On a windy and blustery day in Farnborough some of the world’s elite rugby players, past and present, assembled in Farborough for the game between the world’s smallest club, Racal…
South Africa
Letter from South Africa – March
Springboks to be 50 per cent black by 2019 The South African Rugby Union (SARU) has set a target of 50 per cent black player representivity in the Springbok team by 2019. SARU…
Super 15 analysis: Handre Pollard to turn 21 in some style
Reaching the coveted milestone of 50 Tests in Paris just over a week ago, George North underlined a trend of modern rugby. Barring the odd anomaly such as Keven Mealamu…
The February letter from South Africa
SA player drain continues South Africa coach Heyneke Meyer’s penchant for picking players based in Europe and Japan appears to have hastened the rush of promising players to lucrative foreign…
Rugby statistics: Can we predict the 2015 Super Rugby winner?
The 20th season of Super Rugby begins in February and with the tournament expanding to 18 teams in 2016, this will be the fifth and final time that the 15…
The latest rugby letter from South Africa
FEELING THE HEAT South Africa’s Super Rugby players sucked in their bellies after a short holiday break and returned to the most feared part of the year, pre-season in brutal…
A letter from South Africa: Things go from bad to worse for Springboks
The Springboks’ autumn tour to Britain, Ireland and Italy went from bad to worse, bookended by two unexpected losses to Ireland and Wales, with the latter compounded by a potentially…
Nathan Sharpe: Rugby’s best locks
At the Dubai Sevens we caught up with Wallaby great Nathan Sharpe. In a stellar 14-year career former Queensland Red and Western Force lock Sharpe won 116 caps, played in three World Cups…
Autumn Tests 2014: End of series awards
The ‘In the black’ Award – New Zealand The marketeers at Adidas have their work cut out rebranding a black shirt, and this year they came up ‘the Blackest Shirt…
Wales v South Africa: Five things we learned
Wales get the win they deserve Wales beat South Africa 12- 6 and finally got the much referenced monkey off their back. But let’s face it, this wasn’t your common-or-garden…