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 national coach says the Championship is ‘something I don’t really worry about’, but the state of a league that helps to shape tomorrow’s stars should be a concernPeople often wrongly assume rugby union is defined by weeks such as this. England v France, all the “le Crunch” hoopla, the wider Six Nations equation, the millions watching on television. It matters, of course it does, but – as any French supporter will tell you – it barely scratches the surface of what the game is truly about.It is a bit like announcing the only wine worth drinking is the stuff they pour (or used to) in Paris’s fancier restaurants. If, on the other hand, you hail from a small southern...
We know our time in English rugby’s second tier will be tough, with Ealing and the rest preparing to take down a big nameWhen the referee, Mike Hudson, called time at the end of Coventry’s victory over Doncaster Knights at Castle Park on Saturday 14 March, none of us knew that 358 days would pass before the next competitive game was played in the Greene King IPA Championship. It’s been a long, and frustrating, wait for players and fans, but the new season finally kicks off this weekend with my own club, Saracens, joining the league for the first time.English rugby’s second-tier clubs will be excited at the prospect of denting the ambition of the three-time European champions and welcoming...
The irresistible Anglo-French affairs of Racing v Saracens and Exeter v Toulouse are the pick of this weekend’s sport and can puncture myth international rugby is the only show in townOccasionally it is worth pausing for a moment and asking why people prefer to watch certain team sports compared to others. Football, for example, is easy to understand and truly global, its club game often more gripping and higher quality than its international counterpart. Cricket works well on television and has a range of formats to suit all tastes. Rugby – union and league – can be more compelling than either but is nowhere near as good at displaying the best of itself on a consistent basis.Partly it is cultural...
A fired-up Saracens will present a formidable test in Dublin but they may be the least of the Irish province’s problemsSuccess in rugby is generally mined from the painful depths of failure. Look at the most recent European champions and a glint of silverware has been the product of years of toil. Saracens, champions for three of the past four seasons, endured a three-year period when they regularly finished second in big knockout games. Leinster, currently seen as firm Champions Cup favourites, finished rock bottom of their qualifying pool only four years ago.It is almost as if all high-achieving club sides require a lengthy incubation period, with the exception of big-spending Toulon who remain one of only two teams –...