Fiji, Samoa and Tonga export masses of rugby talent but need more resource sharing and better domestic managementBehind sugar, rugby players are the second biggest export from Fiji. Combined with Samoa and Tonga they provide almost 20% of the world’s professional rugby players. Fiji are Olympic champions in sevens and just won the HSBC World Sevens Series again. Pacific Island players regularly sweep up the end-of-year awards in all the top leagues for player of the season and nearly every top try-scorer in those leagues is from the Pacific. So it’s a no-brainer, right? Slap what’s left of your recently remortgaged mortgage on a Fiji v Samoa World Cup final on 2 November? Maybe don’t do that. Their actual fortunes...
Portrush has finally hosted the Open but, as Ireland make their Test bow at Lord’s, they must do so as guinea pigs – is it a snub?It’s a wonder the Irish are so well known for their hospitality when you consider the state of some of the people they have to welcome. The very same day play got under way in the 148th Open the papers here led with the Boris Johnson line, first reported in the Financial Times, about Leo Varadkar, “why isn’t he called Murphy like all the rest of them?” Add it to the list, along with Iain Duncan Smith’s blithe dismissal of “this Irish stuff”, Karen Bradley’s blunt admission of her own ignorance of the difference...
The club has railed against the WRU’s ‘Project Reset’ and the courts could become involved in a fight for their identityWhen Mike James, for a few minutes longer the chairman of the Ospreys, sat down at lunchtime on Tuesday to talk to his Welsh Rugby Union counterpart, Gareth Davies, his mind could have drifted back 20 years, to when the two were allies against the governing body in one of the many bitter battles waged in the country in the professional era.James was then bankrolling Swansea while Davies was the chief executive of Cardiff, two clubs who that season rebelled against the WRU by arranging friendly matches against England’s leading clubs rather than take part in competitions organised by their...
The South African’s challenge to the IAAF’s testosterone rules could be as profound and far-reaching as the Bosman rulingIt is just one case, brought by just one athlete, against a single organisation. But Caster Semenya’s challenge to the IAAF’s testosterone rules for female athletes, which begins on Monday at the court of arbitration for sport, may yet be as far-reaching and profound as the Bosman ruling.It is not only that the court holds the career of the brilliant Olympic 800m champion in its hands. That, alone, is a weighty enough responsibility. But it also knows that its ruling, which will be announced next month, will be pored over by other organisations trying to wade through the murky waters where gender,...
Elite level athletes and organisations have benefited from unfettered access to Europe; few are fully prepared for the ramifications of whatever happens on 29 MarchIt was during the death throes of the British empire that the penultimate high commissioner of Aden, Richard Turnbull, forecast: “When it finally sinks beneath the waves of history it will leave behind only two monuments: one is the game of association football, the other the expression ‘fuck off’.” How some Brexiters relish lobbing that expletive at the European Union, despite the pernicious risks to the national game and the rest of British sport.Privately, some inside the Olympic and Paralympic system fear Brexit will make it harder to attract the best coaching talent. Others also warn...