Ultimate Rugby's Six Nations Player Of Round Four
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With the dust settling on a shortened round four of the Six Nations we have selected our Six Nations player of the round.
The postponement of Ireland's encounter with Italy meant there were just two fixtures this past weekend with England maintaining their Six Nations title bid with victory against Wales while fourteen-man France saw their Grand Slam ambitions dissipate against Scotland on a tough afternoon at Murrayfield.
There were a number of candidates for our player of the round with Scotland flanker Jamie Ritchie and Ben Youngs collecting man of the match awards in their respective victories over France and Wales.
Outside of those two, the flyhalves were busy this weekend with George Ford, Dan Biggar and Adam Hastings all enjoying fine appearances for their respective countries.
The Scottish front row all deserve a mention as too does Sean Maitland, who dotted down for double against France.
Maro Itoje, Hamish Watson, Julien Marchand and Charles Ollivon were all brilliant but our player of the round comes from Wales' pack despite their loss to England.
The energic, physical and simply brilliant Justin Tipuric has been outstanding for Wayne Pivac's side the entire Six Nations and his performance on Saturday against England was no different.
Tipuric's game against England everything! He made 11 tackles in the 80-minute performance taking his tally to 60 in the competition after 4 games and he is still yet to miss a single tackle.
He made 52 running metres from his 6 carries making three clean breaks, two of which leading to tries.
The first was from an excellent attack from the kick-off as he was received the final pass to dart in under the posts. The second came from a well-timed run off of a dart down the short side from Rhys Webb.
He won a turnover, completed two offloads was a key cog in the Wales' lineout and even acted as a playmaker on numerous occasions making 10 passes.
He also made numerous double hits and sent a number of England players tracking backwards including a key tackle on Tom Curry from an English defensive scrum in their 22.
