Sale v Worcester should have been off when Covid-19 outbreak was confirmed. Instead the title race was put before healthAnyone visiting Sale’s training ground in Carrington last Thursday, the day when coronavirus tests were conducted, would have had to isolate when the results came back the following day and showed the club had a Covid-19 outbreak, with 16 players and three staff testing positive.They would have had to isolate, that is, if contacted by the NHS Test and Trace service which, given what is happening throughout the country, was not that likely to happen. And yet the Sale players who tested negative, and who had been mingling and training with those who were found to have the virus, were not...
From the best-run Premiership club to the grassroots, all parts of the game are in peril but not all its ills can be pinned on CovidThere is nothing quite like a pandemic for exposing hard, uncomfortable truths. And, give or take stand-up comedians, nightclub owners and first year university students, few face a bleaker midwinter than sports that live or die by people entering their stadiums each weekend. The word “catastrophe” usually jars in the context of mere athletic pursuits but increasingly, in rugby, there is no ducking it.It is almost impossible to exaggerate the depth of the abyss into which much of the game – professional and amateur – in Britain and Ireland is now staring. At every level...
Mark Durden-Smith and David Flatman’s blend of serious analysis and humour strikes the right note on Channel 5Welcome back to the show. Only 3,500 people, carefully spread out around the Twickenham Stoop, will be allowed in to watch Harlequins play Bath this weekend but at least it is a start. For English rugby, and all who make a living from the game, the return of paying supporters is a time for tightly crossed fingers and cautious optimism that, financially, the worst might soon be over.There is a bigger picture, too. Club rugby does not just have to woo back its traditional constituents and their all-important wallets. To pay the bills it also needs to entice more floating voters and, ideally,...
Clubs playing in middle of the week during the Six Nations would boost viewing figures and attract new demographicThe first round of midweek Premiership matches was a qualified success. There were some terrible matches, some decent matches and one exceptional clash, between Bristol and Exeter, and while there are a number of reasons why some of what we saw will not live long in the memory, I have seen enough to form the opinion that midweek matches should become a permanent fixture.That is not to say for one minute that players should be regularly playing three fixtures in a just over a week – one of the main reasons some matches have been low on quality is that the players...
The Rugby Against Racism campaign was belatedly born this week, 25 years after the game turned professional and thanks in the main to the raised awareness brought by the Black Lives Matter movementBlack lives matter. Those three words – a statement distilled to its purest form – are the best explanation I can give as to why I will take a knee when rugby restarts on Friday night. I am totally aware that the statement has been politicised and I strongly disagree with some of the things the organisation stands for, but there is one reason why pretty much every household has developed a greater understanding and awareness of anti-racism recently: the Black Lives Matter movement.I also want to clear...