Lima Sopoaga is not the first All Black – and will not be the last – to take time to adjust to his new surroundings. Gazing out of the window at the lashing rain whipping across the pitches of Broadstreet RFC is not the vision he was sold when he signed for Wasps as one…
Month: March 2019
No hiding place for Eddie Jones and Twickenham is getting restless
Sometimes international sport feels less like a game than a game show. Supply the right answers under pressure and you can stay. Get it wrong and you are gone. Entertain before the ad break or get the hell out of town. Twickenham, once the spiritual home of English restraint, is as obsessed these days with…
RFU appoints BOA’s Bill Sweeney as new chief executive
The Rugby Football Union has appointed Bill Sweeney as its new chief executive. Sweeney has spent five and a half years as the British Olympic Association’s chief executive and, while he has little rugby experience, does have a proven commercial track record and will be charged with guiding the RFU out of financial turmoil. Sweeney…
Michael Cheika mixes praise of Eddie Jones with dig at England’s tactics
Michael Cheika and Eddie Jones go back a long way, right to their playing days when they used to pack down together in the suburbs of Sydney for Randwick. All these years later, they still act as if they have got each other’s backs. ‘I was buzzing when I heard’ – George starts in England…
Brad Shields’ long England journey goes to Twickenham via Wembley
It is a great piece of sporting trivia: name the England rugby international who has played at Wembley but has never visited Twickenham, until now, in his life? South Africa captain Siya Kolisi strives for more after All Blacks win Brad Shields’s only previous Test caps both came in South Africa in June but exactly…
Hugh McIlvanney, Ireland v England in Dublin and blindfolded boxing
1) The legendary writer Hugh McIlvanney, “a giant among journalists”, died last week at the age of 84. His finest work may have been in print, but McIlvanney was also an accomplished broadcast journalist, as seen in his documentary series ‘Busby, Stein & Shankly: The Football Men – here are parts one, two, three and…
Matt Symons: ‘I was eligible to play for New Zealand but I am English’
Rob Baxter summed up the dilemma of preparing a side to face Harlequins. “The trouble with facing teams who are patchy is that you do not know which patch you are going to hit,” Exeter’s head coach said a month ago. The Chiefs duly lost their unbeaten record at the Stoop a week after their…
‘Everyone was eating cucumber sandwiches’: an All Black’s view of Twickenham
I remember arriving at Twickenham for the first time, for a game against Barbarians in 1989, and all those childhood memories came rushing back, of growing up and watching the All Blacks in the early hours with a cup of hot chocolate. As a young boy dreaming of one day being an All Black you’d…
Hamish Watson leads Edinburgh’s easing past depleted Newcastle
Dean Richards offered a withering critique of the Champions Cup’s governing body on Friday night after his Newcastle team lost the leadership of Pool Five having played without a single recognised tighthead prop in their squad. The Falcons’ injury problems in the position – severe enough earlier in the week – worsened on Friday when…
Injuries do rugby union much more harm than negative headlines
In a summer which saw the premature retirements of the Lions captain Sam Warburton and the Newcastle prop Scott Wilson through injury, and a few months after the Northampton and Australia centre Rob Horne suffered paralysis in his right arm playing against Leicester, an article in a political magazine lamented rugby union’s deterioration as a…