Innehållsförteckning för July 2024 från Rugby World

HELLO, I’M Joe Robinson. I’m 30 years old, I live in Kent and I’m your new Editor of Rugby World. It’s a pleasure to meet you. From a young age, I wanted to be a rugby journalist. I saw it as the ideal opportunity to spend my life doing what I loved – discussing rugby. So much so that in 2004 my dad sent an email to then RW editor Paul Morgan asking what his son should do if he wanted to be a rugby journalist. He gave three bits of advice: watch as much rugby as possible, keep writing and never stop loving the game. Those pearls of wisdom have led me to being here today. Rugby World is an institution. It’s an honour to take on this prestigious…

WHAT’S THE funniest thing you’ve seen or heard on the pitch? My presentation for Peñarol (in Uruguay) was very funny. We were being showcased to the fans, and a director gave us some balls to kick into the stands. They said, “Don’t kick too hard so you won’t hurt anyone, but kick hard enough for it to fall in a supporter’s hands.” I tried to mix hard and soft but the ball fell into a ditch! Some people turned their heads in my direction with a shocked look. Do you have any phobias? I don’t like snakes but I can’t say it’s a phobia. What was your first job? I was a trainee in a packaging company in Oeiras, Portugal. I’m currently doing an internship in a financial company. What…

THE LEAFY Surrey suburbs with which Harlequins are associated could not be further from the streets of Kolkata, where thousands struggle with life below the poverty line. So why is it that street children from the West Bengal state can be seen running around and not only playing rugby but donning Harlequins shirts from years gone by to do so? To answer that we must go back some 37 years… In 1987, Tim Grandage was the bank manager of an HSBC branch in Kolkata when he struck up a bond with some of the local street children as they looked after his car. By talking to them, he soon became aware of the daily horrors many of them have to face. It was something he couldn’t turn a blind eye…

BEING POSITIVE is a state of mind that I take seriously and try to pass down to my players. I’m an extremely positive coach. I want people to enjoy playing and being part of the set-up. For me, it’s also important to be extremely honest with the players, and it’s something I feel is more right the older I get. Even as a 52-year-old I’m still learning, and my early experiences of failure and pressure shaped me to become the coach I am today. These experiences were important to me, and having travelled from New Zealand to England, France to Ireland and Singapore, they taught me valuable lessons. One of the most important things I’ve learned is to make sure I leave the club or nation I signed for in…

“I WOULD LIKE to beat England.” Warner Dearns delivers the sentence in a typically understated Kiwi way but manages, at the same time, to convey the unmistakable message that nothing in rugby would give him more pleasure than taking England’s scalp this summer. At 22, the Japan second-row has already had two cracks, both of which – at the World Cup and at Twickenham in 2022 – ended in defeat. The results might have been expected by the outside world but that didn’t make them any easier to swallow for the Wellington-born skyscraper. The abiding sense of an opportunity missed in Nice, when aping England’s kicking tactics and going down 34-12 in the pool game, still rankles. “We got our arses handed to us at Twickenham but that game at the…

CRECORA IS a little village south of the centre of Limerick with a church, a pub, a graveyard, a petrol station and a local population who are delighted to live in the splendid countryside while remaining a relative stone’s throw from the city. Cathal O’Neill, the double All Ireland winning hurler, hails from Crecora. At the other end of the scale, John Scanlan, an infamous 19th-century murderer, rests in the local cemetery. There is another famous son of Crecora to talk about now and his name is Calvin Nash of Munster and Ireland. An overnight sensation in the 2024 Six Nations, not that he would see it that way. Nash is so self-deprecating, he makes you laugh. He recounts the story of his championship with a humour and an honesty…

MANY A CHICKEN has come home to roost at Murrayfield after years of inertia and underinvestment, with the Scottish game wracked with angst over the state of its youth development structures. Through his increasingly impressive displays in the Glasgow boilerhouse, Max Williamson has emerged as a welcome counterpoint to all the doom and gloom, even if in certain regards the case of the 21-year-old lock bears out a number of systemic flaws. Part of the Warriors academy since 2020, the Stirling native had long been identified as a young man with the aptitude and the attitude to succeed at professional level, but he soon ran into the all-too-familiar roadblocks of a lack of meaningful adult rugby and delays in him reaching his full physical potential. At 6ft 7in, Williamson always…

AMAZING ASH CASHES IN FOR BARGOED AT PRINCIPALITY STADIUM It was ‘Double Delight’ for Llandovery RFC as they retained the Indigo Premiership by beating Newport – having already won the Cup against Merthyr at the Principality Stadium. The Drovers have rightly been lauded for their accomplishments – but another Welsh club, one tier further down the domestic pyramid, has also secured a historic double. Bargoed won the Admiral Championship in the East and have now secured their place in the Community Premiership next season. The ‘Bulls’ from Bargoed also emphatically claimed the National Championship Cup by crushing Ystrad Rhondda 65-12 in the final in early April. The triumph was especially satisfying for head coach Jack Condy as the club from the Rhymney Valley had lost in the final last season.…

1 South Africa The Springboks booked a place at next year’s Women’s World Cup after defending their Rugby Africa Cup title in Madagascar. They beat Cameroon 55-0, Kenya 63-5 and Madagascar 46-17 in Antananarivo. The victory also confirmed their place in WXV2. Captain Nolusindiso Booi said: “We play to inspire the next girl or woman to pick up a rugby ball. This means so much to those who want to see the game grow.” 2 Ireland The Celtic Challenge, featuring sides from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, will return in December with an expanded ten-round format. The competition is a critical tool for developing Celtic talent, with 68 players from this season going on to play in the Women’s Six Nations. Gillian McDarby, Ireland’s head of women’s performance, said: “With the…

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, England went to Australia for a tour that heralded the start of Clive Woodward’s ‘Club England’, writes Alan Pearey. And RW debated who should be the starting fly-half for the 1999 World Cup – Mike Catt, Paul Grayson, Jonny Wilkinson or Alex King? Ignoring the clubs of that quartet, we polled the other Premiership head coaches and seven of the ten chose Wilkinson, who had only just turned 20. Mike Brewer, boss at West Hartlepool, chose his own Steve Vile. Stuart Barnes endorsed the consensus view. “Clive Woodward must pick Wilkinson now or he will never win the World Cup,” wrote Barnes, dissecting the excellence of Jonny’s recent performance at champions Leicester. Regardless of who England picked, Gavin Hastings was scornful of their RWC chances. The Scotland…

PLAYER BEST Steven Luatua – the man oozes class. Everything that has been good for us recently, he’s been involved in. WORST The yo-yo relegation/promotion years in the mid-2010s provided a few, but Thretton Palamo topped the lot. MOMENT B The first 15 seconds of the 2020 Challenge Cup final v Toulon. A 70m, three-pass try from the kick-off summed up what Bears are about. I was gutted we weren’t able to go to watch during Covid, but we went mental at home! W Sitting with my head in my hands in 2015 at Sixways after Ryan Lamb kicked the points for Worcester that consigned us to another year in the Championship. GAME B Beating Bath in our first game as the Bears back in the Premiership on the opening…

VICTORIA HALL in Saltire was the setting for a recent celebration: the tenth anniversary of International Mixed Ability Sports. Amid the assembled cluster of energisers and high achievers was Anthony Brooke. But for him, all the goodness sprinkled on the world by IMAS, the work done in uniting people of all abilities in sport, even the mixed ability rap by local artist Wilko Wilkes that we were treated to, might not exist. It all started 16 years ago. Brooke wanted to play contact rugby but his local rugby league club said no because he had cerebral palsy. So he wrote to the area’s disability development officer and next thing, a group of RFU coaches gathered at Bradford & Bingley RFC to chuck a ball around with Brooke and three others…

EN EARL is pretty good at everything. After winning last year’s Premiership with Saracens, he took the World Cup by storm before being named in the Six Nations Team of the Tournament. That’s the rugby side of things accounted for. When the biggest gripe people have with you is that you are celebrating too much then it’s fair to say things are going pretty well. Earl says his targeted on-field outbursts are designed to keep him engaged and gee up his team, but there’s cause for celebration away from his day job as a professional player too. A tidy left-handed golfer, Earl plays off three, or at least he did until a broken hand derailed his start to the summer. His golf clubs are his prized possession. “Golf’s my not-so-hidden…

WHEN SOUTH Africa’s coaches talk about “battle stats”, they often cite Kwagga Smith as a prime example. Usually deployed off the bench, his impact was a key component of the Boks’ World Cup wins in 2019 and 2023. At France 2023, he turned over or disrupted 42% of the defensive rucks he hit – the best success rate in the competition (see panel). A bronze medallist at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Smith owns a pecan-nut farm in Mpumalanga but is currently playing in Japan. RW caught up with him as he recovered from groin surgery… RW: How does the standard of club rugby in Japan compare to when you first arrived in 2018? KS: The league has improved a lot since Japan hosted the 2019 World Cup. It’s fun…

THE LAST blow of the whistle. The last drink in the clubhouse. The last sweep of the changing rooms. The dust has not long settled on the community-game season in England and while the hive of rugby activity will be taken down a notch over the summer months, the emotion, the excitement, the thrills and the spills of 2023-24 will still be fresh in the minds of many. So many clubs and individuals created headlines this season, whether it was Leeds Tykes stitching together a remarkable 22-match winning run in National Two North, or down in Counties Two Midlands East (South) where St Neots’ Bradley McKenna scored a ridiculous 48 tries in 19 league games. No matter the level or the division, there have been bumper-to-bumper narratives across the past…

THE NEWS that Jonathan Davies is leaving the Scarlets at the end of the season is something that I probably saw coming given how the campaign has gone for him and some of the comments made by the club about senior contracts. It was inevitable that the old guard was going to be moved on, irrespective of the leadership, experience and player value which they can pass on to others. It’s disappointing for someone like Foxy, who’s been at the club as long as me, bar his two-year stint at Clermont. It would have been nice for him to have a final run-out at Parc Y Scarlets. It’s a separate point but these days loyalty means nothing anymore in the sport. It is very frustrating that looking after players feels…

TEAMS WILL no longer be allowed to scrum again if they win a free-kick at the set-piece. That’s one a raft of law changes – most of them initially as trials – designed by World Rugby to speed up the game. In one of three significant law changes coming in from 1 July, the choices players have when awarded a free-kick will differ. The free-kick law will mean that players are no longer able to call for a scrum. Instead, they can elect to kick the ball or tap and go to restart play. At the World Cup, Springbok Damian Willemse famously called a scrum from a mark in his own 22 but that will no longer be allowed. Critics of the change fear the scrum may be depowered or…

WHICH PLAYERS have set our pulses racing this season? So, so many. But for the sake of expediency, we’ve picked a dream dozen who have stamped their footprint irrepressibly on the campaign. Some, like rocketing star Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, would surely be in everyone’s list. Others are more left-field. All have the stats – courtesy of Oval – to back up their selection in our list. So see what you tyeahhink of our top 12. Whether you agree or not, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Email us at rugbyworldletters@futurenet.com. Gavin Coombes Munster If you want someone to drive over from close range, there are few better than Coombes. The No 8 has been key to Munster’s success this season, ploughing through defenders who have no answer to his power. He’d…

TOMMY REFFELL has already made an enormous impression just 18 caps into his international career with Wales. In a grim Six Nations for Warren Gatland’s side, ‘Tommy Turnover’ was a shining light, his 11 breakdown steals matching Scotsman John Barclay’s all-time tournament record from 2011. The Leicester Tigers flanker was Wales’ Player of the Championship. Now, two years on from his Man of the Match performance in Wales’ first win against the Springboks on South African soil, he’s set to face the world champions again at Twickenham on 22 June. We asked some of those closest to the 25-year-old what makes him tick… The Teacher Simon King, the former Wales U18 coach, was head of physical education at Pencoed Comprehensive when Tommy Reffell was at the school “I first met…

BAA–RILLIANT! “Playing for the Barbarians is one of my fondest rugby experiences. Proper old school club rugby-esque. A team that meets on the Tuesday and then plays a pretty intensive game at Twickenham on the Sunday. It certainly lived up to its name. “To play with one of the greatest players in history in Al (Wyn Jones) and boys from around the world was awesome. I recall looking up at the clock after the World XV scored and thinking it must be nearly half-time because of how tired I was – but only seven minutes had gone by! It was a big week and the end of a long year.” KIWI TOUR “Every time I’ve pulled an England shirt on, I’ve tried to do the best I can and that’s…

SEMI-FINAL TIME and no room for error. The top four of Premiership Women’s Rugby – Gloucester-Hartpury, Saracens, Chiefs and Bristol – was effectively decided months ago but predicting who takes the title is anyone’s guess. “Last year was very competitive and it’s gone up again. Every game, not even just the top four, is tough,” says Saracens centre Sydney Gregson. “Every team is fighting. Yeah, the new teams are finding their feet. But every game now you have to put on a show.” The 28-year-old has been doing just that all season, her hard lines and power plays a prominent feature of a Sarries side pursuing a fourth English title. The final will be at Sandy Park where last year they lost to Chiefs in the semis. “We played some…

“If anyone is caught doping, it’s instant hatred from the players” PLENTY OF players have seen the Enhanced Games thing – the idea of an Olympics for athletes totally doped up. And we’ve all seen how lightly doping appears to be taken in some sports because they want the biggest, most explosive athletes and the best show possible. Perhaps no one cares about the long-term effects on those athletes in those worlds… But it’s not great! Now, rugby is a sport that has prided itself on being clean. And I’m very proud of that. When you sign up to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules, as elite rugby does, you have to give testers a one-hour slot for wherever you are in the world. So I’d put down that I’d…