By Alan Dymock IT’S NOT long until the Aviva Premiership season starts and we’ve only just stopped nursing our British and Irish Lions hangovers. However, with the start of the…
Owain Jones
Top 14: Clash of the big spenders with Toulon v Racing
By Alan Dymock AS CLASHES go, Toulon versus Racing Metro draws more attention that John McCririck’s wardrobe. The two superstar-stables do battle in the second round of France’s Top 14…
Rugby Championship: Minimal changes for Round 2
By Alan Dymock AS INEVITABLE as the front of the newspapers showing flaxen-haired teenage girls jumping for joy on school-results day, the big guns have made almost no changes for…
Top 14: Toulouse coach going the way of the Gunners
By Gavin Mortimer IF THERE’S one man who knows how Arsene Wenger is feeling this week it’s Toulouse coach Guy Noves. Like the Arsenal manager, Noves ended Saturday afternoon with…
RWC2015: Canada in driving seat heading into decider with USA
By Alan Dymock INSURMOUNTABLE IT ain’t, but the USA Eagles have a tough task ahead, overcoming the odds and qualifying outright for Rugby World Cup 2015 after losing 27-9 to…
Beware the return of Juan Smith
By Alan Dymock AS RUGBY becomes more competitive, more sponsor-driven, more about the trophies than the humans involved, there is a chance that some folk could get chewed up and…
Rugby Championship: fly-half Injuries change All Blacks
By Alan Dymock THE AUSSIES have bombed the conveyer belt. After the Wallabies bumbled and bled during the Bledisloe massacre, falling 47-29 to the All Black in Sydney, they can…
Rugby Championship: What the locals are saying before Round 1
By Alan Dymock AS OUTSIDERS we can analyse and chirp and break down what we can of the Rugby Championship from our cosy hemisphere, perhaps tainted by a little bit…
Gaining Six Nations release from the Top 14
By Alan Dymock FRANCE IS a place of cruel and lucrative circumstance, we are told. A place where teams allegedly have to balance slugging it out like dribbling Neanderthals all…
The hardest men in rugby
By Alan Dymock “CAN YOU pick a definitive list of rugby’s hard men?” is one of those nice innocuous questions – the kind that comes up in the pub, once…