Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i Rugby World

“Selection subplots in the Six Nations” YES, IT’S that time of year when everyone has an opinion on who should be in the national team. And with the 2023 World Cup edging ever closer, there is even more significance to selections during this year’s Six Nations. Form or reputation? It’s one of the age-old selection debates. Many criticised Eddie Jones for his decision to stick with a crew of underperforming Saracens last season, the England coach since admitting that he got that wrong. Still, in this year’s initial squad he opted for Owen Farrell, who has hardly played this season but who Jones hails for his leadership, but omitted one of the Premiership’s form players in George Ford. The continued selection of 36-year-old Johnny Sexton at fly-half for Ireland is…

FRIDAY 4 FEBRUARY U20 Six Nations France v Italy (8pm, Stade Guy Boniface) TV Live on BBC iPlayer Ireland v Wales (8pm, Musgrave Park) TV Live on BBC iPlayer & S4C Scotland v England (8pm, DAM Health Stadium) TV Live on BBC iPlayer Gallagher Premiership Gloucester v London Irish (7.45) TV Live on BT Sport RFU Championship Nottingham v Jersey SATURDAY 5 FEBRUARY Six Nations Ireland v Wales (2.15pm, Aviva Stadium) TV Live on ITV & RTÉ Scotland v England (4.45pm, BT Murrayfield) TV Live on BBC & Virgin Media Rugby Europe Championship Romania v Russia (12.30pm) Spain v Netherlands (3pm) Gallagher Premiership Bristol v Newcastle (2pm) Exeter v Wasps (2.30pm) Leicester v Worcester (3pm) Saracens v Bath (3pm) United Rugby Championship Bulls v Lions (1pm) Stormers v Sharks (3.05pm)…

SEVERAL SPORTS have a law for ‘advantage’ that allows play to continue in the hope that a team can capitalise on an opponent’s error or infringement. In rugby football before 1875, team captains were responsible for deciding if play could continue. It’s no surprise disagreements led to the introduction of a neutral ref! The advantage law (Law 7) is designed to keep the game flowing and referees have wide-ranging discretion in its application. They must decide if any advantage is tactical, territorial or both. The ‘opportunity’ to gain advantage is not enough and it’s usually not in the game’s interest to play advantage when none is there. Like many decisions, the application of advantage is more art than science, a feeling, a subjective view of an incident in a specific…

CHRISTY DORAN WE CALL players freaks of nature regularly. From Rieko Ioane to Cheslin Kolbe, Louis Rees-Zammit to Damian Penaud, grounding the ball is a modern art form. But when it comes to intercepts, no, no, catching the ball with one hand is suddenly a leap too far. “Not in a realistic position to catch the ball,” cry referees from all corners of the world. “Your hands were pointed down,” others say. Who are the referees to tell some of the best athletes in the world what someone can and cannot do? Watch any highlight reel from the past decade and it’s jaw-dropping. Deliberate knockdowns came to a head last autumn during Wales’ great escape against the Wallabies. Kurtley Beale paid the price for putting an egg in each basket…

BEING A referee mum, and a referee wife, has its downside. In supporting the man in the middle, I am a neutral supporter of the teams and I don’t need to look at the scoreboard to know which team is in the lead. It can be obvious from the shouts and body language of supporters and coaches. The shouts are at times directed towards players but are far more often aimed at the referee. In looking for someone to blame for the game not following the path they would choose, coaches, parents, players and other supporters can, and do, see the referee as an easy target, leaving me having to bite my tongue. Some shouts are lost in the space between the foul mouth that produced them and the ears…

THE U20 Six Nations is seen primarily as a development tool, with packed off to the men’s tournament with nothing but good wishes ringing in their ears, writes Alan Pearey. Orlando Bailey played full-back for England’s Grand Slam-winning U20s last year, while Leonardo Marin kicked a heap of points in Italy’s 43-3 rout of Scotland. Both find themselves preparing for the senior Six Nations this month. The U20 wheel spins rapidly and, as sure as eggs, this year’s tournament will reveal some new stars-in-the-making. England and France finished one and two last year and to many it will be surprising if one of them doesn’t take the title in the ‘Super Sunday’ finale down in Perpignan on 20 March. Harlequins prop Fin Baxter led England in a recent warm-up at…

STEPHEN JONES Rugby’s most outspoken and influential journalist FRANCE ARE firm favourites for the Six Nations with those jolly chaps, the bookmakers. Why is this a little surprising? Purely because over the years, the doubts and inconsistencies that always surround this magnificent rugby nation tended to persuade punters to keep their money in their pocket. But something seems to have changed this time. And it is all so exciting. The rest of the world has always feared the day when French rugby, at Test and club level, gets itself truly together to make the most of those God-given talents and the sheer size of the sport. With the Six Nations upon us and the 2023 World Cup in France on the horizon, has that day dawned? When Romain Ntamack –…

OH THE drama. Scotland trailed by five points with less than three minutes left against Ireland when Stacey Flood sent a 22m dropout their way. Two minutes and 15 seconds later – and nigh-on 20 phases – Chloe Rollie crossed to draw the scores level. With the clock in the red, Sarah Law kicked the conversion that kept Scotland’s World Cup dreams alive. Belief is one of the three key mantras of this Scottish women’s team and it was evident that day in Parma last September, when they defied expectations to stay in the running for this year’s tournament in New Zealand while knocking out the favourites at the European qualifier. “We talk about belief a lot,” says Scotland head coach Bryan Easson, “and it was a show of belief…

AT 23, Tate McDermott’s journey in rugby has a long way to run. The Reds scrum-half has started just five Tests for Australia, serving as the back-up to Nic White on a European tour that brought defeats by Scotland, England and Wales. Yet in another way the circle is complete, because the young Queenslander has made it to the top of a sport that he might never have been playing professionally but for a chilling day ten years ago. McDermott grew up on the Sunshine Coast, the son of Lexi, a teacher, and Tony, an economist specialising in sugar cane. As a boy he usually had the wind in his hair and the sand between his toes. “We grew up on a beach. My family loved it. They weren’t necessarily…

NIGERIAN CLUB AJ Super Rugby was founded in 2019 to provide organisation and structure in a severely underserved community. Ajegunle, in a district of Lagos, is renowned for gangsterism, cultism and delinquency, and the new club provides a haven for young people. “Our desire is a social inclusion programme where boys and girls can learn rugby and express themselves through the game and dream big,” says media officer Macaulay Maduwuba. “The ‘AJ’ in the name is adapted from the word Ajegunle, which means ‘wealth has grown its roots here’. The youths are the wealth of our community and have found their roots in AJSR teams.” There are four academy sides and players are given stipends as a token of encouragement. Leading lights include Okonkwo Victory, John Caleb and Segun Moses…

MATATŪ – AN instructive command to remain steadfast with head held high, alert and ready to take on any and every challenge head on. That’s the thinking behind the name of the South Island’s Super Rugby Aupiki team and it’s also a description that is well suited to one of their star players, Alana Bremner. Before we find out more about the back-rower, a quick refresher on Super Rugby Aupiki. The inaugural tournament takes place in New Zealand next month and features four teams – Blues, Chiefs, Hurricanes and Matatū. All the teams are packed with Black Ferns and the competition is viewed as an important step on the road to hosting the World Cup later this year, particularly after four heavy defeats to England and France on their return…

GAIN FOR CAINES Bristol-based Kingswood, of Gloucestershire Two South, have bestowed life membership on Rich Caines, the club president for the past five years who racked up 1,000 games for the first, second and third teams. They have also appointed Tom Bowen-Hall as the new head coach. He was UK Coaching’s Children & Young People’s Coach of the Year in 2002. In contrast, Jack Pattinson stepped down as head coach of One East club Windsor following his appointment in a similar role with the London Irish U18 squad. RECORD BREAKER No 8 Matt Gregory, the Devonport Services captain, has become the One West club’s top appearance maker since the current records began in 1994. After Gregory played in his 262nd match, head coach Mike Lewis said: “He has done fantastically…

FILLING THE COFFERS Harrogate Pythons may be in Yorkshire Three but they’re in the premier league in terms of raising money from a tried-and-trusted club dinner format. Chairman and organiser Julian Tatlow said: “We make £12-15k on average, have five or six main sponsors to fund the speakers and the tables ‘sell themselves’. This annual event is the club’s main source of income, other than membership fees, so we get some high-calibre speakers to fill the room with diners. “This season’s function at the Old Swan Hotel was long awaited after three postponements through Covid-19 and it brought in a record £19,000. Almost 400 sponsors, members and guests were joined by speakers Nigel Owens and Lewis Moody.” ON THE CASE ‘Be prepared’ should be the dictum of Sale-based Trafford MV,…

“Get ready for a hotly-contested championship” THERE ARE many reasons to be excited about the 2022 Six Nations. Most importantly, fans are back! Supporters are a huge part of what makes the championship so special, with the passion and vibrancy they bring, but they haven’t been present in the stands since March 2020. So it’s a huge welcome back to crowds. Secondly, this year’s tournament looks like being the most competitive for some time. Five of the six teams – sorry Italy – could all realistically challenge for the trophy and it will be fascinating to see how the title race pans out. Thirdly, all the squads contain fresh faces – whether uncapped players or those relatively new to their national sides – and they could add an intriguing element…

DO YOU have any nicknames? Monty is actually my nickname. My full name is Montanna. My dad was a big fan of the quarterback Joe Montana back in the day. He’s much more of a rugby fan but I guess the name stuck with him. Are you an NFL fan? Not really. I like watching the running backs and the way they attack, but I don’t know the rules or anything. I used to do a bit of track and field but never really stuck to that. I played a bit of what we would call soccer. I played a bit of Aussie Rules, too, but my kicking wasn’t so good! So I wouldn’t say I’m that sporty a person. Funniest team-mate? Iliesa Ratuva. He’s like a 12-year-old boy in…

“Ireland got it right in the autumn. The team is confident and firing” ULTIMATELY, I can understand why France are fancied by the bookies. They have performed really well and are a team who are really developing. To compare them to Ireland, they’re on a similar trajectory in terms of post-Rugby World Cup disappointment but they are just a little bit ahead. They look like they have skipped a couple of years in the development process. But with something as competitive as the Six Nations, you have to look at the fixtures. So where does that make a big difference? France face both England and Ireland at home and that could be the big separator. It’s going to be an incredibly tight edition. With England’s historical Six Nations performances, how…

THE KITTEN stalks across the keyboard as Raffi Quirke Zooms in, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase nine lives. But this is where the Sale and England scrum-half is most comfortable – with his family and other animals in Chorlton. There cannot be many Tier One internationals still living at home. However, given how the nine has buzzed through the elite game for Sale and England, it is easy to forget that 20-year-old Quirke is still so new to all this. So new in fact that he is saving up for a place of his own (though you’d bet dollars to doner kebabs that Chorlton’s estate agents will be the first contacted). If you haven’t avidly tracked Sale through the Gallagher Premiership over the last few seasons, your abiding…

THE LAST time Italy won a game in the Six Nations was 28 February 2015. They beat Scotland 22-19 in Edinburgh – only their second championship success on the road – as a series of punishing late drives saw home debutants Ben Toolis and Hamish Watson sent to the sin-bin and referee George Clancy award a penalty try. Enrico Bacchin won his first cap that afternoon, at inside-centre. Seven years on, he recalls the whole experience in vivid detail: from being shaken from his reverie by scrum-half Edoardo Gori when he became mesmerised by the phalanx of fans who thronged the team bus on its arrival at the stadium, through to being knocked over by Stuart Hogg almost straight from the kick-off, to insinuating himself into those crucial last-gasp mauls,…

LAUGHTER. THAT’S the abiding takeaway of our photographer from a day spent with Fijian Drua in New South Wales. They may be thousands of kilometres from home, the pandemic delaying plans to be based in Fiji until next year, but the team spirit is strong amongst the Super Rugby Pacific new boys. As prop Samuela Tawake says: “Fijians are well known for that part of life – being happy and smiling, laughing and joking. It creates what we need as a team.” From the conversations Rugby World has had, the most popular joke is throwing plastic snakes at each other. Their camp in the seaside village of Lennox Head may have similarities to Fiji but the Australian wildlife is not one of them. Players try to scare each other with…

GEORGIA EXPERIENCED two revolutions in 2003. One was peaceful, the other was violent. One was political, the other was sporting. Both stood for new beginnings. That autumn, Georgia transitioned from an autocracy to democracy, shrugging off the final vestiges of Soviet rule, and the national team made their Rugby World Cup bow. It was only 12 years after they’d gained independence and they reached the showpiece by beating Russia, their rivals of several centuries, 17-13 in Tbilisi. The Rose Revolution – so named for the flower petals scattered in parliament by protesters – began as Georgia’s rugby team took their first uncertain steps onto the world stage. “Our country has suffered a lot, like almost all the former Soviet countries,” explains Gia Labadze, a back-row in that team. “We had…

LATE IN September 2019 was when Callum Sirker’s long spell on the sidelines began. A week after scoring a try for Wasps against Saracens in the Premiership Rugby Cup, he was dual-registered with Ampthill in the hope the youngster wouldn’t lose momentum. Starting for the Bedfordshire club in their Championship Cup clash against Ealing Trailfinders, the wing lasted just 36 minutes before disaster struck. Stepping an opponent, in one fell swoop Sirker ruptured his ACL and damaged his MCL, PCL and lateral meniscus. It was nearly two years before he took to the field again, scoring two tries against Richmond in Cornish Pirates’ opening win this season. Tries have come with relative ease for Sirker so far in this campaign, having scored seven times in his first six appearances, but…

I LEARNT ENGLISH at my school,” says Marcos Moneta, with disarming diction. “I went to a Scottish school, called St Andrew’s, in Buenos Aires. My university is linked to the school as well and is called San Andrés, as is my first rugby club. I’m Scottish, I’m Scottish!” What’s clear is this 21-year-old is as full of energy off the field as he is on it. And boy has he entertained us recently. Back on the World Rugby Sevens Series with his gutsy Argentine cohorts, Moneta has established himself as one of the country’s brightest young stars. Before the turn of the year he was also called up to the Pumas squad to rub shoulders with some of Test rugby’s biggest names – and recently he has learnt a fair…

DREAM EXPERIENCE With backing from East London RFC, Graeme Bloom is unswerving in his aim to fulfil a long-held ambition. He wants to become a rugby referee despite living with MND and Asperger’s syndrome. Bloom, 38, has completed a referee course, joined the London Society and was a recent guest at West Ham-based East London, where he shadowed David Gallagher, the referee, in a game against Upminster. He assisted in the coin toss, attended the pre-match briefing, delivered the ball for the kick-off and blew the whistle to start and finish the game. Bloom also took charge of the final scrum of the match and was presented with a ball bearing the East London badge by their captain Lewis Bourke as a memento. He said: “I live with a condition…

ACROSS 1 London Irish wing brings order to eely work (4,4) 7 3 Down or 17 Down, for example (4) 8 Spanish champions, from the country’s third-largest city, in 1983 (8) 9 Back-row David, who captained Wasps and London Irish in the amateur era, mends rep leg (6) 10 IRFU - - -, team for Irish-qualified players living and playing in the UK (6) 11 The Llanelli Rugby Academy was launched at Coleg - - - Gâr in 2000 (3) 12 Tomos Williams was an - - - at his brother’s wedding in 2019 (5) 14 Tendai Mtawarira’s nickname (5) 16 George Ford: one of the Biggest ‘What - - - ’ of England’s failed Rugby World Cup bid, wrote the Express in 2015 (3) 18 Taniela Tupou signed his first pro contract for the Reds…

“The French public are loving having les Bleus back” NO BEATING around le bush. Over the past 15 years, French people have thought the national team was a bit crap. Under the cadre of Marc Lièvremont, Philippe Saint-André, Guy Novès and then Jacques Brunel, it was really, really poor at times. Which was stunning considering the reservoir of talent they’ve got in France. Rugby pigs are very proud of their Top 14 and it always has a few star teams that function really well. There are scraps. Amazing crowds. Big TV audiences. It’s ceaselessly huge for fans but the France team had turned into an embarrassment. When it came to playing against Ireland, England or anyone from the southern hemisphere, back then they were incredibly shoddy and it almost felt…

1 Tonga Former All Blacks centre Malakai Fekitoa launched a fundraising appeal following the damage in Tonga (below) caused by an undersea volcano eruption that triggered tsunami waves. Fekitoa, who was born in Tonga and has switched allegiance to the country, set a GoFundMe target of £50,000 and said: “I’m making this collection in the first person because I want to make sure that all the aid destined is received by the community.” To find his appeal and donate, search ‘Malakai Fekitoa’ on gofundme.com 2 Argentina Ignacio Mendy, 21, will be part of the Jaguares squad aiming to successfully defend their Super Liga Americana de Rugby title. Mendy (above, right) was part of Argentina’s bronze medal-winning sevens team at last year’s Olympics and made his Test debut against South Africa…

IS THERE more to a rugby club than rugby? You better believe it. Worcester Warriors might not be winning the Gallagher Premiership any time soon but their moral compass is in overdrive. As the first professional rugby club in Europe to sign up to the United Nations Sports for Climate Action, the Warriors are showing admirable leadership in an area that affects every man jack of us. The driving force at Sixways is Gené Willis, Head of Stadium Operations and a woman so ardent about climate action that they call her Greta (after Swedish activist Greta Thunberg). When we contacted her, she was presenting on the club’s sustainability initiative at a business summit in Manchester. “I’m very passionate about it so I want to move it forward quickly. Our owners…

SOME PROPS contain multitudes. Traits you might not normally associate with the load-bearing pillars of your set-piece. Just look at Toulouse and France’s Cyril Baille. As his club team-mate Richie Arnold tells Rugby World: “I agree that Cyril is an awesome player and he’s very solid in the scrum at loosehead. But what sets him apart is what he can do with ball in hand – his passing and footwork in the tight. We joke at training that he thinks he is a back in a prop’s body. “And the funny thing is you should see the man kick! Drop-kicks, place kicks, spiral torpedoes… The man can do it all. After a captain’s run, usually the kickers are out doing their practice and Cyril is right there. The big fella…

“We have a shared vision – Russia want to be a global competitor” IWASN’T REALLY in the market to do an overseas coaching gig. My son is in his final year of school and I hadn’t gone abroad mainly because of that. But when coaching Russia came up, my ears pricked up with the challenge. I like the shared vision of where Russia want to take their rugby. They want to be a global competitor. They have unbelievable stadiums, they have this rich history of rugby in the country that has been interrupted through certain challenges over the last 130-odd years. There’s a huge tradition there, but there has been some dysfunction for clubs and they’ve probably fallen behind, professionally. There are ten professional clubs with big aspirations and the…

BRAVE PEOPLE, the Glaswegians. Some of them, it seems, think nothing about going up to a 6ft 3in, 19st international prop in the street and commenting on the colour of his hair in less than flattering terms. “They’re pretty direct,” laughs Oli Kebble, the Glasgow and Scotland loosehead who can turn his hand to tighthead. “I’ve had people coming up to me and looking at my hair, whatever colour it might have been at the time, and going, ‘Nah, not sure about that, pal’ but you’ll have others, total strangers, saying, ‘I like it’. “I don’t even know what shade my hair is now. It’s something I started to mess around with during the first lockdown, out of boredom really. It went from polar bear white to caramel orange and…

ELLIS JENKINS jokes that he was a “maths geek” in school, something that has been reignited as he studies for an Executive Masters in Business Administration. The degree is how he is planning for the future, learning about various areas of business, from marketing to corporate finance, to find out what might interest him as a career post-rugby. That point should be a fair few years off yet, although he could already be a ‘former player’ had his comeback journey taken a different turn. It was back in November 2018 that Jenkins suffered a serious injury in the closing stages of Wales’ win over South Africa. Within minutes of being named Man of the Match and seconds before the final whistle, the back-rower was receiving treatment after damaging knee ligaments…

DID YOU KNOW? England have won the most Grand Slams in the championship (13), closely followed by Wales with 12. France have nine Slams while Ireland and Scotland have each won three.…

SUPER RUGBY has taken on many guises over the past 25 years but the 2022 version is arguably the most exciting yet. Super Rugby Pacific features not only the best franchises from Australia and New Zealand but two Pacific Islands teams. Rugby Australia CEO Andy Marinos has described the addition of Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika as “a game-changer for rugby in the Pacific. Their inclusion will make this new competition one of the toughest in the world”. Moana Pasifika will be based in NZ while the Drua will play the majority of home games in Oz this year due to Covid but hope to play out of Fiji from 2023. The 12-team tournament will kick off in mid-February and reach its climax on 18 June. There are 14 regular…

IT WASN’T pretty. When Dalton Papalii rocked up to his first All Blacks camp for an end-of-year tour, the conditioners saw an athlete who, by their standards, was “terribly unfit. Slow. Average”. After a standout campaign with Auckland in the Mitre 10 Cup, in 2018 he arrived… Only to lose puff at the bottom of a learning curve. Since that day, says All Blacks strength and conditioning coach Nic Gill, Papalii has transformed. “He’s just matured into a great man, a great athlete,” Gill tells Rugby World. “He trains hard. He is strong. He pushes himself. In training he’s fiercely competitive. From then until now he has matured into a great rugby player, from a physical perspective. “I think he learnt a bit. He was just playing good code three…

Sidelined Harvey Biljon was banned from match-day coaching duties for Jersey’s game against Doncaster in mid-January for conduct prejudicial to the game. The Jersey DoR had been critical of the referee in his side’s game against Bedford on Boxing Day. Hosts with the most Doncaster Knights’ Castle Park (below) will host England’s U20 Six Nations fixture against Wales on Friday 25 February (kick-off 7pm). England are defending champions having won the tournament last summer. For tickets, visit drfc.co.uk/tickets/ Test call-up Nottingham lock Jose Andrade has been included in the Portugal squad for the Rugby Europe Championship. Question time The Bedford Rugby Followers Association are holding a charity quiz night in the club’s Scrum Bar on 11 February. Call 01234 354708 for details. Ins and outs James Tyas has joined Coventry…

POWER OF FOUR Sheffield Tigers, of Two North, are on their way to fulfilling an ambition 30 years in the making. With 16 playing sections, the club is creating a fourth pitch to cater for a growing number of players at their picturesque ground on the edge of the Peak District. As well as the senior men, Tigers have a women’s team, a thriving mini-junior set-up and a colts’ section in the offing. They also host Sheffield Vulcans, an inclusive club founded five years ago. The project will cost £150,000 and at the last count £60,000 had been raised, together with pledges from private sponsors. But Tigers will need a further £60,000 to turn their plans into reality. CHIN UP Chinnor, a community hub-minded National One club, have schemes afoot…

TREE MUSKETEERS Hereford have planted a red-leaf oak tree at their Wyeside ground to mark their 150th year in a novel way. It represents the One West club’s anniversary motto of “From tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow” and reflects their journey from uncertain beginnings to become an established part of the city’s sporting culture. They played their first match in the 1870-71 season at the Harold Street Army Barracks ground and had at least a dozen other ‘home’ venues around the city before settling at Wyeside in 1984. The red oak ceremony will be followed by the planting of 421 trees in Hereford to celebrate the club’s history in a joint initiative with the Woodland Trust, Wyevale Nurseries and Advance Joinery Pontrilas. KICKING ON Old Saltleians have unveiled plans for…