European club rugby faces crunch time with CVC sniffing around Pro14 and the only certainty being that change is afootNext month in Newcastle they are promising to host the best weekend that club rugby union has ever known. A convivial city, an iconic stadium, two ding-dong finals and a vibrant late-night social scene: anyone heading to Tyneside is in for a treat. Assuming the weather plays along, it will make Twickenham feel like Madame Tussauds.It might come as a surprise to many, therefore, that the future of Europe’s elite club competition is not yet entirely guaranteed beyond 2022. The entire road map of domestic and international rugby is in the process of being reassessed and no one currently knows where...
Freddie Burns’s showboating blunder that cost Bath the match is a reminder to players to stop behaving like 12-year-oldsAt least Freddie Burns is in good company. Virtually every sport, at some stage, has produced a fall guy whose ill-advised showboating has gone viral and reminded us all of the value of humility. For Burns read Leon Lett of the Dallas Cowboys, guilty of a similar error in the 1993 Super Bowl, or the great American jockey Bill Shoemaker, who stood up in his stirrups to celebrate victory on Gallant Man in the 1957 Kentucky Derby only to be misjudge the finishing line and finish second.The word “showboat” came from the United States where gaudy river steamers used to act as...
Friday’s European Challenge Cup final in Bilbao is a revival of a fixture that changed the game in the 1880s and quickened fans’ pulses in the 1970sRetro is in for football’s World Cup this summer. A number of kits pay homage to the past and, if rugby union is not getting nostalgic for a time when the game tended to be played on dilapidated mudflats, this Friday night will see the resumption of one of the game’s most historic fixtures.Cardiff Blues play Gloucester in the final of the European Challenge Cup in Bilbao, 134 years after the teams (the Blues were Cardiff then) first met, at the Arms Park. In an era when there were no points and a goal...
Scarlets’ lionhearts stir the soul, the group of death lives up to its billing and Saracens’ demolition of Northampton leaves Franklin’s Gardens stunnedIt is clear the force is not with a side when they become news, intentionally or not, for the “unfair”. Wasps did not appreciate their five-day turnaround for a date at Ulster. This would have been less newsworthy had they not been labouring under a horrible injury list, which was promptly extended by three more during the first half. Ulster’s subsequent 19-9 win felt as if it had been coming all week. All of which places great moment on their home encounter with Harlequins next weekend. Quins have already won in Coventry this season and they are going...
This season’s Champions Cup attendances will hopefully be up after a World Cup-hit 2015 while a high calibre of clubs are set for the Challenge CupThe 2016-17 European rugby campaign is upon us. Good luck to all competing clubs and, in particular, travelling fans from the UK as they prepare to exchange their weakened sterling for euros. Half a week’s wages for a round of gaseous French lager? Had the referendum literature mentioned the possibility of teetotal rugby weekends there might have been a different outcome. Related: European Champions Cup 2016-17: pool-by-pool guide | Paul Rees Related: Owen Farrell likely to return for Saracens against Toulon after injury Continue reading...