Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i Rugby World

WE’VE WATCHED that clip of Dan Carter being smashed on his return to club rugby with Southbridge in July a fair few times. Not to glory in the violence but because of what it represented – a man who is in the discussion for greatest fly-half ever got tarmacked while playing amateur footy He’s not the only stellar name dropping into New Zealand’s amateur ranks the past few months. Ardie Savea ran amok for Oriental-Rongotai in Wellington’s Swindale Shield. Both stars were using the club game to get back up to speed. But this is familiar stuff in NZ. Could you fathom it being regularly seen in the North? It’s tough to picture. When images of Savea circulated, some in Ireland asked if the game there had failed to utilise…

FRI 31 JULY Super Rugby AU Western Force v Rebels (10.05am) TV Live on Sky Sports SAT 1 AUGUST Super Rugby Aotearoa Chiefs v Crusaders (8.05am) TV Live on Sky Sports Super Rugby AU Brumbies v Reds (10.15am) TV Live on Sky Sports SUN 2 AUGUST Super Rugby Aotearoa Highlanders v Blues (4.35am) TV Live on Sky Sports FRI 7 AUGUST Super Rugby AU Rebels v Brumbies (10.05am) TV Live on Sky Sports SAT 8 AUGUST Super Rugby Aotearoa Hurricanes v Chiefs (8.05am) TV Live on Sky Sports Super Rugby AU Waratahs v Reds (10.15am) TV Live on Sky Sports SUN 9 AUGUST Super Rugby Aotearoa Crusaders v Highlanders (4.35am) TV Live on Sky Sports FRI 14 AUGUST Gallagher Premiership Harlequins v Sale Super Rugby AU W Force v Waratahs…

WHO COULD have imagined in 1990 that the state of Welsh domestic rugby would now be so bad? Regional rugby has helped to improve standards, but since it was implemented many supporters have walked away from the game. People often say that TV money is king, but I find the decline in attendances alarming. Why are people not engaged? The answer, seemingly, is identity. The development pathway is also exclusionary. Some thrive in a regional academy but others are put off, and many potential players are missing the opportunity to play competitive rugby. The whole of Welsh rugby needs to be overhauled. The WRU should decide on the players they need to retain to make four ‘touring squads’: Wales, Wales A, Wales B, Wales U21. Those players should then be…

WHILE OTHER domestic leagues scramble to complete fixtures, over in France they are beginning anew. After axing last season amid the Covid crisis, they are starting over, with the 2020-21 Top 14 season launching on Friday 4 September. And we’ve seen big changes, according to former Stade Français, Castres and Clermont hooker Benjamin Kayser. “What happened last season is that the top teams were surprisingly bad,” the Frenchman explains. “Why? Because of Rugby World Cup duty. “Take the French champions (from the last season), Toulouse. Antoine Dupont, the scrum-half and hottest European player of the last two years, only played 54 minutes in the Top 14 between the World Cup and Covid.” The former France front-rower believes that the enforced rest of a cancelled season means there will be renewed…

THERE CAN be liberation in accepting that change is needed. In an age when it feels like the mere concepts of compromise, concession and even accepting help can be lost amongst the angry voices, we may not notice how those who embrace them have grown. At first. For example, it was the fear of an outsider, not an established name who had earned 36 Test caps, when Anthony Watson panicked about being asked to leave England’s pre-World Cup camp in 2019. He had only just come back from a 17-month ordeal where he had injured, and then shockingly reinjured, his Achilles. Then this. And although Eddie Jones reassured him time and again that his excursion wasn’t a sign that the coach was ready to cut the cord, we all know…

WELCOME BACK RUGBY. Welcome back Guinness Pro14. Welcome back derby day. The league will resume later this month with two weeks’ worth of local rivalries before we head to the play-offs. So here we delve into the history books to celebrate the most glorious, most unpredictable and, frankly, the most bonkers derbies in the history of the championship in all its guises, from its inception as the Celtic League nearly 20 years ago. That inaugural league started on 17 August 2001 when Paul John’s Pontypridd beat a Bridgend team coached by his father Dennis. A quiz question for you: a dad of two very famous England rugby players sat on the bench for Ponty that day. Who was he? Answer at the bottom of the piece, but for now, a…

THE RETURN of live rugby in the form of Super Rugby Aotearoa and AU has seen the lawmakers under scrutiny after their tightening of the breakdown laws. World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont promised a focus on “the ball-carrier playing or placing the ball immediately, the tackler releasing immediately, rewarding the player who wins the race to the contest, and penalising side entry and players who dive into rucks”. In the first two SR Aotearoa fixtures, 58 penalties were awarded – 40 of them for offences around the tackle area. Across the first four matches more than 100 penalties were dished out. The laws haven’t changed, they are just being enforced with more vigour. There is a desire to create faster attacking ball and a fairer contest for possession. The other…

ADMINISTRATORS often espouse the importance of player welfare. It is said to be at the heart of decisions made about the game. Yet how does the forthcoming Gallagher Premiership schedule put players’ welfare first? Premiership Rugby said the revised schedule protects “the integrity of the competition”, but surely that integrity is already in question with clubs set to avoid penalties for fielding weakened teams, players playing for different clubs in the same season… And that’s before you consider the impact on next season. Top pros now face the prospect of 12 months of back-to-back rugby with the British & Irish Lions tour next summer. People will point to squad rotation as a way of resting players but an injury or two, or a run of knockout matches, will see best…

WHAT’S IT like being back at Gloucester? It’s been really nice so far. It’s just nice being back playing rugby and having a bit of a routine. I did enjoy the isolation period but by the end of it I was ready to get back. I’m obviously happy to be back here and to be closer to my family, and I’m really enjoying training. We have a really good group. What did you enjoy about isolation? I fractured my cheek against Wales (in March) so I couldn’t play anyway and I quite enjoyed a break from rugby at that stage. It’s World Cup year, I’d had a sore foot then fractured my cheek, so I needed a break. cheek, so I needed a break. I enjoy doing my own training…

PITCHES HAVE sat unused for months, studmarks fading over time. Boots have been zipped up in kitbags, the mud from their last outing hardening weekly. Balls have been locked away in store cupboards, slowly deflating. Yet amateur players across the UK and Ireland are now taking their first steps towards rugby’s return, with the hope that competitive matches will be back at some point later in 2020. When it comes to getting back into training, one of the key messages is to go slow and steady. There certainly shouldn’t be live scrummaging or a full-contact training game on the first day back. After months without rugby, you need to ease your body in. Every union has produced detailed return-to-play guidelines depending on their government’s policy, with different variations in England,…

A REBOOT at a big rugby club is sometimes good and sometimes bad. If you’ve been playing well under a certain coach – who likes you – and you’ve used a certain framework, you’re devastated. There goes all that graft. The new guy might come in and not like you. You know as a player that the one person who can make or break your career is your head coach or director of rugby. If your face doesn’t fit with that one figure, out you go. For everyone who goes through this cycle, the worries are: “Is the coach coming in going to like me? Are they going to extend me, maybe give me a pay rise? Are they going to cut my pay in half and blame it all…

5th Father-and-son referees Julian and Theo Edwards will complete their visit to all North Midlands RFU clubs this month. Their cycle ride is in aid of the RFU Injured Players Foundation and Matt Hampson Foundation. See refsdotherounds.wordpress.com 27th This marks a week until the release of Dylan Hartley’s autobiography The Hurt (RRP £20). The former England captain and hooker retired due to injury last year and discusses the physical and psychological demands that players face, as well as his rugby journey, in the book written with Michael Calvin. 21st Western Force play their final ‘home’ tie of Super Rugby AU this Friday night. Force had to play two home matches in New South Wales due to travel restrictions but hope to face the Reds this Friday in Perth. Sky Sports…

1 England Southport RFC smashed their targets in a fund-raising expedition to the ‘South Pole’. Players and supporters set out to run, walk and cycle the equivalent distance from Southport to the South Pole (16,000km) in honour of club president Graham Ellis (below centre), who died aged 64 two days before the Ellis Expedition started. Money raised is for the local hospital – justgiving.com/team/SouthportRFC 2 New Zealand New Zealand were awarded both the men’s and women’s World Sevens Series titles after the remaining legs of the 2020 competition were cancelled. The Black Ferns Sevens (above) had won four of the five rounds on the women’s circuit, while the All Blacks Sevens had won half of the six rounds on the men’s circuit Japan have been awarded the inaugural men’s Challenger…

MEL SQUIRE and family run the Iroquois Roots rugby project from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada, and she laughs of the shared name with Europe’s beloved rugby tournament: “I honestly think that’s how a lot of people stumble upon our website!” The project’s goal is to take rugby into the indigenous populations of Ontario. Part of the Turtle Clan of the Mohawk Nation, Squire and her children are proud members of the Iroquois Confederacy – made up of six First Nations from Southern Ontario (Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga and Tuscarora). The reserve, an hour south of Toronto, is one of 133 indigenous communities in Ontario. “It’s our goal to get to every one of them,” Squire adds. The scheme is still in its infancy, being founded by…

NICK SCHONERT arrived at Worcester in 2014 and has been known as ‘Sharky’ ever since. He earned the nickname after regaling his new team-mates with tales of his fishing exploits. In his native South Africa, Schonert would take his rod down to the shoreline, reel in sharks, hold them up by their tail for a photo and then release them back into the water. “There’s evidence on social media – and it’s a bigger shark than I expected,” laughs Warriors hooker Niall Annett. Schonert is often central to the laughter at Sixways. Director of rugby Alan Solomons mentions the prop’s “wicked sense of humour” while Annett praises his ability to lift the mood. Even after needing 40 stitches following a horrific facial injury against Saracens in 2015 (Google it if…

MISCHIEF SEEMS to find Dane Coles. It always has. Growing up on the Kapiti Coast, before becoming an All Black hooker looked like a certainty, Coles was sneaking into the henhouse on his pal’s farm to pilfer ammo – no passing car was safe from gooey carnage. “We definitely found a way to get in trouble!” Coles regales Rugby World. “A mate of mine had a farm and his parents had a chicken coop. We used to get the eggs and go egg cars, stuff like that. And then the cars would stop and we’d bloody run away as fast as we could. “It is a small town. A few times word got out and they were straight round to my mate’s house. We got in a bit of trouble……

FAB 50 “To go to Australia that summer and whitewash a series down there for the first time and win my 50th cap, presented by Jason Leonard, helped me move forward (from the 2015 World Cup). “To have the most-capped Englishman ever present it was very fitting and is something that will stay with me for a long time. “I don’t have many mementoes up at home but that silver cap is on the mantel; it’s the one thing that I have downstairs.” TITLE DEED “In this photo are guys I came through the academy with, so just to share the Premiership win with those boys, with the team I’d supported as a kid… “It’s a different feeling playing at Twickenham in a club shirt than it is for England.…

ACROSS 1 Dan - - -, Munster centre who grew up close to Thomond Park (6) 4 See 19 Across 9 Gerhard - - -, Cheetahs flanker who retired in June after a neck injury (7) 10 World Rugby suffered a - - - attack on one of their training websites in 2018 (5) 11 Paul - - -, president of France’s LNR and 28th in our 50 Most Influential list (4) 12 Name linking Adams, Lewsey and Strauss, for example (4) 13 Richard - - -, prop whose Test debut came in the first World Cup match, New Zealand v Italy in 1987 (3) 15 Cathedral city where Rob Webber, now coaching at Jersey, was born (4) 16 Channel moat for 2020-21 Gilbert match ball (4) 19 And 4…