Rugby Rant

  • October 21, 2014

As I looked around the Stade Jean Bouin midway through the Women’s World Cup final, I noticed Magali Harvey giving a TV interview on the pitch. The half-time interview has…

  • July 7, 2014

THE SAYING goes that ‘footballers spend the whole game pretending they’re hurt, whilst rugby players spend the whole game pretending they’re not’. Rugby union is an increasingly brutal, attritional game, and…

  • June 7, 2014

SEVENS’ admission into the Olympics is one of the most exciting developments in rugby in decades. In the women’s game it is probably the most transformational development ever. Here, at…

  • May 7, 2014

Allyson Pollock, professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary University of London, is meddling with our game. For the second time in four years she is openly…

  • August 24, 2013

THE SIGHT of two colossal packs throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at each other is becoming all too common in the northern hemisphere. This year’s Six Nations was far from…

  • July 24, 2013

AH! BACK-SEAT drivers, don’t they get on your nerves? “Left here”, “It’s green”, “Slow down”. SHUT UP! Well, now we have our very own back-seat drivers in rugby, and they’re…

Jonny Wilkinson

  • July 1, 2013

IT’S TEN years since Jonny Wilkinson helped net rugby’s greatest prize courtesy of a dramatic drop-goal. And it’s four years since the now retired Ronan O’Gara dropped a goal in…

  • June 24, 2013

ITALIAN RUGBY has sold its soul to the devil. In the name of high-level rugby, it has forgotten the club game. The development of players is now all in the…

  • April 1, 2013

WHO DECIDED the vibrant and unique buzz of a Test-match atmosphere – the excitement, the anticipation, the singing, the explosions of joy, the revelry – was no longer good enough?…