Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i Rugby World

“We want new heroes on the biggest stage” WHAT A breath of fresh air the U20 World Cup in South Africa was. If you want to focus on the ‘New World Order’ narrative, then the superb performances of Ireland and France, and the overtaking of teams like New Zealand and South Africa, has been fascinating to see. But the competition offered so much more than just seeing the excellence of the Irish and French. The real joy, actually, came from the rest of the cast. Italy beating South Africa in a mud bath was wild, in the best possible way. Georgia blitzed Argentina and thudded Italy. Fiji gave a really good account of themselves throughout. Australia got one up on their familiar foes, the Baby Blacks, and the Kiwi side…

WHAT’S THE funniest thing you’ve seen or heard on the pitch? I just love hearing the forwards’ banter. Nothing goes my way, I play and keep quiet. Some of the boys have great chat at Suntory Sungoliath. Will Chambers gave Duane Vermeulen lip in a trial match just after he won the World Cup. Do you have any phobias? I’m scared of the dark and definitely scared of snakes, so they are something I stay well away from. Heights are also not my forte. If your house was on fire, what one item would you save? Probably just my phone. It has got everything on there, my cards and ID. That or my favourite book, the Bible, I’d run out with that. Best book you’ve read? I read this investment book…

“THE ULTIMATE aspiration for the Olympics is absolutely there. One big draw is that touch, in the structured sense, has a number of different age groups, so you are transferring all the way through from youth to over-50s. “But the big one is the inclusivity from a gender perspective; the mixed sport with three men and three women on the pitch at the same time is different from most other team sports and for any code of rugby. That is the real appeal. “Touch isn’t going to be a pro sport and that is the joy of it. It goes to the heart of the Olympic, accessible ethos. Sevens hasn’t made the impact I expected. The number of people playing hasn’t increased much over the years and it feels like…

TWO STORIES have prompted this rant. One was via an insider who had worked with one of the streaming platforms on documentaries, who suggested that some English Premiership clubs may now be harder to deal with than Premier League football giants. The second was a tale from an insider about a press officer from a famous club bawling out someone from a documentary crew who had struck up a spontaneous, and accordant, chat with a player. So this a plea to the directors of rugby at all English clubs – continue to take leaps of faith when it comes to new avenues of coverage. We say DoRs because most clubs take their lead from the head of the rugby department. And we understand high performance is what drives these sides.…

“You want to see every single player give their all for the shirt” ENGLAND AREN’T building from ground zero. But they have to make up for a lot of lost time because of the late changeover of coaching staff, with Steve Borthwick coming in. However, he was part of the England World Cup group in 2007, so he’ll know how quickly you can turn around a group, especially one living in each other’s pockets, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A World Cup is an incredibly intense environment where you’ve got plenty of opportunity to grow as a team. Steve can draw on his experiences in 2007 when England hit rock-bottom within the first couple of weeks of the tournament, yet ultimately reached the final. That was through…

HIS OBSESSION with Vikings started in Covid times, when he and his Galway-born wife Sarah – “the lads always say I’m punching above my weight but I beg to differ, I think I bring a lot to the table” – were flicking around for something to watch on television and happened upon the tales of the Norsemen of medieval Scandinavia. Whatever can be said about pharmacist Sarah’s views on it all, Finlay Bealham was hooked. And he wasn’t the only one. There are three of them in this. Bealham, the Connacht and Ireland tighthead, is Ragnar Lothbok, a feared warrior, ruthless and curious. James Ryan is Björn Ironside (son of Ragnar/Bealham, which is a bit trippy, but let’s go with it…) and, drawing the short straw, Andrew Porter is Ivar the…

THE TRACK record of 15s superstars trying their hands at sevens is mixed to say the least, but France captain Antoine Dupont has the skill-set to be the exception to the rule. Dupont, World Rugby’s men’s 15s Player of the Year in 2021, will lead his country at the World Cup on home soil later this autumn. The immediate focus, therefore, is on becoming the first Frenchman to lift the Webb Ellis Cup. However, once the World Cup is over, Dupont has another objective clearly marked out – to play sevens at the Olympic Games in Paris. From the end of October until the end of July, that gives him nine months to make the transition – with Toulouse coach Ugo Mola giving an indication of how seriously Dupont is taking…

1 New Zealand Wales fly-half Rhys Patchell (below) has signed a one-year deal with the Highlanders, the Super Rugby Pacific franchise. Patchell, not selected in Wales’ World Cup training squad, was released by Scarlets over the summer. The 30-year-old said: “These types of opportunities don’t come very often.” Highlanders have also signed Moana Pasifika wing Timoci Tavatavanawai and Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens. 2 Italy New-look Zebre Parma will kick off the URC season when they host Ulster at 1pm on 21 October. The club have changed their logo as part of a significant rebrand. “The profile of the Zebra now becomes frontal, aggressive and challenging, with straight eyes aimed at observers,” they said. “The club’s objective is to offer the players of a team that has been profoundly renewed a new image…

“The global calendar has suffered death by committee” THE ADMINISTRATORS of rugby consistently forget that without the players, there is no game. There isn’t an infinite amount of players and so seeing them as assets and not pieces of meat is important. We need the top players playing for longer, in top competitions against each other. That means we all get a better product and, in turn, it attracts more boys and girls to the sport. There have been some strides forward with player welfare, with changing approaches to brain injury protocols and some nations mandating time away from rugby after heavy periods. But a more streamlined view of rugby, across the world and on all issues like a global season, would make a better product. And we need to…

“I’m not sure I could have played any more games, but it’s amazing what you can do when you’re locked in” THE TENSION was palpable. As the clock wound down on the 2011 World Cup final at Eden Park, many watched on stressed, nervy, anxious, silent. And that was just in the press box. The All Blacks finally shrugged off the chokers tag that had bedevilled them since 1987 to “thrash France 8-7”, as Graham Henry would later say. It would be a stretch to say that victorious skipper Richie McCaw enjoyed the World Cup. “The buzz around the country was amazing. Having the team win topped it off. I’m not sure if the memory would have been quite the same if we hadn’t got the job done. It was…

IT WAS Steve Borthwick himself who perhaps best outlined the scale of the challenge facing him as England head coach. It was early February, Borthwick had just lost his first game in charge, and the considered Cumbrian was assessing the state of the side he’d taken over a month and a half earlier. “When I looked at the team in the autumn, when I measured the team and got all the data, we weren’t good at anything,” Borthwick remarked. “It was as frank as that.” Rarely has any English side entered the run-up to a tournament with such low expectations. The best resourced of the Six Nations teams hasn’t been in championship contention in the last three campaigns. The past 12 months has brought home defeats to Argentina, South Africa,…

WHEN YOU’VE had as many ups and downs in an international career as Danny Care, you need to have faith in the big picture. Luckily, therefore, the 36-year-old has the phrase ‘Everything happens for a reason’ inked onto his arm. A permanent reminder of the mantra he abides by. “I do agree with it and I know a lot of people don’t,” Care explains. “I think everything you go through comes around for a reason. It’s never just a positive thing all the time. There’s a lot of ups and downs to get to where you’re at.” The Leeds lad first wore the red rose as an U16 before winning a sevens silver at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Two years later, he made his senior 15s debut in…

IN MID-JUNE, Coventry fly-half Pat Pellegrini was called up to Tonga’s 35-man squad for the July Internationals. This summer, the 24-year-old’s rugby will be played alongside the world-beating talents of Malakai Fekitoa, Charles Piutau and Israel Folau, with a place in the Pacific Islanders’ squad for the World Cup firmly in mind. Pellegrini’s path to Test rugby has been different to most. Just two years ago the playmaker was preparing for a debut season in the northern hemisphere with Sevenoaks in London & South East Premier – the fifth tier of English club rugby. Arriving from Australia with a handful of Shute Shield appearances for West Harbour, Pellegrini made an impression in Kent, with his no-holds-barred style and by coaching the minis and juniors. Soon enough he was in Tonga…

FROM ICONIC classics to the weird and wonderful, the World Cup is when rugby puts on its very best clothes. So we’ve pulled together a ranking of the finest shirts the iconic men’s event has seen since 1987. Here you will find a mix of the traditional, the modern, the vaguely baggy and the skin-hugging. We have collars, roundnecks, stripes, panels and national sigils as graphical elements. And it’s not just the powerhouse nations here. Because you can’t buy taste… 1 England 1999 The 1999 World Cup was probably the best-looking in history – in truth, we could have done a top 12 just on gorgeous kits from this tournament. Why? Well, it sat right in the sweet spot of being close enough to the amateur era that kits were still…

8 UAE UAE dominated two legs of the Asia Rugby Men’s Division One competition, beating Pakistan 188-3 on aggregate. They now join Hong Kong China, Korea and Malaysia in the Asia Rugby Championship. 9 Argentina Sam Cane, the New Zealand captain (above), apologised after kicking a pitch invader after the All Blacks’ Rugby Championship win over Argentina in Mendoza. On Instagram he called it “an error in judgement”. 10 Czech Republic The Czechian Rugby Union will be involved in the newest version of the Rugby Europe Super Cup, with Bohemia Rugby Warriors joining the competition. The franchise will play at the Marketa Stadium in Prague.…

UNTIL JANUARY this year, the most famous quote attributed to Campbell Johnstone’s rugby was that he had “the best right shoulder in the game”. That came from Steve Hansen in June 2005 to a roomful of hungover journos in Napier. The Crusaders tighthead had just been named as an All Black for the first time. It was a surprise, given a tighthead logjam around then that included Carl Hayman, John Afoa, Greg Somerville and Neemia Tialata. Johnstone played three Tests that year, one against Fiji and two against the touring Lions. That was the zenith of his rugby fame until January 2023 when he publicly came out as the first openly gay former All Black. It was big news at the time. But to get to that point, let us…

WE’RE USED to seeing ex-players hop on a bike for charity, but Budge Pountney is going a few steps further. On 23 October, the former Scotland captain will join a hardy group of old pros in a four-pronged challenge in aid of the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation and 40tude, two charities for whom Doddie Weir and Tom Smith did so much prior to their tragic passing last year. The group, which also includes Allan Bateman, Paddy Johns, Stuart Reid, Jon Phillips and Mark Soden, will first swim 5km in a London lido. They’ll then run 75 miles to Dover, row across the Channel to Calais and cycle 180 miles to Paris. The aim is to finish by 26 October, in time to watch the final two matches of the Rugby…

WHEN THE Springboks departed for Japan in 2019, Lukhanyo Am was an underrated and unsung part of Rassie Erasmus’s plan to turn the team into world champions. At the time, he had only played eight Tests and from outside the camp there were questions of the then 25-year-old outside-centre’s experience. Even though he had been part of the teams that won and drew Rugby Championship matches in New Zealand, there was a sense that Am, and his combination with the abrasive Damian de Allende, was still a work in progress. However, those inside the Springbok camp were confident that Am would steal the spotlight and go big in Japan. Four years on and the man who provided the most unselfish try assist in a World Cup final is preparing to…

LIFETIME AGO, when Darcy Graham was on the sevens circuit with Scotland, he talked to Rugby World with gusto about the joy of globetrotting with the outfit. Today, as one of the most enthralling Test wingers in the game, the Hawick hero is known far and wide. But as the 26-year-old chatted to us from Scotland’s pre-World Cup camp in Nice, it became clear that the Edinburgh star is unencumbered by his rise. Indeed, he was happy to cover all sorts in this wide-ranging Q&A… How did you end up playing rugby? “I was relatively late into it, starting in primary six. I was terrible at football, so I tried rugby and really took to it. I just loved getting the ball and running with it, and all my pals…

ACROSS 1 Joe - - -, USA-born Leinster lock who made his Ireland debut against Australia last year (8)4 Romania team gives out acorns (4)8 Name linking Clarke, Spencer and O’Keeffe (3)9 Rotate the scrum – for 1970s Wales lock Geoff? (5)10 Experimental Law Variation, acronym (1,1,1)11 Set-piece in which 14 Down won the most ball for Ireland in this year’s Six Nations (7)12 - - - Murley, Quins wing selected for England’s summer training squad (5)13 They beat Castres 29-10 last year to win their first Top 14 title (11)17 Bath and England prop whose favourite player as a teenager was Sean O’Brien (5)18 Pierre-Louis - - -, Toulouse centre who made his France debut at the 2019 World Cup against Tonga (7)20 Wales wing Dyer found in Brazil (3)21…

“I think Tonga will knock off someone in the Pool of Death” WHAT’S INTERESTING about this World Cup is how countries like Samoa and Tonga shape up. Take Tonga, for instance. So much of their GDP comes from professional rugby players, which is incredible. It shows how important their athletes are. But for the first time we’re about to get these nations using eligibility rules that enable players capped elsewhere to represent the country of their parents, grandparents or their own birth, to almost burn those All Blacks and Wallaby caps. And for good measure, they get three months of prep together. These countries have players scattered all over Europe and Japan. Now they get that rare amount of time as a group. As Ben Tameifuna says, “It’s like getting…