Last summer’s Lions tour to New Zealand is history but the unlikely friendships it forged endure. The partnership of Alun Wyn Jones and Maro Itoje in the second row for the final two Tests, neither of which the All Blacks managed to win, was a conspicuous success and the Wales captain was even memorably caught…
Month: March 2019
Wales eager to make England’s ‘Jones the Gob’ rue his trash talk
For hundreds of thousands of noisy neighbours on either side of the Severn Bridge this remains the most eagerly anticipated weekend of the year. It hardly needed Eddie Jones’s vigorous pre-match cauldron-stirring to raise expectation levels for a fixture which requires no artificial enhancement. When even the Welsh first minister is discussing class war in…
Eddie Jones pushes England fitness to the limit in quest for supremacy
When Conor O’Shea walked up the driveway of the hotel for a dinner on the eve of the Six Nations’ launch last month, a fox ran out in front of him. The immediate thought of the Italy head coach, which sums up the suspicion that swirls in an era when stories of spying and surveillance…
Wales and Leigh Halfpenny rip apart Scotland’s Six Nations ambitions
Scotland flew high in the autumn but suffered a fall here. Their pre-tournament optimism was shredded by a team who beat them at their own handling game. On the 10th anniversary weekend of Warren Gatland’s first match as the Wales coach, the New Zealander showed again he has few peers by shrugging off the loss…
Milestone for Warren Gatland but Wales need a Six Nations reboot
Warren Gatland will on Saturday equal Bernard Laporte’s 98 Tests in charge of one country for a Six Nations coach and by the summer should have eclipsed Sir Graham Henry’s all-time record of 103 with New Zealand. One day after the 10th anniversary of his first match in charge of Wales, the New Zealander is…
Aaron Shingler ready to show his switch-hitting skills at Twickenham
As a teenager, Aaron Shingler dreamed of the batsmen he would like to dismiss. Shingler’s list would have included a number of Australians, but as the 30-year old travels from his hotel on Saturday to a famous ground in London, the former Glamorgan pace bowler’s destination is not Lord’s but Twickenham where he will be…
Joe Schmidt: Ireland will still have to ‘roll up sleeves’ to win Six Nations
Suddenly this Six Nations is Ireland’s to lose. Take maximum points at home to Scotland – as, for example, Wales did, the team they took maximum points against here – and England would need to do the same against them at Twickenham in the final round just to stand a chance. Joe Schmidt is doing…
Six Nations 2018: six fans preview the tournament
England England are not being spoken about as clear favourites, which favours us. Given our injury list, I’m not expecting a macabre dismantling of Italy to be used as a benchmark for a barnstorming Six Nations. Eddie Jones has a mix of brilliant and experienced players, as well as exciting, inexperienced ones. The fixture list…
Eddie Jones welcomes David Moyes behind enemy lines before Scotland
Eddie Jones and his England assistants will pick the brains of one of Scotland’s highest-profile football coaches by welcoming David Moyes behind enemy lines on Tuesday in preparation for the Calcutta Cup match on Saturday. Moyes, the West Ham manager, along with his assistant Stuart Pearce, the former Spurs striker Les Ferdinand and the former…