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Posted 532 days ago
Jack Nowell
(Exeter Chiefs)
This may only be Exeter’s second season in the Aviva Premiership but with youngsters like 18-year-old Jack Nowell in the ranks, the Chiefs certainly have the talent to stay around for some time yet.
Born in Truro, Nowell is starting to make a name for himself in the South-West. Although he’s now a full-time member of Exeter’s academy,…
Posted 536 days ago
Serious aerobic work will help you get your cardio fitness back, says Darren Grewcock
Treadmill Intervals
Alternating between inclines on a treadmill is less punishing on your joints than road running, and it’s easier to regulate your heart-rate.
Start walking on an incline at 6kmh moving from 2-8° for ten minutes
Then work in sequences of two-minute runs at 4° followed by one-minute…
Posted 537 days ago
This is not to sound patronising or like a northern send-up à la Monty Python. But probably my happiest times in rugby reporting concern the consumption of mushy peas – in the clubhouse at Orrell. In the days before TV producers started dictating to rugby’s paying public exactly when games would be allowed to begin, almost all top-class club rugby…
Posted 538 days ago
The usual post-RWC tinkering with the laws has begun, the IRB agreeing to experiment with the point-scoring system, writes Paul Morgan.
The IRB have granted permission for South Africa’s Varsity Cup Rugby to adopt a system where conversions will be worth three points and penalties and drop-goals just two.
That means four penalties will equal a converted try so the competition –…
Posted 539 days ago
This season Harlequins set a club record by winning their first 12 games. Head of strength and conditioning John Dams lets us into the secret of their success…
“Two-and-a-half seasons ago we started using GPS systems to monitor the volume and intensity of our players’ training throughout the week, to analyse how that affected their performance at the weekend. This enabled…
Posted 540 days ago
Remember when Sean Connery’s James Bond reinvents himself as a Japanese man in You Only Live Twice? That – and he’ll like this analogy – is what another James is in the process of doing in Tokyo, where he now lives and plays his rugby, at least for the next couple of months, writes Ian Stafford.
England back-rower James…
Posted 541 days ago
What is it with Glasgow? Can there be a more erratic side in European rugby? Two years ago they were the team with the Killer Bs back row, the swashbuckling Warriors from the Mean City who finished third in the Magners League. Then, unaccountably, last season they turned into paper tigers, ending up second bottom, below perennial strugglers Treviso and…
Posted 542 days ago
No matter what level you play at, there’s a range of kicks that every team should have in its locker. Dan Cottrell of betterrugbycoaching.com explains what they are and when to use them.
You can’t always make touch with a kick and sometimes you don’t want to anyway. Kicking into touch gives the opposition the throw-in and so, in all likelihood,…
Posted 543 days ago
The top two sides in the Aviva Premiership will go head to head at Twickenham on Tuesday 27 December, writes Features Editor – Sarah Mockford. It’s Harlequins’ fourth Big Game at the home of English rugby, with reigning champions Saracens this year’s opponents. We met up with four promising young players set to take to the hallowed turf to talk…
Posted 543 days ago
Given what he’s already achieved on the world stage, it’s easy to forget just how young George North is, writes Features Editor – Sarah Mockford. One reporter fell into this trap at the World Cup, asking the Wales wing what he remembered about the inaugural tournament in 1987 when the men in red registered a third-place finish. It was left…
