Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i Rugby World

[ Goes in Rugby World ] I HAD A call before the 2002 Heineken Cup semi-final against Leicester saying the organisers wanted myself, Gareth (Jenkins) and Scott Quinnell to attend a press conference in Nottingham, writes Anthony Buchanan, the former Llanelli Scarlets team manager. “Are you serious?” I asked. “It’ll take us four hours to drive up and another four hours coming home.” “You will receive a heavy fine if you don’t attend,” was the reply. “The only way you’re getting us there is if you send a helicopter.” He called back ten minutes later: “Right, we’ve got a helicopter.” On the Thursday we climbed into the helicopter at Stradey and touched down on the halfway line of Nottingham Forest’s ground. We climbed out, made our way to the press…

BATH CHANGES Johann van Graan will leave Munster at the end of the season to become Bath’s head coach. Brent Janse van Rensburg has been named as Bath’s new defence coach. A JOB FOR JOE Former Ireland coach Joe Schmidt has replaced Grant Fox as the All Blacks’ independent selector. WOMEN’S UNION World Cup winner Danielle Waterman has launched the Women’s Rugby Association, a players’ union for the Premier 15s. IFAN DONATIONS Funds are being raised for Ospreys hooker Ifan Phillips, who suffered life-changing injuries in a motorcycle accident. See justgiving.com/ crowdfunding/ifan-phillips to donate. DUE NORTH South African lock JP du Preez (left) will leave Sale at the end of the season to join Glasgow Warriors. ENGLAND FIXTURES England will take on Argentina, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa as…

The greatest foreign signing anyone in European rugby ever made? That record is held jointly by Ulster, Gloucester and Bristol thanks to the contracts they gave to John Afoa. The Hercules prop is now 38. He is still on the playing books (and scrum coaching) at Bristol Bears, even though it’s ten years since he won the last of his 36 All Blacks caps at RWC 2011. Before that he played 100 times for the Blues. He helped a major revival with Ulster, did the same at Gloucester (right) and then moved to Bristol, where he has been in the form of his career despite having passed his mid-30s. Afoa is still so passionate about his rugby that you see him punching the air as he takes the field. He…

“The easy bit has passed. Selection for the Test team is the easy bit. You have an awesome responsibility on the eight individual forwards’ shoulders, awesome responsibility. This is your f***ing Everest, boys. Very few ever get a chance in rugby terms to get to the top of Everest. You have the chance. “Being picked is the easy bit. To win for the Lions in a Test match is the ultimate, but you’ll not do it unless you put your bodies on the line. Every one jack of you for 80 minutes. Defeat doesn’t worry me. I’ve had it often and so have you. It’s performance that matters. If you put in the performance, you’ll get what you deserve. No luck attached to it. If you don’t put it in,…

“The first thing to focus on is footwork, to get your feet square. That means that the front and back lifter are facing one another, and your feet are nice and wide. That allows you to drop your hips quite low to get into position to lift effectively. You want to get your feet really close to the jumper too.” “We have a lineout where there is a front jumper and it’s just a race to get the jumper up. The jumper will be coiled, ready to go. We take our grip and it’s on the jumper to choose when to go. The jumper shouldn’t dip, they should just push off and then we drive them up and chase our feet in under the jumper and get a full arm…

1 MOVE GINGER IS found in tropical rainforests, writes Bristol Bears nutritionist James Morehen. It contains alkaloids and is a flowering plant that has been used in medicine for decades. Ginger has few negative side effects and it’s listed in the Food & Drug Administration’s ‘safe’ list. It’s been shown to have an anti-inflammatory effect in vitro studies which may be because of the presence of Gingerols, Paradols, Shogaols, their congeners or other compounds. Which is a fair bit of science to throw at you, but all you really need to know is that consuming ginger is worth considering when you head outside to compete in a winter sport – and in Europe at this time of year you need all the help you can get to fight off illness…

For 65 of my 80 years I have watched rugby on television (and played a bit). The coverage has gradually improved and has always been a joy to watch. However, there is one thing that still makes me scream at the television – the use of the touchline camera. The touchline camera was originally used to show more detail of the lineout. That worked fine until it then started to be used to show open play when the ball and action came near to touch. It has been used in this manner for the past many years and for me (at least) ruins the enjoyment. Invariably an exciting move develops and then moves towards the touchline camera, which is then used and all context for the viewer is immediately lost.…

2021 Wait for it! The 11-6 defeat of England was Scotland’s first Six Nations triumph at Twickenham – and their first win there since 1983 2017 Double treble Jonathan Joseph became the first Englishman to score two Six Nations hat-tricks, against Scotland here and Italy in 2016 2008 Red better day Warren Gatland’s first game as coach saw Wales prevail at Twickenham for the first time in 20 years, winning 26-19 2000 The Italian job Italy marked their Six Nations debut with a comprehensive 34-20 victory over Scotland at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome 2018 Seven heaven Jacob Stockdale’s Grand Slam-sealing try against England was his seventh in that championship – a record 2009 Friday night lights Stade de France staged the first Friday night match in championship history, with…

RUGBY HAS always been a game where players and coaches have tried to stretch the laws. From the very birth of the game, players have twisted those laws in order to suit their own devices and the advent of professionalism has only led to an increasingly ‘professional’ approach. This level of gamesmanship has, in the past, gone from cheek to farce. Saracens, as one would expect from a team with such eminent coaches, have always been at the forefront of such thinking outside the box. And this time they’ve come up with a beauty. Some dub it the crab, others the caterpillar but call it what you will, it’s stretching the ‘spirit of the law’ to its extreme. And this is no accident. It’s a well thought-out, planned and rehearsed…

1 CONNIE POWELL Age 21 (13 July 2000) Born Ipswich Position Hooker Club Gloucester-Hartpury Country England How did you get involved in rugby? When I was 13 or 14, they got girls’ rugby going at Hadleigh High School and it kicked off from there. I joined a club, Sudbury, and from my first game I got a county trial, and things escalated from there. What did you like about rugby? The hard work, trying something new, the friendships I built, the physicality… It was different to anything I’d done before and I fell in love with it. What positions have you played? I started at 12, then I moved to the back row and then to the front row when I was about 17. My South-East divisional coach said I’d…

“I’d only just come back from injury when I got a call from Toutai Kefu asking if I wanted to play sevens to qualify for Tonga. I found it pretty hard as I’m a lot bigger and slower than a lot of the other guys!” “I missed five months due to a blood clot in my shoulder. My arm swelled up and the medics didn’t understand it.” “Compared to my last three years at La Rochelle, it’s nice and warm in Toulon! My family enjoy it. If we have a day off, we’ll try to go to the beach or grab a bite of lunch. It’s beautiful.” “I made the transition to Tonga at a sevens tournament in Monaco. We made the choice as we’re now Europe-based and when I…

“MY FRIEND Matthew Creel started a mental health charity, Tidy Butt, and after the struggles I had with alcoholism after retirement (in 2012 following a heart attack), when I came out of rehab we got together. We do workshops in schools, colleges and businesses all around South Wales and we present to educate, break stigmas and help. “There is a huge issue with mental health in schools because of lockdown. We talk from lived experience and seeing two men talk about their feelings and being vulnerable is what we’re about. “I was with Sporting Chance for a year, straight after rehab. I worked with 11 different professional sports. “I’m still waiting for my heart transplant and hoping 2022 will be my year, but I might have to fundraise and I’m…

SPOTLIGHT ON Age 26 (16 Feb 1995) Born Sidcup, Kent Position Centre Club Saracens Height 5ft 11in Weight 13st 4lb Wales caps 16 (2T) Instagram handle @nicktompkins1 TWO YEARS in and already Wales coach Wayne Pivac has started eight different players at centre. Nick Tompkins, the ex-England age-grader who qualifies for Wales via a Wrexham-born grandmother, is pretty much a constant. Unavailable last autumn against New Zealand, he played at 12 against South Africa, was drafted in at 13 against Fiji after injury to Josh Adams and retained the 13 shirt against Australia, scoring a critical try that had Wallabies boss Dave Rennie seething. Tompkins was deemed to have knocked the ball back when slapping down a pass and scampered away while defenders froze. “What’s strange is that none of…

IF FRANCE have any problems at all it’s in selection – and the major decision is at outside-half. Romain Ntamack got the nod for the win over the All Blacks last autumn and was inspired. Yet you still feel this matter is not done and dusted. Ntamack has played a fair bit at 12. He has numerous attributes that facilitate him playing as a second receiver, a second kicking option from 12 with a brave and solid defensive mindset. Then you have Matthieu Jalibert, six months Ntamack’s senior and only 23. No one has made more line breaks in this season’s Top 14 than the Bordeaux mastermind. Against Argentina, Fabien Galthié played Jalibert and Ntamack at ten and 12 respectively. Ntamack was replaced on 53 minutes with France up 16-10,…

3rd Doddie Aid is back! Last year £1m was raised for the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation to fund MND research, and this year’s event runs until 12 February. The idea is for participants to clock as many miles as possible, be it by walking, running, cycling… Exercise is logged via the Doddie Aid app. For info, see doddieaid.com 12th Wales icons Ieuan Evans and Shane Williams (right) visit the host cities of the Six Nations for a new three-part series on S4C, visiting the stadiums, trying the food and catching up with rugby legends. 6 Gwlad Shane ac Ieuan starts at 9pm this Wednesday on the Welsh language channel, with English subtitles available. 8th There’s a cracking match early in the new year as Harlequins face Exeter Chiefs at the…

Last person you phoned Lewis Bean, who picks me up every morning Most important person in phone I don’t know if this counts but my screensaver – my dog, Archie Last person you texted Sione Tuipulotu. We text GIFs back and forth Last photo taken A selfie of me with my video game headset on while I waited for the lads to come on Favourite social network None! If I had to say something, Hinge Music app Spotify Last song you played Suzanne by Journey Favourite WhatsApp group The Jedis – it’s my mates back home that we’ve had since we were 17…

CARDIFF & VALE COLLEGE beat Llandovery College 23-17 in the 2021 Welsh Schools & Colleges Cup final at the Principality Stadium. Whitchurch HS and Ysgol Glantaf won the Welsh Schools and Colleges League Bowl and Plate finals respectively, meaning three Cardiff sides took titles. Leinster schools competitions kick off this month, the D’Arcy Cup launching on Saturday 29 January and the Schools Senior Cup starting the next day. There has been no Senior Cup final in the past two years. After the first Rugby Schools Cup in Western Australia, with Aranmore College winning the boys and girls events, the competition returns in July as the Western Force Cup. The number of participants will double to 18 schools as part of £2.7m grass roots-to-elite pathway funding from mining magnate Andrew Forrest.…

DAN LEO THE NEED for changes to eligibility laws and the lack of profit share amongst unions are symptoms of inequalities in our game. And when there is money it should be going into the grass roots to keep games going – but here in Australia, a huge amount of money generated goes back into the Wallabies. And then people wonder why their community game needs saving? It’s time to reassess what our expectations of international rugby should be. With my Pacific Island head on, Test rugby has become an extension of professionalism, and it’s just like club rugby. So why not let the clubs worry about paying players and keep Internationals pure? A lot of players see Tests as a way to make a living as opposed to honouring…

Rugby’s most outspoken and influential journalist LET’S START with controversy. I would impose no limit on the number of foreign players in the Gallagher Premiership. And I’d give far more independence and freedom to the Scottish, Irish and Welsh teams in the United Rugby Championship so that they could bring in more overseas talent too. It’s easy to imagine the steam now coming from the ears of national coaches and chief executives. Well, sorry. But I have never seen club/provincial rugby as some sort of slavish process that is there chiefly to produce players for one national team. Everybody knows that clubs find it difficult to balance the books, and for many different reasons, so the idea of fielding some exotica of true world class so that the box office…

YOU HAVE likely seen the clip. Ireland legend Paul O’Connell, in full flow, shouting about “manic aggression” in the changing room, all fire, brimstone and bane. It’s an artefact of a time when one of the country’s great modern captains electrified his side. And it’s one the man himself has paused to consider. In his 2016 autobiography, The Battle, O’Connell wrote of his relationship with the much-romantacised speech: “I know a lot of people’s impressions of my character came from what they saw of me in the dressing room at Croke Park in 2007, just before we played France in the Six Nations – the clip from the documentary where I was going on about ‘manic aggression’, about putting `the fear of God’ into someone. It was a good documentary,…

Two of the first players to fly the Muslim flag in the southern hemisphere were Anthony Mundine and Hazem El Masri, who played in the NRL for St George Dragons and Canterbury Bulldogs respectively in the 1990s. Hazem played rugby league for Australia. Neither touched the heights of rugby’s most high-profile Muslim, Sonny Bill Williams, who retired from professional rugby last year as a double World Cup winner and is now a pro boxer. The All Black converted to Islam in 2008 whilst playing for Toulon – he prayed regularly at that time with team-mate Olivier Missoup. SBW says one thing that all Muslim athletes get asked about is the impact of fasting during Ramadan on sports performance. “The first week of fasting can mean your energy flags, so Muslim…

A SPORT’S relationship with science is troubling at the best of times. Science starts by fuelling performance, which makes many feel uneasy anyway, but in collision sports the implications of improved performance are profound for player welfare. Then science steps in to lay out before sport in gory detail the damage it is doing to itself. The final twist in the relationship is when science presents itself as sport’s only hope for salvation. Rugby finds itself somewhere between the last two stages of this pas de deux. The effects of full-time professionalism and improved techniques in the, well, science of preparation have exposed players to ever-escalating levels of repetitive “insult”, as the scientists like to term traumatic events of even the mildest nature. This seems to be resulting in that…

SIGNS Loss of consciousness – confirmed or suspected Lying motionless on the ground / Slow to get up Unsteady on feet Balance problems or falling over Poor coordination Seizure (fits) Confused Disorientated Dazed, blank or vacant look Grabbing or clutching of head SYMPTOMS Headache Dizziness Confusion / Feeling slowed down Blurred vision Nausea or vomiting More emotional / Irritable Fatigue Drowsiness / Feeling like “in a fog” Difficulty concentrating “Pressure in head” Sensitivity to light or noise Recognise, remove – and remember if in doubt, sit them out…

1 Speed control It’s vital that a fly-half judges the speed of the ball. If on the front foot with quick ball, the ten can flatten up, move onto the ball and be a real threat. If the ball comes to him slower, the defence can bring speed off the line, so he’d maintain depth, control his speed and bring other runners from depth onto the ball. One thing hard to coach is that orientation in space and the feel for defenders being off-balance or over-running to allow you to step an opponent. Ntamack has a real knack of doing this and often scores from first receiver. 2 Passing fancy For flat, long passing, get your distributor in motion and squaring up before the pass. Set up a drill where…

Email your letters to rugbyworldletters@futurenet.com or write to our editorial address WIN SOME CASH! The Star Letter winner will receive £20 – let us know your views on the game to be in the running Criteria question Re The 100 best players in the world (Jan 2022 issue): Were performances from the autumn series taken into consideration? I do think that the autumn Internationals are so important to judge players’ form and that discussions shouldn’t start until these games have taken place. The players’ form is over the year, January to December 2021. As the Six Nations, Rugby Championship and autumn Internationals are the three major competitions, surely all three should be played before the final decision. Padraig O Dea, Maynooth, Kildare RW says: Form in November did see players…

A new year means a new Six Nations will soon be upon us, and what a Six Nations it is poised to be. The autumn brought positives for all the competing countries and while France may be narrow favourites, the title is sure to be hotly contested with cracking matches on the agenda. To build up excitement for the 2022 championship, in this mini magazine we’ve spoken to a few fresh faces who are getting ready to play in their first Six Nations, as well as two people who are preparing for the tournament from new positions. Get to know the stories of five players set to become ever more important to their respective nations over the coming years and the coach hoping to revive Italy’s fortunes. Plus, we look…

FREDDIE STEWARD’S early rugby memories aren’t of the positive variety. His older brother, Harry, played at Swaffham RFC but four-year-old Freddie wasn’t so keen on the oval ball. “I used to lock myself in the car because I was cold and hated being there,” he says. “I didn’t want to play rugby at that age. It was a nightmare for my mum, who would talk me out in the end.” A decade and a half later, he’s thriving in the sport and looks to have cemented himself in the England No 15 shirt for 2022 and beyond. Called into the national set-up last year after delivering top-class displays for Leicester Tigers, he’s produced the same for his country. There’s his solidity under the high ball (his 6ft 5in frame clearly…

FABIEN GALTHIÉ has a word for players in the France set-up who have followed unlikely paths to the international game; they’re known as ‘ovni’. In English, UFOs. In his first squad in 2020 you had Anthony Bouthier, the former builder who played his first top-flight game at 27 and was starting for France within six months. His Montpellier team-mate Mohamed Haouas’s Test debut was not his first ‘Crunch’, having played for the French Navy against their English counterparts four years prior to packing down against Joe Marler and Co. Since then, Gabin Villière has gone from being a second-team scrum-half in the third tier to a sevens standout and then a Test winger in just 18 months. And, last July, Melvyn Jaminet kicked France to a first win on Australian…

AFTER HE left the field in Ireland’s final Test of 2021, against Argentina at the Aviva, the television cameras lingered for a moment on Andrew Porter with his deadpan expression just about visible beneath that Desperate Dan beard. Any number of things could have been going though his mind at that moment. A quiet reflection on how brilliantly he has bounced back from being invalided out of the Lions tour even before they set off for South Africa? A sense of pride at how well he’s transitioned from being Ireland’s second-choice tighthead to their first-choice loosehead? A feeling of exhilaration having just won his sixth Test in a row, one of the six being a spectacular victory against the All Blacks? Or maybe something a little more mundane, like, ‘What…

A SIGN WENT up on the walls of the Italy changing room for the Autumn Nations Series. Create a team identity it read, reflecting the message that new coach Kieran Crowley has been keen to hammer home. The New Zealander, who took over from Franco Smith last summer, is desperate for the Azzurri to realise who and what they are. With previous incarnations of this team, these have been straightforward questions to answer: lots of large men looking to do equally big things in the tight exchanges. A side that knew its strengths and played to them, unapologetically and consistently. In recent years, however, that sense of certainty, that sense of self, has been largely missing. Under Smith, Italy often spoke of trying to broaden their attacking horizons and ended…

PIERRE SCHOEMAN, the hulking Edinburgh and Scotland prop, has never been to a Calcutta Cup match, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t have a heart-warming story about the grand old fixture. A recent one, too. It actually couldn’t be any more recent because it only dates back to the last meeting of the countries a year ago, to when the Scots ripped up the history books by winning at Twickenham for the first time in the lifetime of the players who pulled it off. Schoeman hadn’t yet qualified to play for his adopted land at that point – that only happened in autumn 2021 when he made a try-scoring debut against Tonga before beating the Wallabies and losing to the Boks. His role in the great Calcutta Cup…

HAVING MADE it to the Test arena from the regional game with the Dragons, crossing the tracks into more treacherous territory, Taine Basham has been rocked like a southbound train. And you know what? He’s loved it. He made his Wales debut in a summer of Lions action, coming off the bench each time for a full house – a win against Canada, a draw with Argentina and then a loss to the Pumas. Then in November, he started four Tests in a row against some serious units. He came out with plaudits against the All Blacks, went toe-to-toe with the Springboks, dug in against Fiji and was Player of the Match in the win over the Wallabies. So how has his physical world changed? “You kind of feel the…