Watching England in the Six Nations was a reminder of how much football can learn from rugby, cycling and othersThe ball was sent long, launched off the right boot in the hope of getting his team up the other end to put pressure on opposition defenders. Possession was lost, though, and the visitors took control, quickly regained the territory and nearly scored on the counter. The fan next to me bemoaned this waste of an attack from the hosts, claiming short passes at speed are a better way of playing than that “lazy” style.All this took place at Twickenham, where it was fascinating to analyse the differences and similarities between rugby union and football. I spent last Sunday at England’s...
The former Wasps flanker has had a rough couple of years but roared back with a standout performance at TwickenhamNearly two and a half years ago England claimed a dominant victory here against Georgia in the best-forgotten Autumn Nations Cup. It was a match memorable for little other than England handing first Test starts to Jack Willis and Ollie Lawrence and proceeding to maul their opposition to death. So much has changed in the ensuing years and months – not least both players losing their jobs – yet equally, there are considerable parallels to this victory over Italy that represent a smallish step in the right direction for England under Steve Borthwick.Both Willis – who was making his first start...
There were glimpses of attacking promise, but the new coach watched his side lose their fourth straight Six Nations openerTwickenham felt a little different on Saturday afternoon. It was the same walk from the station, by the same stalls on the Whitton Road, past the same faces, under the same sort of sombre February weather, to watch an England team made up, in the large part, of the same names that have been on and off the team-sheets here for the last few years. It was the air around the place that had changed. People were unsure exactly what to expect from the afternoon ahead, except that, whatever else, it would at least be something unlike what they’ve seen from...
Steve Borthwick’s men will run out on Saturday in one of the worst rugby shirts of all time. It doesn’t have to be this wayThe comedian Robert Newman once discussed why England’s football team wear white. Having invented football, he said, the English got to pick colours first. So they chose white, freighted with meaning and power, pure and existential.Newman didn’t cite the greatest novel of all, Moby-Dick, but I will. Herman Melville wrote a whole chapter about white, the colour of his whale. He wrote of the “certain nameless terror” instilled by visions in white, whether sharks, bears, Death on his pale horse or even Iron Mike Teague. I might have added the last one. Continue reading...
Having made a monumental PR cock-up, administrators must consider the game as a whole, including grassrootsEveryone makes mistakes. Apparently the occasional misprint has even been known to creep into the Guardian. All of us are human and rugby union is a famously imperfect sport. But it has to be said the Rugby Football Union has had better weeks. On a self-destructive scale of one to 10 the general consensus has been that the guardians of the game in England scored, at best, a big fat zero.It was such a howler that some are simply treating it as an aberration. Maybe it was just a cock-up. But if you are releasing a bombshell statement from the RFU Council – in this...