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Posted 157 days ago
HOW MANY players are lost to the game because they’re loath to commit to training? Sweden back-row Seb Taylor had doubts himself when first arriving in London, but he now captains a side, Old Haberdashers, that sidesteps the issue neatly.
“Our USP is not having to train in midweek,” he says. “So many good players can’t afford to give up two…
Posted 387 days ago
WHEN BARRY Poulter moved to Halstead five years ago, he was surprised to learn that the Essex town had no rugby club. Nor, apart from a handful of games under a pub name in the Seventies, had there ever been one.
Poulter and Neil Prentice, a fellow resident who was coaching Bury St Edmunds, were aggrieved that local players had to…
Posted 417 days ago
Emile Hertz spends most of his week putting up the signs on Jamie Oliver’s new restaurants, and he’s pointing the way in his Saturday job too – as coach of Enfield Ignatians.
Having steered Old Ashmoleans to several promotions, the South African took charge of Enfield last season and set about swapping their ten-man brand of rugby for a more open…
Posted 443 days ago
He hasn’t gone quite as far as ex-Springbok coach Harry Viljoen, who once banned his team from kicking in a Test against Argentina. But Mark Bugden is preaching the same message at Salisbury – with stunning results. “I may be a second-row,” says Bugden, “but I’m an advocate of running rugby. I like to see the ball being moved around.”
MD…
Posted 504 days ago
“It’s been hard to earn respect from our men’s teams,” says Astrid Huisman, a flanker with Dutch team RC Delft Dames. “But I’m proud of what we’ve been through and how we’ve grown and of our recent results.”
The women’s side from near Rotterdam has redefined the term ‘digging deep’ after being on the receiving end of numerous thrashings since their…
Posted 784 days ago
BEING A women’s rugby team in Newcastle’s football hotbed requires a special resilience. And when Novocastrians Ladies lost several key figures in pre-season – some to the baby boom, others, like England A’s Emily Braund, to a distant job – that roll-your-sleeves-up doggedness was needed to save the club.
Fears that they’d be unable to field a side were allayed by…
Posted 809 days ago
WHEN Bhomdat Mahraj joined White City’s Christopher Wren school in 1966, the PE master was a Welshman, John Powell. Pupils had to play rugby in the first year and it was a novel experience. “None of us knew about rugby, we all had a football background,” says Mahraj, who came to England from British Guyana. “It was, ‘This is the…
Posted 845 days ago
Charles and Camila weren’t the only ones to be put out by student demonstrations in the English capital – London Welsh Amateurs almost lost a match because of them! Coach Ian Horgan got stuck in traffic at Westminster and only delivered the team kit minutes before kick-off against table toppers HAC.
“We did a joke stretch, then ran on the pitch,”…
