Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i Rugby World

“Elite female referees need more opportunities” UPON RETIRING from all officiating, Ireland’s Joy Neville said of a female referee calling a men’s Six Nations or World Cup match: “It is inevitable. The calibre of female referees that we have in place now is significant.” It’s high praise for a cohort of officials now led by Scotland’s Hollie Davidson, who was an assistant referee during the recent Men’s Six Nations, England’s Sara Cox, who has called Gallagher Premiership action, and South Africa’s Aimee Barrett-Theron, who can be seen in the URC. As we understand it, World Rugby’s match official panel selection for major events relies on refs who look after the top competitions, with their choices overseeing a significant number of matches in other top competitions – as well as being…

1 Australia A huge bench press of 202.5kg by 20-year-old Queensland Reds prop Massimo De Lutiis (below) is being hailed as a record for any pro rugby player in the region – league or union. He achieved the feat while returning from a torn quad. Taniela Tupou set the recent Reds record at 200kg, back in 2020. 2 England The Red Roses will host both France and New Zealand in September, prior to the upcoming WXV1 tournament in Canada. The matches were unveiled by RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney as part of the marker events to hail 500 days before next year’s Women’s World Cup in England. The dates and venues for those big games will be announced in due course but are being treated as big-ticket signs of what…

MOST REFEREES don’t like to grab headlines or have their officiating put under scrutiny. Usually, the best compliment a ref can get is for no one to notice they were at the game and there’s nothing about them in the media. When officials do make the headlines, it’s not usually good news. In the recent Harlequins v Bath game, Quins held off a mighty second-half comeback to win 40-36. But the headline-grabbing incident was the return of yellow-carded Irne Herbst after only seven minutes – not the full ten. This is most unusual. There is a clear process for handling the sin-binned player and it starts with the ten-minute clock starting when they make it to their designated chair in the sin-bin. In addition, because rugby wisely uses a countdown…

PLAYER BEST Always hard to pick given the stellar names. Ultimately, it has to be Martin Johnson. An unreal player and a magnificent captain who epitomised what being a Leicester Tiger is. WORST The ‘Banter Years’ of 2017 to 2020 provide us with so many contenders. Take a pick from Joe Thomas, Joe Ford, David Feao or Chris Baumann and you’re there. MOMENT B It’s hard to look past Leon Lloyd’s second try in 2001 or Tim Stimpson’s conversion to win our first European Cup. W The 2007 defeat to Wasps in the European Cup final. An historic treble was on, with two trophies already in the bag, only to not deliver in the last game. GAME B The European Cup wins in 2001 and 2002 will probably take many…

STEPHEN JONES Rugby’s most outspoken and influential journalist OUR THEME in this edition is entertainment and the joy of rugby. The way rugby is played at present, enmeshed in hundreds of mini-rucks, with both backs and forwards sucked in to play where the sun never shines, and with coaches keeping off-the-cuff plays to a minimum, often represents the death of individual genius; it mitigates almost totally against the worship of players of brilliance, those who you would pay to see even if they were playing on their own. Individualism in rugby, and therefore the reverence extended to individuals, has been on the wane for a long time. The entertainers, the would-be men and women of genius, can appear fleetingly to thrill us, but otherwise they are hidden in interminable phases,…

VIBRANCY AND personality – the USP of the Women’s Six Nations has always been the characters who take to the field. And in the 2024 edition we saw plenty of that. Along with growing crowds! England and France are still a cut above, but with the battles within battles – and World Cup qualification up for grabs – there was plenty to shout about. Here’s a snapshot of the action……

LORENZO PANI had it all planned out. If he managed to score a try in Cardiff, he would reach for the trademark ‘Siuuu!’ celebration of his footballing idol, Cristiano Ronaldo. Almost seven years before Italy beat Wales for the second time in as many attempts at the Principality Stadium, the then Real Madrid striker had netted twice there in a 4-1 Champions League final win over Juventus. As a fervent Juventino, that had been a painful experience for Pani, although he did then have the consolation of watching the Portuguese legend up close for three seasons in Turin. “I’m probably a little biased but Ronaldo is well and truly the greatest of all time,” the Italy full-back says. “I have long been in awe of his mentality and his dedication.…

WE KNOW making it to the Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens is part of many rugby bucket lists, but sometimes the joy of it can come as a total surprise. Ask local star Chong Ka-yan. “I was studying at university and had a part-time job here,” says the Hong Kong China team’s playmaker. She was selling burgers at a concession stand in the Hong Kong Stadium in 2013 when she witnessed the sport of rugby for the very first time. “It was unforgettable. The Fiji team were losing by three tries but they came back. The atmosphere and the intensity of the sport made me think, ‘Oh, I want to try that!’” By 2015, she was representing the national team at sevens. A rapid rise. But then we know that the…

WITH TEARS stinging the corner of his eyes as he strained to hold back his emotions, Ian King shares the poignant secret he’d guarded tightly all afternoon. The 57-year-old hadn’t pulled on his boots since losing his stepson Jamie Styles, a fellow Manor Park RFC player, in a traffic collision aged just 28, in 2017. He is standing just a few metres away from the framed shirt in which Jamie is immortalised in this tiny sporting pavilion in Nuneaton, in the Midlands. “I’ve worn his kit today,” King says, looking down at his mud-stained shorts, socks and both heavily strapped knees. “I didn’t think I could play again after Jamie passed away, it didn’t feel right. But today was the day to do it. “When I went on the pitch,…

THROUGHOUT A recent trip to Hong Kong, it was interesting picking the brains of the athletes. Many sevens players, you see, are very proud of how hard it is to transition to their game. Wallaby great Michael Hooper, for example, is up against it to hit Olympic standard in time for this year’s Games. But then, with a sigh, talk turns to Antoine Dupont… He is, frankly, a farce, they say. Already considered the best 15s player in the world, the jack-in-the-box scrum-half has taken to sevens brilliantly. As Aaron Grandidier Nkanang details on P25, a lot of work has gone into that. But still. He gets it. Then he goes back to Toulouse and guides them to the European semis. So as this issue is all about entertainers, we…

FOR A while it looked like Courtney Lawes would finish as a one-club man. They are now an all-too rare commodity in a modern game where opportunities abound and loyalty is not always rewarded on both sides of the coin. Forward Lawes has been synonymous with Northampton Saints ever since his first game as a gangly teenager way back in 2007 and hopes to sign off at Franklin’s Gardens with at least one piece of silverware. A Premiership winner in 2014 (above), Lawes made it clear he wanted to end his career having only played for Saints – who did their best to make it happen – but eventually the offer of a bumper deal with Brive in France’s Pro D2 proved too good to turn down. Lawes says it…

“We’ve got a good chance of winning at our home Olympics” I WAS INITIATED with the France Sevens development side in 2019, before Covid. After that I began training with the first team as they prepared for the Olympics in Tokyo – but we missed out on that one. Since then it’s been three years of a new cycle, a fresh group with some experienced players. You could sense that there was a lot of potential right from the off because of how diverse, rugby-wise, the team is. A lot of pace and power and different skill-sets that players bring to the table. We knew we could do something really great. So every year we’ve known we can win, but when we won this year in Los Angeles it proved…

THROUGH THE course of our chat with young flyer Harry Paterson, we learn that the Edinburgh man is bang into his watches. But despite his extensive timepiece knowledge – he’s big into German brand A. Lange & Söhne – Paterson was always up against the clock when he found out on the morning of the game that he was going to be making his Scotland debut against France in the 2024 Guinness Six Nations. Kyle Steyn’s wife was so close to going into labour that Paterson had been in Cardiff in round one as a travelling reserve. He reprised the role for the game at Murrayfield and was called upon as the Glasgow captain dashed off to meet his newborn. The Scottish coaches knew the night before but saved the…

THERE’S A touch of ‘The Flash’ about Etene Nanai-Seturo. Lelia Masaga had a bigger smile, though not a bigger sidestep, but he was full of X-factor and flair, crossing for 32 tries from 91 games for the Chiefs, playing a prominent role in their Super Rugby titles in 2012-13. Nanai-Seturo has also brought a cutting edge to the Chiefs since 2019 and early April saw him bag his 50th cap for the franchise, playing a starring role in a 68-12 rout of Moana Pasifika. He’d give a lot to emulate Masaga as a Super Rugby champion come June, the Chiefs desperate to go one better after the agony of 2023 when they were the best team in the comp until the final. In the early rounds of Super Rugby Pacific…

THERE IS a symmetry to Adam Radwan’s favourite hobby. A player renowned for his remarkable athleticism, leaping like a salmon to score by the corner flag, likes nothing better than spending a day fly fishing on the River Tyne. “My real passion is salmon fishing,” the Newcastle and England wing tells Rugby World. “And it’s not easy. I get a lot of stick off my mates; every day they ask if I caught one. Nope! That is salmon fishing, it’s very challenging. You’re always having to adapt techniques and tactics, trying to work out what the fish want, because as soon as the salmon leaves the sea and starts swimming up the river, it doesn’t eat anything. So you’re effectively fishing for a fish that has no appetite. “And then…

“It was almost funny to see how Jerry Collins dismantled us” ▶ HAVE I ever been skinned by a modern great? Oh yeah, by lots of them and in different ways. By people that you’ve grown up watching on TV. You’ve been impressed by them as a youngster, but on the field they are even better than they look on TV. And they’ve just made me look like an average Joe. Shane Williams would be one. Finding yourself in space against him was absolutely ‘s**t your pants’ territory because you knew what he could do. And you look like an amateur who doesn’t know how to tackle because you can’t get near him. The other one, around the same time, was Jerry Collins. I came up against the great All…

WASPS FANS might read it and weep. Heady days, with no hint of the strife to come. Our July 2004 issue celebrated Wasps’ Heineken Cup final win over Toulouse at Twickenham, when Rob Howley scored a remarkable winning try in the closing seconds. Collecting the ball 40 metres out, his bobbling grubber kick flirted with the touchline without ever touching it and when Clément Poitrenaud dithered, the Wasps No 9 pounced. We saw something similar recently from Munster’s Sean O’Brien at Ospreys. Wasps, who incredibly didn’t use one replacement in that final, also won the women’s title, while Newcastle bagged the Powergen Cup courtesy of sub Phil Dowson’s late score. The “Sensational Scarlets” won the Celtic League, pipping Ulster and the Dragons, and Jason Leonard’s final game for Harlequins brought…

“I slipped entering the field and almost did a 360º in front of 60,000 people” DO YOU have any phobias? I’m scared of spiders but I try to not kill them because in Italy it means bad luck. So any time I see a spider in my house I put them outside the window without hurting them. What really annoys you? War movies. I think they’re too noisy and whenever they’re on, my dog gets scared. If your house was on fire, what one item would you save? For sure my dog Berta! If Berta is not there, then my first cap jersey, when Italy beat South Africa in 2016 (in Florence). What was your first job? A rugby player. As soon as I finished school, I became a professional…

THURSDAY 18TH of April started a long weekend of French rugby where both the ProD2 and Top14 were in action. If you made the trip, you could watch Provence v Mont-de-Marsan on Thursday at 9pm, then Soyaux-Angouleme v Brive at 7pm on Friday, followed by five matches at 7.30pm in ProD2. You could cap the night off with Biarritz v Grenoble at 9pm. The Top14 came in on Saturday with games at 3pm, 5pm, 9pm, with a further match at 9pm on Sunday. That’s eight distinct time windows and seven games you could watch in their entirety. That same weekend also had English Premiership action. Just five matches needed to be accommodated there rather than the 15 the ProD2 and Top14 have to juggle. Two of the Premiership matches kicked…

WHAT HAPPENS when one of the most marketable young rugby stars leaves his sport to sign on with the back-to-back Super Bowl winners? Well, we’ll find out! Louis Rees-Zammit, the former Wales and British & Irish Lions winger who is still just 23, made the shock decision on the day of the Six Nations squad announcement to throw his lot in with the NFL’s International Player Pathway programme, where talents from outside of the North American system try to win contracts with American Football giants. How this programme works is that international athletes feed into a roster of 90 players at the start of pre-season and battle it out for a place on the first-team roster as numbers are whittled down. More often, those international players end up on the…

IF YOU’RE someone who still subscribes to the caricature of Finn Russell as a wanton maverick, a player in thrall to his own impulses rather than the good of the team, it may surprise you to hear that during our 30-minute conversation he uses the word “balance” no fewer than 17 times. There is, Russell believes, a pleasing and effective balance to the way that Bath attack at the moment, but not enough of one when it comes to Scotland and their protracted attempts to turn promise into something substantial. Balance is also what Russell identifies as being absolutely key to the business of entertainment, or perhaps more accurately, the entertainment side of his business. The 31-year-old’s every natural inclination is towards doing things with flair, and he also believes…

CHESLIN KOLBE lives his life as he plays his rugby – at high speed. For a moment, you know what it’s like to be Owen Farrell or Joe Marler, the England players who famously locked onto the Springbok wing in the second half of the 2019 World Cup final, only to be left grasping at shadows. One second you have him, the next you don’t. Getting Kolbe to slow down for an interview is no mean feat. Kolbe takes a breath before providing a breakdown of his schedule. Few players win one World Cup, let alone two. South Africa’s triumph at the 2023 tournament has burnished Kolbe’s legacy and opened the door to several opportunities. Many expressed their surprise after he moved to Japan last year. He highlights his commitment…

MAX EFFORT FROM CRAIG IN HOPE TO RAISE £1MILLION Craig Maxwell completed his mammoth Wales Coast Path Cancer Challenge at the Principality Stadium in March after 26 days walking the length of Wales. The dad of two, who was diagnosed with incurable and inoperable EGFR+ lung cancer in September 2022, walked the men’s Wales v France match ball, which he had carried on his back throughout the challenge, onto the pitch to a standing ovation from the crowd of over 71,000 fans. He was joined by his wife Tracey, daughter Isla and son Zach. With just shy of £915,000 raised, the former WRU commercial director and Six Nations chief commercial officer is aiming to raise a massive £1million for the Maxwell Family Fund, which works with Velindre Cancer Centre, to…