 8 Ireland 5 4 0 1 131 97 8 Scotland 530278 81 6 England 52031201064 Wales 5113801353 Italy 5 0 1 4 72 125 1