Israel Folau is set to play for Australia to the end of 2022 after reportedly signing a four-year contract extension with Rugby Australia, the Wallabies and NSW Waratahs. The 29-year-old superstar put pen to paper on the new deal some time ago, but Rugby Australia and Waratahs have kept the announcement under wraps, Fairfax reports….
Month: March 2019
Neath survive winding-up petition but doubts persist over club’s future
Neath survived a winding-up petition at a court hearing in Cardiff on Thursday but the future of Wales’ oldest club remains uncertain after a judgment that was greeted with dismay by supporters. Neath were sued for £31,000 by a company that loaned the club money earlier this year to help it meet its wage bill…
Owen Farrell: ‘Confidence can be elusive – you don’t know you’ve lost it’
“The thing I liked about it most,” Owen Farrell says, “was having a look at yourself and what you’re doing. Seeing and understanding how things happened.” On the verge of a new year, after a tumultuous 2018 in which he became England’s captain amid the team losing five Tests in a row following a winning…
Eddie Jones: Pressure all on Ireland in Six Nations opener against England
Eddie Jones says the pressure will be on Ireland at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday when England aim to become the first visiting country to win there since the autumn of 2016. Champions Ireland have won their last 12 home matches, beating all the other tier-one nations in that run, and they have not lost…
Adam Hastings steers Glasgow past Cardiff in farcical clash of the kits
Glasgow blew away the Blues with two tries before some of the crowd had settled in their seats – and blue was the colour on an afternoon when it was so hard to tell the players apart that one of them later tore a strip off the tournament organisers. Kick-chasers and counterattackers were confused because…
Eddie Jones says old foe John Mitchell will get England thinking differently
Eddie Jones says he is testing himself by hiring the former New Zealand coach John Mitchell until the end of next year’s World Cup. Just as England’s man in charge believes there is no substitute for experience when it comes to playing in a World Cup, so he thinks successful sides are built on a…
Tom Youngs: ‘When my wife was ill, rugby was a release for me’
Sometimes we forget that rugby is just a game and those who play it are human beings. The outcome of Northampton’s game against Leicester at Twickenham on Saturday matters, of course, but so does raising funds for the injured Wallaby Rob Horne, whose right arm has been paralysed since last April’s fixture between the two…
French rugby soul-searches before Newcastle’s visit to Toulon
Newcastle’s last appearance in the European Cup was against Stade Français in Paris in the 2005 quarter-final and it is to France they travel on their reappearance this Sunday. At the start of the season, a trip to Toulon might not have presaged the happiest of returns; the club that won the tournament for three…
Matt Banahan: ‘I still don’t know why Bath let me go. It cut me deeply’
Matt Banahan will, as usual, be at Bath for their first home match of the season on Saturday but this time it will be different. His familiar and well-trodden journey from the car park to the clubhouse at the club he joined 12 years ago will involve a detour to the away dressing room. Banahan,…
Kyle Eastmond try helps Leicester pin Sale to the bottom of Premiership
Few will remember this contest with affection but winning ugly, at this precise moment, is perfectly fine with Leicester. Had they lost at home to the league’s basement dwellers Sale and recorded a fourth defeat in five games a proper East Midlands crisis would have had to be declared. As it is, the Tigers now…