On Friday, 4 February 2000, the pink pages of Gazzetta dello Sport contained a beginners’ guide.

"The goal is shaped like an H, offside exists - but it means something different - and a try is worth five points," explained Italy’s foremost sports newspaper.

If the Italian public were playing catch-up, it was expected their team would be as well.

The following day Italy - who had been thrashed by England and New Zealand in the World Cup a few months earlier - were taking on defending champions Scotland in their very first Six Nations game.

Fears of rout proved unfounded. Instead Italy pulled off a shock 34-20 victory.

"I thought if we were going to win a game, it would be this one,” said Italy coach Brad Johnstone afterwards.

“Everybody expected us to be useless. Opinion in Britain even questioned whether Italy should be in the competition.”

Doubts over Italy’s participation were not killed off for good, though. The Azzurri have, at times, fallen far behind the pack.

But now, 25 years after Italy’s inclusion and the tournament’s expansion, have the organisers’ dreams finally been realised?

Are we living through a golden age of the Six Nations?

It didn’t always come down to ‘Le Crunch’ in the opening phase of the expanded tournament, but it often did.

In the first eight years of the Six Nations, the title usually ended up in one of two countries.

England and France’s duopoly was interrupted only once, when Wales clinched a surprise Grand Slam in 2005 - a campaign kick-started by an 11-9 opening-round win over England, complete with Gavin Henson’s late touchline penalty and commentator Eddie Butler’s famous “shave away!” line in reference to the centre’s grooming habits.

Matches were, however, rarely on a razor’s edge.

The average winning margin in games over these eight years was a fraction more than 18 points.

The least competitive championship by that measure was 2002.

England beat every other team by at least 26 points, but France, captained by their current coach Fabien Galthie, ambushed them with a 20-15 win in Paris to take the title.

In that edition of the tournament, the average winning margin was 23 points, with only three of the 15 matches being decided by fewer than 10 points.

Neither figure has been surpassed since as a measure of inequity.

By 2007, though, things were changing.

Italy, coached by legendary France scrum-half Pierre Berbizier, were growing in strength.

With Sergio Parisse, Martin Castrogiovanni and Mirco Bergamasco establishing themselves, Italy beat Scotland and Wales to head into the final day with a mathematical chance of actually winning the Six Nations.

In addition, Ireland, who would ultimately miss out on the title to France on points difference, had emerged as a major force, winning triple crowns in 2004, 2006 and 2007.

With Brian O’Driscoll, Ronan O’Gara and Paul O’Connell to the fore, they demolished England 43-13 in a historic meeting at Croke Park en route to the last of that trio.

So, by 2007 the destiny of the title was less predictable and the matches were more competitive.

The average winning margin had dropped to a little more than 15 points.

And it would continue to fall.

“Wales is the sleeping giant of world rugby and I want to make sure we achieve our full potential.”

Those were the words of a 44-year-old Warren Gatland as he was unveiled as Wales coach in autumn 2007.

Wales had won only one match in each of their previous two Six Nations campaigns.

But Gatland masterminded a first win at Twickenham in 20 years on his debut as Wales boss and, with wing Shane Williams’ dancing feet delivering six tries, he was toasting a Grand Slam seven weeks later.

That year Italy beat Scotland in Rome and were within five points of both England and Ireland. The Scots beat England at Murrayfield 15-9 in a game decided solely by the boot.

It was the first tournament of a second age of the Six Nations characterised by tighter scorelines with  fewer five-pointers.

By 2013 the number of tries per game had fallen to 2.5, half what it had been at the start of the Six Nations.

Only one player – Wales’ Alex Cuthbert – scored more than two tries across their team’s five games.

Instead it was the boot of Leigh Halfpenny that proved critical in another Wales title win as, often to the annoyance of Gatland himself, the term ‘Warrenball’ was coined to describe their mix of direct, gain-line runners and suffocating defence.

After O’Driscoll crossed against them just after half-time in the opening round, Wales did not concede a try for the rest of their 2013 campaign – their line remaining unbroken for a record 358 minutes.

Winning margins also dropped steeply.

By 2013, there was an average of just 10.8 points between the teams in each match.

It was the fifth successive year that at least half the games had been decided by nine points or fewer.

An improved Italy were key to that statistic. They continued to deliver, beating Ireland for the first time and overcoming France in Rome.

O’Driscoll, who had made his name with a hat-trick in Paris in 2000, returned to mark his retirement from Test rugby as part of a title-sealing 22-20 win against  France on the final day of the 2014 tournament.

Competitive, but cagey.

Between 2015 and 2022, Italy lost 36 successive Six Nations games.

The streak was so sustained that South Africa were apparently being lined up to take the Italians’ place in the tournament.

The 2021 tournament was the worst for the Azzurri.

With all matches taking place behind closed doors, they lost by 40 points to France, 41 points to Wales and 42 points to Scotland.

They finished with a points difference of minus 184, the worst return in their history.

But even that wretched run did not send the overall average winning margin in matches back to the heights seen in the Six Nations’ early days.

During Italy’s dismal form it rose to 15 points, still short of the 20 clocked during the tournament’s first five years.

That was partly because Scotland went in the opposite direction to Italy.

Under the coaching reigns of Vern Cotter then Gregor Townsend, Scotland went from the Wooden Spoon in 2015 to regularly matching the major powers.

The easiest benchmark to measure their progress is also the oldest.

In the countries’ 154-year rivalry, Scotland have never been on a longer winning streak against England than their current run of four straight victories.

By contrast, Scotland won only three of the teams’ first 18 meetings in the Six Nations, frequently suffering defeats of more than 30 points.

Across the tournament, attack has the upper hand like never before.

After a precipitous drop in try-scoring to a low in the early 2010s, it has rebounded to unprecedented levels.

In 2015, 27 tries and 221 points were scored across three matches in a riotous final round.

By 2023, the tournament averaged a record 6.1 tries per game. It was the fourth time in the space of six editions of the Six Nations that a new try-scoring high has been set.

The trend is partly because there is more time to score tries. While matches remain 80 minutes long, thanks in part to rule tweaks such as ‘shot clocks’ for kickers, the ball is now in play longer, with less time taken up by scrums and line-outs.

With the introduction of bonus points in 2017, there is also a premium on securing points by putting the ball down over the line, rather than booting it between the sticks.

Most excitingly for Six Nations fans, Italy’s recent resurgence has meant last year’s tournament was the most competitive yet, as well as one of the most entertaining in terms of tries scored.

The average winning margin in matches in 2024 was just 8.9 points – an all-time low.

There were a host of grandstand finishes: Marcus Smith’s final-play drop goal snatched victory for England over Ireland; Thomas Ramos nailed a 79th - minute shot to claim a 33-31 over England and Italy’s Paolo Garbisi came within the width of an upright on the H of ensuring a first away win over France.

In total, 11 matches were decided by fewer than 10 points. In 10 of those the winning margin was fewer than five. Both numbers are Six Nations records.

The five times that the team trailing at half-time ran out winners also equalled a Six Nations high.

Outcomes are less predictable.

Part of that trend is the fact home advantage has been eroded.

Since 2015, four tournaments have seen seven or more away wins – it had happened only once in the 15 preceding Six Nations.

As a result, the table settings are less prescribed.

The title has been shared four different ways since the turn of the decade – even if France and Ireland have tightened their grip lately.

That is a minor gripe though.

The standard across the six teams has never been so even and the unpredictability of the fixtures has never been as high.

A quarter of a century in, Italy are no longer the beginners. And, as the stats show, the Six Nations has never had it so good.