Gloucester and Wales wing suffered during the Six Nations but is determined to get back to his best at his clubDuring this year’s Six Nations, lightning did not strike twice. Whereas Louis Rees-Zammit blazed his way through his debut championship in 2021, he failed to score a try and was axed for Wales’s key match against England. His Gloucester director of rugby, George Skivington, sums up nicely the predicament the 21-year-old winger found himself in: “When you’re one of the poster boys of the game, everybody knows when you’ve been dropped.”It represented a first major setback for Rees-Zammit, the youngest member of last year’s British & Irish Lions squad, but one that he dwelled on for all of five minutes....
Participation has plummeted, finances are dire and the structure of the men’s game below the Premiership is brokenNothing lasts forever, as numerous proud old English rugby clubs can testify. Orrell, West Hartlepool, Wakefield, Waterloo, Rugby Lions, London Welsh … all of them have been in the top two leagues in the country in the past 25 years before disappearing off the radar when financial reality struck. The downward spiral, once it commences, can be desperately hard to arrest.Which begs a question: how will English domestic club rugby look 10 or 20 years from now? Here’s a fun piece of trivia for you: a time capsule was buried in Twickenham’s South Stand in 2006-07 containing, among other things, predictions of the...
With tourists resting, youngsters have opportunities to grab, but old hands such as Cipriani and Vunipola can make a markIf rugby union is increasingly a young person’s game there have been some noteworthy exceptions to the rule of late. Morne Steyn and Quade Cooper have a combined age of 70, but both veteran fly-halves have kicked decisive late penalties in the dying stages of Test matches within the past six weeks. Their returns partly speak to the lack of younger talent in South Africa and Australia respectively, but equally Steyn and Cooper were able to provide their sides with an assuredness that only comes with age.Which brings us on to the opening weeks of the Premiership season, which gets under...
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,...
Shrinking salary cap, smaller squad sizes and cheap academy graduates mean long-serving pros could become a dying breedGood night and good luck to the loyal 30-plus Premiership players hanging up their battered old boots this week. For long-serving professionals such as Matt Banahan at Gloucester, Matt Cox at Worcester, Bath’s Ross Batty and Newcastle’s John Hardie, the slow limp into rugby’s twilight is the simple bit: here’s wishing the departing stalwarts every happiness wherever life takes them next.The regular season’s conclusion, though, is also a suitable moment to reflect on the chances of their successors enjoying similar longevity. How many more Chris Pennell, for example, will there be in future? A one-club man who made his debut for his local...