1997 Five Nations Championship 1997 Five Nations Championship The 1997 Five Nations Championship was the sixty-eighth series of the rugby union Five Nations Championship. Including the previous incarnations as the Home Nations and Five Nations, this was the hundred-and-third series of the northern hemisphere rugby union championship. Ten matches were played over five weekends from 18 January to 15 March, the crucial match being in Weekend 4 where England inexplicably threw away a 20-6 lead at Twickenham with quarter of the match to go and were pipped by France. France went on to win their first Grand Slam in ten years; England defeated the
Rugby union in the Australian Capital Territory the New Zealanders going on to win by 57–5. The Federal Capital Territory Rugby Union was renamed the Australian Capital Territory Rugby Union in 1939. Rugby union expanded quickly after World War II, particularly in New South Wales. The ACT representative team, often referred to simply as "Canberra", grew in stature throughout the 1950s and 1960s as part of the NSW Country Rugby Union. The team won the Caldwell Cup for the Country Championship for the first time in 1964 and went on to win it three times in a row. In 1966, five Canberra players were chosen in the