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The Triple Crown is a title and trophy that is competed for annually by England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland in the sport of Rugby Union. One aspect of it, that sometimes causes confusion for newcomers to the sport, is the fact that it is competed for as part of the Six Nations competition. As we'll explore in this article, this has come about through historical changes in the composition of European rugby. We'll also see why the Triple Crown used to be known as the "invisible cup".

Those who follow rugby union, these days, will be familiar with the Six Nations competition as a yearly tournament that pitches the best six European rugby nations against one another. As well as the aforementioned four nations, France and Italy participate and each nation plays each other nation once. This means that each team plays a total of five matches and the overall winner is determined by which team has picked up the most points over the course of the season. That explains the current format and is fairly straightforward.

To understand where the Triple Crown fits in, however, we have to go back in time a bit, to 1883 to be precise. This was when the Home International Championship was set up, as an annual competition between the four countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) that comprised Britain at that point. Since then, of course, partition has happened in Ireland, with the north remaining part of the UK but the south setting up an independent Republic. Nevertheless, Ireland has continued to compete in rugby as one single nation and is still considered as a "home nation" with regards to the Triple Crown.

These four nations competed for the Home International Championship until 1910 when a decision was taken to allow France to join in. The competition became known as the Five Nations and the main trophy being competed for was the Five Nations trophy. However, the four home nations wanted something to preserve the long history that they had of competition against each other. Therefore a decision was taken that if one of the home nations succeeded in beating all the other three home nations, then they would be dubbed the Triple Crown winners. Therefore, assuming that France didn't win the Five Nations, then it was perfectly possible for one of the home nations to win both the Five Nations and be dubbed Triple Crown winners in the same year.

I used the term "dubbed" due to the fact that there wasn't an actual cup reserved for the winners of the Triple Crown until

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