Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i Rugby World

“Tackling climate change is the game’s next frontier” A CLIMATE change report from World Rugby has identified the consequences that global warming of +2 degrees will have on players and fans across the globe. It makes for sober reading. It’s predicted that global average temperatures will rise by 1.5 degrees by 2026, with some predicting a 2-degree increase at the current rate. The report, created alongside national unions, stakeholders, climate professionals and academics, identified six main climate hazards that would have an impact on rugby players, spectators, infrastructure and pitches should this happen. Eight of the ten nations studied face increased flash-floods threats and five face higher drought risk. Gloucester’s Kingsholm Stadium, for example, is at risk of “marine submersion”. Six countries face ten or more additional days when playing…

I WAS AT Twickenham recently to watch the Army-Navy match culminate in a last-gasp try by the Army to complete a fantastic comeback. For those who don’t know or haven’t been involved with the Armed Forces: being in the Forces is not a job, it’s a way of life. After serving, there are lifelong friendships. When this game takes place, people gather and meet up with old friends. There’s nothing more warming than seeing friends bumping into each other having not seen each other for many a year, and the look on their faces as they relive old times. Personnel also meet up to remember those who have paid the ultimate price. I don’t know of any other event where former Forces personnel can meet in this way. The game is…

AFTER EIGHT legs across seven months, France’s men and Australia’s women were crowned the inaugural HSBC SVNS series champions in Madrid, writes Joe Robinson. Rugby’s short format has undergone a facelift this season in a bid to attract new, younger audiences that World Rugby keep describing as “leisure-hungry”. This included live music, new stops in Perth and Madrid, a combined men’s and women’s competition across all legs, a slightly complicated tournament format with ‘winner takes all’ grand final, and a promotion/relegation play-off with the Tier Two Challenger Series. The grand final saw Antoine Dupont inspire France to a 19-5 victory against series frontrunners Argentina in a tense affair that saw Rodrigo Isgró, the current Men’s Sevens Player of the Year, shown a late red card for a tip tackle. The…

FINALLY ENGLAND may have found the prop for the future. For so long Joe Marler and Dan Cole have been the mainstays of the international front row. Marler has already reversed a number of retirements and turns 34 in July and with Leicester’s Cole already 37, fresh blood is needed. And that is exactly what Harlequins’ Fin Baxter represents. Baxter, still just 22, leapfrogged Marler in the Quins pecking order on their glorious run to the Champions Cup semi-finals, where they were only stopped in their tracks by eventual champions Toulouse. But it was the quarter-final triumph in Bordeaux that really marked his card as being ready for the senior international Test arena. Up against Tongan tighthead ‘Big Ben’ Tameifuna – a standout performer who captained his country at last…

ONCE THE Garden of Eden… It is now the Fortress of Eden, a rugby citadel that has not been successfully stormed by a visiting team against the All Blacks since 12 months before the game turned professional – that is 1994, can you believe? The largest crowd in New Zealand rugby history is the 61,240 who crammed Eden Park in 1956 for the fourth Test against the Springboks. I wonder if they counted those hanging out of the poplar trees. I was one of 61,079 there for the 2011 World Cup final, a dramatic, spine-tingling event. One may think the stadium is just bricks, mortar and stands looming high in the midst of a residential zone in Auckland. It was a swamp at the turn of the 19th century. But…

HREE YEARS ago, Ronan O’Gara picked up the phone to Jack Crowley and made him an offer he thought he couldn’t refuse. In his bid to lure the young man to La Rochelle, he felt he was holding a few aces: same position, same club (Cork Con), same province. “I thought there’s no chance this guy is going to turn me down,” said O’Gara on the Irish radio show OTB AM. “Then, BANG, it was crushing. I wanted him big time but my calling card wasn’t strong enough and I was back in my box.” Forward-wind to last February. The Six Nations, Marseille, Crowley at ten. All eyes on Johnny Sexton’s heir apparent. He was magnificent in a record win. With Ireland three from three, O’Gara revisited the Crowley question.…

“IF YOU want a guy to lead a bunch of dogs, then he is the guy. He is the main dog.” That is how Jacques Nienaber describes Bongi Mbonambi in Chasing the Sun 2. For six years, Mbonambi has been tasked with setting the tone for the Springbok pack, but he has also grown into an influential leader. He first captained the Boks in a RWC 2023 warm-up in Argentina and later led the team during the tournament itself, in the tense finales to the knockout ties against France and England when Siya Kolisi was substituted. While eyebrows were raised when Mbonambi was announced as captain for the Argentina game, Nienaber shut down questions around his leadership abilities. “He’s been a brilliant leader for us since 2018. He’s one of…

GLOUCESTER 22 36 SHARKS Friday 24 May, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London. Attendance: 34,761 JOHN PLUMTREE’S Sharks became the first side to plant the South African flag squarely in EPCR territory. They outmuscled Gloucester at the home of Spurs to win the Challenge Cup and, crucially, secured Investec Champions Cup qualification for next season. A ferocious first-half display was powered by scrum dominance and they never looked like giving up a 16-3 lead, despite a late flurry from Gloucester before they succumbed 36-22. Former Saracens prop Vincent Koch’s sublime form and the metronomic boot of fly-half Siya Masuku caught the eye, while George Skivington’s side were left to rue their inability to convert early pressure when the Sharks were down to 14 with Aphelele Fassi in the bin. After prioritising their…

I’M CONSIGNING myself to a ‘Tony Soprano Summer’. It involves a bit too much cured meat, wearing silk bowling shirts and sipping espresso outside a café while ‘keeping an eye on things’. It’s a bit different to a ‘Fin Baxter Summer’. That involves making your England debut aged 22, a toe-curlingly awkward reunion with Eddie Jones in Japan and the ultimate rugby baptism of fire – playing the All Blacks at Eden Park. Baxter is one of six uncapped players in Steve Borthwick’s summer tour squad and he tells Rugby World all about his aspirations on page 32. The Harlequins prop is just one of a host of home nation young guns making a name for themselves at the moment and these summer tours could be the making of them.…

YOUR HOUSE is on fire, what one item would you save? Oh, easy, my PS5. I play far too much Call of Duty to leave that behind. What’s your go-to dance move? I have no idea. I think I would go for the gun fingers to a bit of garage. What would be your Mastermind specialist subject? Golf, the PGA tour or Rory McIlory. I love golf. I really want to get down to a ten-handicap but it’s all about putting the hours in during the off-season. I would love to play a round at Pebble Beach in the States or the Royal Liverpool, where The Open was played last year. Do you have any superstitions? I always put tape on my right wrist before my left and I also put my right…

“Wales’ preparation for the next World Cup starts in Australia” IT’S A very new squad that Warren Gatland has picked to tour Australia, with young boys getting opportunities. It’s a tough year post World Cup with injuries and retirements, so it’s the start of a new period for the national team. Gats is trying to rest some key players, the likes of Will Rowlands, Alex Mann, Ryan Elias and Josh Adams, some of whom have played a lot of rugby. It’s the start of a new dawn for Welsh rugby now. It’s good to see players like (former co-captains) Dewi Lake and Jac Morgan back in the squad, they will bring some experience and quality that was missing. They want to cap and have a look at some boys playing…

IF SOME have openly wondered what Scotland stand to gain from a summer tour of Canada, the United States, Chile and Uruguay, Peter Horne sees only upside. The silky centre turned highly-regarded assistant coach is one of life’s natural enthusiasts, but the positive outlook he has on this trip is informed by first-hand experience too. When the Scots last embarked on a combined North and South American trip six years ago, Horne was one of the senior players picked to provide some ballast in a largely greenhorn group where 19 of the 33 men selected set out with fewer than ten caps. Six of those emerging talents – including his younger brother George, Jamie Ritchie, Matt Fagerson and Adam Hastings – had not played for their country at all, and…

WE’RE ALL on different journeys and you only need look at Alex Tessier for a reminder of that. A year ago, she was playing in France and had a full-time job as a production planner for a cosmetics company. Now, at nearly 31, the Canadian has just completed her first season as a fully-fledged pro rugby player with Exeter. Has the switch paid off? “Definitely,” she says. “It’s upped my experience, I’m seeing other pictures on the field and it’s been good for my fitness, for the body. I’m playing with and against the world’s best players, the English, Welsh, you get to study players better. So it’s been beneficial.” Tessier, of course, is no novice. She won her 50th Test cap in the 33-14 win over Australia in Sydney…

SAINTS 25 21 BATH Saturday 8 June, Twickenham Stadium, London. Attendance: 81,699 AS A CHORUS of Hey Jude rang around Twickenham with ten minutes remaining, you could sense 28 years of hurt lifting from the shoulders of each and every fan in blue, black and white. Bath looked to be defying an early red card for prop Beno Obano – after a high tackle on Juarno Augustus – to become English champions once more. They came close but not close enough. Eventually, Northampton Saints took the title they deserved, albeit making hard work of it in the process. Sam Underhill was a monster in defence, tighthead prop Thomas du Toit dominated for the full 80, switching to loosehead after Obano’s red, and Ben Spencer proved why he is considered one…

IT’S TEN years since the last England tour to New Zealand, writes Alan Pearey. To nobody’s surprise, Stuart Lancaster’s team lost the series 3-0, with Stuart Barnes picking Danny Cipriani as the star tourist in our August 2014 issue. Barnes was less enamoured with England as a whole, accusing them of “delusions of grandeur” for trying to engage in an open-style battle with the world’s running masters. “The series was lost in a tactical miasma,” he wrote, slamming “the folly of England’s fast-paced, loose-thinking ambition”. It wasn’t all doom and gloom for England, though, because their U20s had just won the Junior World Cup in Auckland under Maro Itoje’s captaincy. And the Kiwis were heading for a fall. “If you had to bank your house on something,” wrote Ali Donnelly,…

1 Morocco Morocco held their national sevens finals in May. The men’s event in Taza was won by Association Jeunesse de Rugby Marrakech (below), who beat Mouloudia d’Oujda Rugby in the final. Rabat hosted the women’s tournament that saw Académie Ben Msik de Rugby emerge victorious. “We extend heartfelt congratulations to all the teams for their exemplary sportsmanship,” read a Royal Moroccan Rugby Federation statement. 2 Ireland Simon Easterby (above), Ireland’s defence coach, will lead an Emerging Ireland squad to South Africa in the autumn. The team will play the Pumas (2 Oct), Western Force (6 Oct) and Currie Cup champions the Cheetahs (9 Oct) in Bloemfontein. Paul O’Connell, John Fogarty and Andrew Goodman, Ireland’s incoming backs coach, will join Easterby on a tour that echoes a 2022 trip that developed the…

WHEN EWAN Jones and George Dyer were just broke Manchester Uni students trying to flog some sports equipment to kickstart their business endeavours, they never dreamed of one day signing with the world’s hightest-grossing film franchise, Marvel Cinematic Universe. But after figuring out that mouthguards were their most popular item, they co-founded what is now SAFEJAWZ in 2014 and set out on the path to profit. It proved to be a long and winding journey but now, with the aim of making mouthguards fun, fashionable and protective, they are turning over millions and providing millions of athletes, including rugby players at all levels, with snazzy gumshields. “The whole reason we came to being is that mouthguards for a long time were just dull, uninspiring, boring, clunky and uncomfortable,” says CEO…

“She has this knack of going unnoticed because of how well she manages the game” WHEN RUGBY bosses announced that Hollie Davidson would take charge of South Africa’s upcoming match against Portugal, the sport paid her the biggest compliment by taking it in its stride. Davidson, 31, will make history with her 20 July appointment in Bloemfontein, the first woman to referee the men’s world champions. Much like when Stephanie Frappart became the first female to take charge of a men’s FIFA World Cup fixture in 2022, the reaction has been more one of ‘about time’. “Holly is an extremely talented, impressive match official. Nothing to do with whether she’s male or female,” says Wayne Barnes, until his recent retirement recognised as the best in the business. “She’s a peer…

MAY THE fourth be with you, said nobody ever at an Olympic Games. Certainly Meg Jones and her rugby sevens team will want no such good luck message heading into Paris. Team GB’s women’s team have threatened the podium in the last two editions only to finish one place outside the medals in both Rio and Tokyo. “Probably the worst place to come in an Olympics,” says Sarah Hunter, England’s most-capped player. “Talk about monkey on the back,” adds Tom Mitchell, who captained Great Britain’s men to silver in 2016. “Two fourth places is rough. So close yet…” Jones, voted Women’s Player of the Season by the RPA, doesn’t need to be told. She was in Brazil and Japan and the memories are fuelling her drive to thrive in France…

MACKENZIE MARTIN has shown already in his fledgling career that he has a lot to offer Wales as just the sort of explosive ball-carrier they crave. However, he intends his influence to extend further. The 20-year-old No 8, who burst into the national side after only nine regional appearances this season, hopes he can be a beacon for more aspirational black players too. While Martin hails from the tough Cardiff suburb of Ely, his great grandfather was a Windrush Jamaican and he was brought up on his nan’s Caribbean delicacies of jerk chicken and curried goat. It is a lineage which he is proud of and he wants to be a role model for others with similar back stories to believe the Wales shirt can be for them too. “Taulupe…

THE SECOND day of December 1905 saw the first match between England and New Zealand. Played out in front of a record crowd of 50,000 at Crystal Palace, it came during the All Blacks’ maiden tour outside Australasia. They won 15-0, continuing their legendary 35-game, 34-win, 151-day romp of the UK, Ireland, France and USA with a squad featuring four Bills and two Billys. It established the All Blacks’ place as rugby’s team to beat – something that England have only managed on eight occasions, not forgetting a couple of draws. We’ve selected a dozen of the best England-New Zealand clashes… England 38 | 21 NZ 2012, Twickenham One of the greatest England performances ever witnessed by a Twickenham crowd – and against the reigning world champions. Owen Farrell’s opening 15…

LEINSTER 22 31 TOULOUSE Saturday 25 May, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London. Attendance: 61,531 AN EXTRA-TIME THRILLER for the ages held in a world-class arena fit for the occasion – there was plenty to like about this year’s Investec Champions Cup final in North London. That is, of course, unless you are a Leinster fan. It’s now a hat-trick of final defeats to French opposition, after La Rochelle’s double act, and a bitter pill to swallow. If Ciaran Frawley’s drop-goal had been a few metres the other side of the post, they would have won the game at the death in normal time. How finals turn on such small margins. It was a fine individual display from Antoine Dupont – who else? – that dragged Toulouse over the line. Ugo Mola’s…

IF YOU ever needed a reminder that making it as a professional rugby player was what you wanted to do, then packing meat onto the shelves of Tesco overnight ought to do it. That’s the position that George Makepeace-Cubitt found himself in after London Irish went under and he returned to boyhood club Rams in Reading to play National One rugby and get his career back on track. As a semi-pro player, he needed to bring in some more cash and, like so many others, took to some supermarket shifts. “It was challenging and quite different,” he says, “but it gave me that reminder that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing and that I wanted to be playing rugby. “I would restack all the meats and be getting…

“The summer tour provides special off-the-pitch experiences” OH, HOW I miss summer tours. You could be mistaken for thinking that after a gruelling season of domestic rugby in Europe, lads would be looking for excuses to miss out on extending the grind by another month. You could not be more wrong: the summer tour is one of the best things about being a pro. Regardless of the competition, the year-on-year churn of rugby becomes a grind. The same old bus journeys to the same old towns to play the same old teams. There’s only so many times you can be excited by a trip to Ulster or Northampton. Even playing in the Six Nations can become a slog. Edinburgh, Rome, Dublin, Paris, London and Cardiff are all lovely cities but…