Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i Rugby World

HOW FITTING that as Rugby World decided to celebrate the heroes of the game at all levels, Argentina delivered a momentous victory. The passion of Pablo Matera, the physicality of Marcos Kremer, the accuracy of Nicolás Sánchez… It all combined to great effect as the Pumas made history in Sydney by beating New Zealand for the first time. The win was all the more remarkable when you consider it was their first Test in 13 months, most of the squad hadn’t played competitive rugby since March and they’d faced rigorous protocols due to Covid-19. It’s little wonder so much emotion was evident at the final whistle. The Pumas have rightly been hailed at home and abroad, and in this issue we celebrate others around the globe who deserve praise for…

1 New Zealand New Zealand and Australia’s ten franchises, including Crusaders (below), will play in Super Rugby Trans-Tasman after their own domestic tournaments conclude next year. It will kick off on 14 May, with the final on 19 June. Each team will play two home and two away fixtures while round three will be a ‘Super Round’, where all five matches are played in one location over one weekend. 2 Georgia The Rugby Europe Championship, dominated by Georgia (above) recently, will have Head Injury Assessments and Television Match Officials from 2021 onwards. Rugby Europe president Octavian Morariu said: “The implementation of TMO and HIA on this major competition was an important objective. We wanted to put it in place for the qualifying matches for the 2023 World Cup.” A former…

ROWS OF concrete multi-storey buildings emerge from the Sicilian countryside. Shop fronts are barricaded with metal shutters and garbage rests on the pavements where men loiter. Motorists lock their car doors as they drive through a neighbourhood where they would never think of stopping. This is what Librino looks like on the surface – a place only spoken about when local newspapers report yet another shootout or drug bust. Gang violence and child poverty have even earned it the reputation as the ‘Bronx of Catania’, Sicily’s second largest city. However, a local initiative to teach rugby to Librino’s youngest residents is trying to tackle this violent image. “A team and a community like this is extraordinary in this neighbourhood,” says Alessio Panebianco, 20, of the Briganti di Librino rugby club…

THE FIRST thing people mention about Wasps’ head medic Ali James is his character. In fact, one medical professional from a rival club describes him as “the best kind of guy – a lovely human”. The medical departments at rugby clubs rarely get the public love they deserve for the triage, long-term care and even counselling they give. But when Rugby World approaches Wasps to talk about James, it takes next to no time for the positive responses to roll in. “He has genuinely just become a mate,” says long-serving back-five forward James Gaskell. “He is one of those I’d happily go for a coffee or a beer with, away from rugby, just like meeting up with a friend back home. “His work ethic, I don’t know if there’s anything…

“Us French always like to do things differently!” THE WORLD of rugby has been shaken to its core by the pandemic. European rugby got hit hard too but comes back with a new format – pretty much a new competition. French clubs’ chances are high with new teams, a new competition, but they keep the same old habits… However talented and ambitious those clubs can be, it’ll always come down to circumstance – form, injuries and their position in the Top 14 – for some teams to decide whether to properly try to conquer Europe. On the other hand, there has always been a strong correlation between domination of international rugby and club fortunes in Europe. Look at Leinster during Ireland’s domination; Saracens during England’s. The only exception is Toulon,…

TALK OF rugby’s values can be trite, descriptions of acts on a rugby field as heroic or brave can be overused, yet the stories covered on the following pages highlight how special this sporting community is. Elsewhere in this issue of Rugby World we celebrate the work being done by the game’s big names; here we highlight lesser-known stories of those members of the rugby family who have gone above and beyond. Not all heroes wear capes… RELIEF EFFORT ON TUESDAY 4 August 2020, a huge explosion of ammonium nitrate in the Port of Beirut killed more than 200 people, injured a further 6,500 and destroyed swathes of buildings. The disaster only added to Lebanon’s problems, with the Covid-19 pandemic and economic collapse already putting the country in crisis. “Lebanon…

THE LACK of visibility in women’s rugby hit home for Rachael Burford during training sessions for her eponymous academy. Mention the likes of Maggie Alphonsi and Emily Scarratt when demonstrating skills and she was met by blank faces and the question: Who? “It broke me,” she says. “These girls are playing the game, they’re the future, but they don’t know the stars of the women’s game. It was a bit of a wake-up call.” That’s where her new project comes in. The Girls Rugby Club (GRC) aims to inspire female players around the world by providing an online platform to share knowledge and resources (girlsrugbyclub.com), as well as face-to-face sessions run by women’s internationals. England fly-half Katy Daley-Mclean could hold a workshop in the North of England, Australia Sevens star…

WILL STUART first played rugby aged five at Andover RFC and last month brought an impressive first Test start against Georgia, soon after he helped England win the 2020 Six Nations. At 24, he looks here for the long haul. He tells us about his life… I was born in London. Then Mum moved out Hampshire way. She works for a racehorse syndicate. My dad works as a diplomat for the EU. He’s mostly been abroad, Iraq, Baghdad, Tanzania. He’s just moved back to Belgium. I’ve got a half-brother and a half-sister. The story is my grandad played for Uganda. That was on family WhatsApp groups. I took the piss out of Dad saying he doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story! But he was…

THAT TEST debut against the Wallabies is still fresh in Anton Lienert-Brown’s mind. Trotting out as an All Black for the very first time, there was something surprisingly serene about the whole experience. “The legs were going under the water and on top I probably looked quite calm,” the centre tells RW of that day in 2016. “For sure there were a lot of nerves but for some reason, when I ran out there, there was a sense of calm. “In a way I felt as though I was chucked in the deep end a little bit, because we had so many injuries. I thought I’d be an injury replacement at best (for the first cap) and it turns out I started, in a pretty big match. “But I’d been…

THE SCRAPPING of this season’s RFU amateur league programme was brutal news. In North London, Hendon RFC were on the crest of a wave last March, clinching a league and cup double just two days before the first lockdown. The promised new campaign in London Three North-West never materialised but the club aren’t moping. When the RFU devised the non-contact game Ready 4 Rugby (R4R), Hendon took the bull by the horns. They adapted the rules to suit their needs – including playing it on a full-size pitch – and set about creating a ‘cluster’ league of local clubs. President David Gershlick was the driving force. “Many years ago we had a competition called the London Borough of Barnet Cup. So I just phoned up those clubs that were in…

AFTER WINNING an Olympic gold medal with Australia women back in 2016, Sharni Williams was driven around her home town of Batlow in the back of a BMW. “We finished at the school hall,” she remembers. “They ended up calling it the Sharni Williams Hall. It’s pretty cool going back to see the plaque up there – I did a lot of beep tests in that hall and I probably broke a lot of lights playing hockey and things like that in there too!” The forward has come a long way since those smashing days, and says she still pinches herself. Williams never thought a girl from a small country town of 1,500 would ever leave Australia, let alone lead them in global competitions. Her abiding memories of her World…

“The 2021 Rugby World Cup draw” THREE WORLD Cup winners and a Prime Minister – not a bad line-up for a pool draw! New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern joined former Black Ferns captain Farah Palmer, ex-NZ flanker Melodie Robinson and All Blacks legend Dan Carter to determine the three groups for the 2021 World Cup. And there was something of a continental drift to the resulting pools. Hosts New Zealand have been drawn with trans-Tasman rivals Australia in Pool A, Canada and USA are part of a North America-dominated Pool B while European foes England and France are in Pool C. With quarter-finals in the women’s competition for the first time, these ‘crunch’ ties may have a little less bite as the top two from each pool are guaranteed to…

WEEKEND 4-6 DECEMBER Red Bull Ignite7s (Blake Park, Mount Maunganui) FRI 4 DECEMBER Gallagher Premiership Bristol v Northampton (7.45pm) TV Live on BT Sport Guinness Pro14 Connacht v Benetton (7.35pm) TV Live on Premier Sports & TG4 Top 14 Clermont v Montpellier SAT 5 DECEMBER Autumn Nations Cup Play-offs Georgia v TBD (midday, BT Murrayfield) TV Live on Amazon Prime (UK) & Premier Sports (RoI) Ireland v TBD (2.15pm, Aviva Stadium) TV Live on Amazon Prime & RTÉ Wales v TBD (4.45pm, Parcy Scarlets) TV Live on Amazon Prime (UK), Premier Sports (RoI) & S4C Tri-Nations Australia v Argentina (8.45am, Bankwest Stad, Sydney) TV Live on Sky Sports Gallagher Premiership Leicester v Exeter (3pm) Wasps v Newcastle (3pm) Worcester v Bath (3pm) TV All live on BT Sport Guinness Pro14…

AS LONG as the game of rugby has existed, so too has the art or science of kidology – aka conning the ref or opponents. It’s not new to the pro game and ranges from the subtle to the downright outrageous. Some of these incidents have even passed into folklore. Who can forget the ‘Hand of Back’ incident in the 2002 Heineken Cup final when Neil Back nudged the ball out of Peter Stringer’s hands at the scrum, resulting in a crucial turnover? Or, even further back in 1978, when Andy Haden dived out of a lineout in Cardiff, crying foul. Referee Roger Quittenton awarded New Zealand a match-winning penalty. Neither of these incidents would survive in the modern game as they’d be reviewed by the Television Match Official. Today,…

HOW MANY of the 101 previous nominations for World Rugby Men’s 15s Player of the Year have been for a prop? How many times in 19 years have they been up for what is described as ‘the ultimate accolade’? The answer is zero. With the usual award show not on this year, 2021 is the earliest this trend could change. So why no recognition for props? There’s the argument that the importance of the scrum has diminished over the years. According to Opta (part of Stats Perform), the average number of scrums per Rugby World Cup game reduced from 32 in 1987 to 14 in 2019. But ‘no scrum, no win’ surely can’t be sent to rugby’s cliché recycling bin yet. Not when it was so evident in South Africa’s…

THIS TROUBLED year wouldn’t be complete without one final twist to the rugby calendar and it comes in the shape of revamped European competitions, writes Alan Pearey. The formats caused a lot of head scratching when announced by EPCR in September. Yet for all its complexity, the new competition structure still dishes up a host of cross-border match-ups and across eight weekends instead of nine – a crucial factor in this congested season. The Heineken Champions Cup features 24 teams – four more than previously – taken equally from the Premiership, Pro14 and Top 14. They have been split into both four tiers of six and two groups of 12, and a key factor is that nobody plays a side from their own domestic league in the pool stages. Players…

LIONS HAT & SCARF £15 & £18 store.lionsrugby.com A dual-purpose present! Keep warm during the winter months (the hat is fleece-lined) and show support for the best of the British Isles CUSHION £45 lazypheasant.com These rugby ball-shaped cushions come in a variety of colourways, like the Oak and Emerald here. Lazy Pheasant also has a range of flag-themed cushions PENCIL CASE From £11 rugbyrecycled.co.uk William and Thomas Graves are turning old rugby balls into pencil cases, with profits going to the Wooden Spoon charity (they’ve already raised £1,500!) LIONS JERSEY £75 store.lionsrugby.com The British & Irish Lions shirt for the 2021 tour is the most sustainable ever as it’s made from 100% recycled polyester SAINTS TRY GNOME £20 saintsstore.co.uk Whether in the garden or on the mantelpiece, this 12-inch gnome…

“ULTIMATELY, I don’t want kids to go through what I went through when I was younger. In a sense, I’m tired of being celebrated because I suffered and still managed to make it. No kid should have to face that kind of challenge.” Siya Kolisi’s journey from impoverished township to World Cup-winning captain is well documented, but now he’s working to change the narrative for the next generation. The 29-year-old South Africa flanker recognises that he has a platform to make a difference and over the past year his voice has grown louder as he’s spoken out on social issues, including gender-based violence (GBV). “I used to be the quiet guy in the corner,” says the Springbok. “I’ve never spoken out about this kind of stuff. I’ve got to a…

EXETER’S RISE from England’s second tier to European champions in the space of a decade has been told in a brilliant new book by Rob Kitson, rugby correspondent for The Guardian. DoR Rob Baxter and forwards coach Rob Hunter form two-thirds of Chiefs’ lauded management hub and here we reproduce an extract from the book, Exe Men, that focuses on the third strand – head coach Ali Hepher. Baxter recruited Hepher as backs coach from Northampton’s academy in 2009, when Chiefs were still in the RFU Championship. He quickly made a major impact, including introducing Baxter to the ‘champagne ruse’ – an idea he borrowed from John Steele at Saints – for the second leg of the 2010 play-off at Bristol. It entailed Baxter telling his players just before the…

THE RED SEA “A lot has been said about the Australians coming out for this first Test and seeing a sea of red. In this picture is myself, Danny Grewcock and Gordon Bulloch. You can see Phil Vickery and Martyn Williams at the back. “This was Danny’s first Lions tour, so this is important for him. It was about the joy and elation for him but also for our fans, coming off the pitch; you could see what it means to them. I think I’m sort of saying to Danny, ‘Look at this, this is for you.’ And, of course, Lions fans are absolutely brilliant.” LEADING THE CHARGE “This is the first game of the 1997 Lions tour and I was captain because Martin Johnson was injured. We put out…

HAVING SPENT months transporting Covid-19 patients between hospitals, Maxime Mbandà requires no introduction to the harshest realities of the pandemic. Even so, it was all brought home in a devastatingly literal sense after Italy’s Six Nations defeat by England. Waiting on his phone in the dressing room was a message to say his mother, Luisa, and father, Luwa, had both been admitted to a Milanese hospital with symptoms. Luwa, Congolese by birth but long since a respected surgeon in his adopted city, had been at the forefront of the response in one of Italy’s worst-affected areas and now found the roles reversed. “Because my father is a medic, it’s likely that he caught it from a patient and brought it home,” says Mbandà. “He had gone into hospital the day…

HONEST JOE The initial selection of Leicester prop Joe Heyes, at the early age of 21, for three of England’s autumn squad sessions delighted Nottingham Moderns and Newark, his first clubs. Heyes took up the game with Moderns before playing for Newark, where he still helps to coach younger brother Callum. Ian Herborn, Joe’s mentor at Moderns along with John Cole, said: “His natural athleticism, coordination and attitude made Joe a dream to coach. He also had a phenomenal boot, landed touchline kicks pre-training and had good hands after previously being a goalkeeper on Nottingham Forest’s books.” Moderns junior chairman Stuart Grantham added: “Joe has also remained highly supportive to us and returned last season as part of our Project Rugby partnership with Tigers.” FILLING THE HOLE Two South Bury…

“I cut a hole in his shorts and he only realised when he arrived for his date” HERE’S A look at Gareth Davies in numbers. The Scarlets scrum-half, who turned 30 in August, won his 50th cap for Wales in their World Cup semi-final against South Africa last year. His tally of 14 Test tries in that half-century means Gareth Edwards is the only Wales No 9 to have crossed the whitewash more. He’d clocked up 199 appearances for the Scarlets as the Autumn Nations Cup kicked off. Those figures highlight an impressive career on the pitch; here we find out more about Davies off it… Any practical jokes you can tell us? Rob Evans was going on a date in the summer, had his shorts laid out ready, and…

“Fiji already has the hardest thing to find – the talent” FIJI WAS where I got my start, so I always wanted to go back eventually. I liked development, I’d thought about coaching, but when the high-performance job came up there, it really, really interested me. All the stars aligned for me because after 21 years in Europe we were looking to come home, and I got the opportunity to coach with Michael Cheika and the Wallabies. And after the World Cup it couldn’t have worked out any better, with me then heading to Fiji. The talent in Fiji is extraordinary but it’s about getting the most out of that talent. And so many of our players are spread out across the world. So the main goal is to get…

MAKAZOLE Mapimpi’s story is one of triumph and inspiration against all odds, writes Craig Lewis. The death of his mother, sister and brother at an early age compounded the hardship of an underprivileged upbringing. Yet the man who hails from Moni village in the heart of rural Eastern Cape has always been a fighter; a fighter who climbed from the lower echelons of South African rugby to World Cup winner in just four years. Now the Springbok is using his position to raise awareness about the need to eradicate gender-based violence, an issue that South Africa president Cyril Ramaphosa has described as the country’s ‘second pandemic’. “Gender-based violence is something I’ve experienced first-hand in my community, and it’s happened to friends and family,” says Mapimpi. “It’s something that also affected…

FIRST THINGS first, big Duhan van der Merwe, of Edinburgh and Scotland via George in the Western Cape, wants to clear up a few things. That stuff about the origins of his Christian name on Wikipedia? The brilliantly curious claim that he was named after a musician from Limerick called Johnny Duhan? “It’s nonsense, man. I honestly don’t know where these people dream this stuff up.” And his brother, the Sale hooker Akker? “It says he was named after a guy who used to play the clarinet, Acker Bilk. He wasn’t. “It’s funny. We’re reading this and we’re laughing. Some people have great imaginations and way too much time on their hands.” Back in October, after three years in Scotland, van der Merwe made his debut for Gregor Townsend’s team…

ACROSS 1 - - - Celtic, Austria’s oldest rugby club and current national champions (6) 5 Paul - - -, former Cardiff Blues captain now coaching at Pau (4) 8 Ospreys flanker who was born and raised in Leeds (4,9) 9 Scarlets wing outmanoeuvres storm ogre (3,6) 10 - - - Risman, England and British & Irish Lions fly-half who switched codes in the Sixties (3) 11 Name of the cow mascot attached to Waikato rugby (6) 13 Up to date, like a Midlands Three East player from Nottingham perhaps? (6) 16 - - - Crossdale, Saracens wing called into an England training camp this autumn (3) 17 Conrad Smith is a nephew of this former All Blacks lock, who won three caps in 1969-70 (4,5) 19 Ulster captain who…

WHEN THE word ‘caterodactyl’ comes up in conversation with Claire Molloy, it would be easy to think it’s a medical term. Molloy is a doctor after all. Yet it’s actually an imaginary creature she has drawn – one of many she has invented with Wasps Ladies press officer Holly Foskett as part of an A to Z of dinosaurs mixed with animals. It’s a creative outlet for Ireland back-row Molloy, a side project that allows her to switch off from work and rugby. She describes it as “doodling”, but a quick look at her Twitter profile would suggest she is downplaying her talent. The drawings she put together when revising for her most recent set of medical exams proved a big hit on social media, so the dinosaurs/animals – dinomals?…

“Every man and his dog is trying to do a podcast!” RUGBY’S SPEAKING market has mutated. When I first started playing, at big dinners it was a case of ‘Come and listen to a former player make jokes’. Podcasts have completely shifted how those engagements are crafted now. Nobody really wants to hear a journeyman just dribble out one-liners; they want insight into the inner workings of professional rugby and stories about top players. In the amateur era, club guys had access to the big names of the time but now, in the pro bubble, access is very limited. So civilians want a gauge on personalities, stories, pro teams, national teams, and how they operate. That’s opened up the podcast sphere, which in turn means every man and his dog…