Financial woes and player welfare concerns abound but rugby union remains a compelling spectacle when everything clicksEvery now and again on social media a video clip will emerge of a lonely surfer trying to catch a skyscraper-high wave off the coast of Portugal. Time it right and the long ride down is truly epic. Get it slightly wrong and the consequences of that misjudgment do not bear thinking about.In many ways the 2022-23 Premiership season feels broadly similar. Increasingly there are jagged financial rocks everywhere and the game’s physicality continues to make it unsuitable for the faint of heart. Continue reading...
Tigers and Sarries are favourites, but Saints’ brilliant backs and Quins’ 2021 heroics mean nothing can be taken for grantedWelcome to The Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly (and free) rugby union newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version every Tuesday, just pop your email in below:Sometimes it is worth remembering how swiftly things can change, in club rugby as well as politics. This time a year ago, for example, fourth-placed Harlequins were still seen as distant long shots to win the Gallagher Premiership, only 10,000 could watch the final because of Covid-19 and the United Rugby Championship, containing South Africa’s top sides, had yet to be launched. Continue reading...
Four key questions before leaders Leicester travel to champions Harlequins and Saracens host Exeter this weekendThe biggest compliment you can currently pay Leicester is that they are playing like an international team. Steve Borthwick has worked for long enough at the right hand of Eddie Jones in Japan and England to know the importance of being tough to play against as well as supremely fit. He has also gathered some shrewd tactical lieutenants around him and the uplift in Tigers’ efficiency has been conspicuous. Continue reading...
The Harlequins fly-half endured the worst of moments but elite sport always requires an ability to bounce back from failureWelcome to The Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly (and free) rugby union newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version every Tuesday, just pop your email in below.Playing top-level sport, in the end, is less about talent than the ability to bounce back from failure. “I’ve failed over and over again in my life and that’s why I succeed,” said the great Michael Jordan, who knew a little about turning talent into consistent achievement. There is not a single great athlete who, at one stage or another, has not experienced a jolt of gut-twisting dismay. Continue reading...
This season’s Premiership winners battled back from the brink time and time again before vanquishing Exeter in a hectic finalIt goes without saying this was an epic. Another. And in this era of the comeback, who should be crowned as the English champions but a team that had seemed in pieces only a few months ago, their coach gone, their form ruined? Harlequins became English rugby’s unlikeliest champions – not the first to prevail from fourth place, perhaps, but undoubtedly the first to have found themselves in such seemingly hopeless positions throughout this season, right up to last weekend and the 28-0 deficit that needs no introduction.Where is Paul Gustard now? Well, polishing some unlikely silverware of his own, actually,...