I think most people are asking the same question with regards to Nick Easter, but Stuart Lancaster has a way of thinking and wants to set his own marker I guess – the word is that he is on the wrong side of 30. I don’t think his role in the 2011 World Cup and the subsequent report which came out helped his cause all that much.

I agree that the Rugby Championship is a more intense competition than the Six Nations, but you have to look further to explain why. The unions in the south retain huge control over their players by means of central contracting, so players can be protected from playing too many games and keeping them fresh.

In effect, the All Blacks are an elaborate club side with a second string (the Super 15 player base) and a third string (the Air New Zealand Cup). It is a system that obviously works, but at a financial price.

Whereas in England, for example, players are contracted to the club and the Union has to pay compensation for agreed match and training slots through out the year – they don’t have the same control which the centrally contracted players are used to.

Back to the point as I digress, will Jonny Wilkinson tour with the Lions? Personally, I don’t know if he will. As Toulon are his paymasters and the Lions won’t take anyone who joins the tour late, I have a funny feeling that he won’t be selected and that he’ll guide Toulon and their band of ‘galacticos’ to the Top 14 title.

PS. Brian O’Driscoll is a world class 13.

Of course Hightackle, I just read my comment and it did sound a bit militant! Apologies all around.

Jonny Wilkinson is a great. It’s just a massive shame that after the 2003 World Cup he was smashed by injuries and a run of bad luck that would break others.

He is by far the best defensive stand-off the game has ever seen, often doing the work of an open-side. And he still managed to muster 1,179 test points. Imagine if he didn’t have those four bad years of injuries?

The simple truth is that the Kiwis and Saffas never rate European players anyway, so it’s no surprise that these comments that ‘Poms over-rate their own’ are around. Then again, some boys up in Pretoria still think Naas Botha was God’s gift to the game so maybe we shouldn’t read too much into that…

It’s fairly insulting to stereotype every British citizen as cucumber sandwich eaters who long to live in Richmond and drink Pims. Nice, but totally wrong.

The issue of Britain and the constituent countries – and more specifically national identity – is interesting but where David, I feel, goes wrong is in the idea that Andy Murray almost is trapped into the idea that he has to represent Great Britain at certain events (such as the Olympics) at the expense of being represented or known as a Jock. Either way, if he is so against the idea of representing Britain in itself, then he should have chosen not to represent Team GB at the games – but of course he did and that probably suggests that he doesn’t give a toss.

What people fail to realise is that some people over here can choose to feel a pride in being both, say, Scottish and British. I’m a Cornishman, but I also feel immensely proud whenever the Union flag is raised.

What about Australia allowing the Aborigines entering a team into international sporting contests who don’t feel anything for the Australian flag nor Australia (in the European-settlers sense) either?

It does come down to identity and affiliation after all.

If that’s your argument Bill, then I’m sure if I dug into it then a Team England would still have beaten Australia in the medal tables at this games…

By reading this article, as a British person, I feel that this article is a big complement to our developing success over the past two Olympic games upto this point. By the government setting up UK Sport and using lottery funding to supplement the money pool from which sporting governing bodies can run their operations, it has improved standards a lot.

The use of foreign, and in particular Australian, coaches has been well documented. However, this is simply the case of using the best resources available to you in order to achieve certain goals. With £125 million of funding from the UK government being provided, they aren’t going to accept failure and subsequently the best coaches in the world need to be employed in order to achieve these desired goals.

I couldn’t give a toss where they are from – if a coach fulfils their role and justifies the expenditure with medals then that’s all that can be asked for. Even Troy Cooley is mentioned, but Duncan Fletcher was the head coach who took most of the plaudits. As with the current scenario, Andy Flower is the head coach and David Saker is the right hand man (a certain irony being that both right hand men were Australian and the head coaches being Zimbabwean). However, a world class coach has to enjoy the job or otherwise they’ll pack it up and leave for pastures new – and therefore deny the chances of a long term programme to be developed.

As I digress, the key is that international sport is a business, a political statement, a marketing tool and a way of demonstrating a nation’s power through diplomatic means. Where there is money to be made, and a coach who has the knowledge to impart on world class athletes, then there will always be an international exchange of coaches – wherever that may take them.

Britain is no different, and the investment appears to be paying off so far.

He’s a talented batsman but quite the melodramatic. I just wonder if the Delhi Daredevils or another IPL franchise gained test status that he’d play test cricket for them instead?

Maybe it can be explained by the ‘really round wheels’ that Dave Brailsford talked about. Funnily enough, the French team bought the joke and are ‘very interested in their methods’.

Put at its most basic form, the British cycling system employs the best coaches, cherry picks the best potential cyclists and uses their vast money from lottery funding and corporate sponsorship to its fullest extent – including using F1 technology in testing new bikes and materials.

The usual quip about drugs is way off the mark, with the testing procedures being the strictest they’ve ever been.

Heart of Sydney, you are correct when you mention the lottery programme which is funding our Team GB team. What is evident though is that it isn’t an accident or a one-off either – it has been a gradual but steady progressive path.

We came 4th in the medal table in Beijing and now we are currently 3rd here in London. There is a steady progressive path in place, and the Olympics have just gone mental here in the UK.

I’m not really knowledgeable about the Australian programme, but Ian Thorpe was a bit annoyed about the Australians’ performance – especially in the pool where they were expected to kill it from what I gather.

What would people say the Australian Olympic Committee and the sporting institutes like the AIS have to do to improve their performance – either at this Olympic meet or Rio de Janeiro in 2016?

The reason for the Rugby clips throughout the evening was due to the influence that Rugby Union had in the founding of the modern Olympic Games. It was Baron Pierre de Coubertin who was taken aback by the principles of the sport, and the concept of fair play and sportsmanship.

Maybe it was a good advert for the 2015 Rugby World Cup and the reintroduction of Rugby (albeit 7s) in 2016.

The funny thing is this: the Rugby World Cup is the world’s third largest sporting event in terms of viewer numbers. The Heineken Cup is more successful than ever with an annual profit of £40 million. The IRB has successfully won their bid for Olympic inclusion for Sevens.

If the laws were confusing, or boring – with the ‘yawnion’ phrase coming to mind – then how come there are more players playing than ever before as well as more people watching the game then ever before?

Something must be right in the formula.

I think, from over here in the UK, it has added an interest from the wider general public outside of traditional Rugby circles. He is a fairly well known ‘celebrity’ due to his romances with Kelly Brooke and other women, rather than his performances on the field. What that has done is pushed the Rebels name out to a wider audience and probably improved viewer numbers on Sky TV to watch Super Rugby on a Saturday morning.

That probably has earned the golden handshake itself.

Will he get anywhere near the England side at the moment? No chance. Moving to Sale isn’t a bad choice as such, but they aren’t a club brimming with current internationals and he would benefit from playing on the front foot. On top of that, he’s perfected the ‘turnstile’ tackling method…

The Top 14 is a very conservative league by standards, based on attrition and territory. Why? Because, like the Aviva Premiership, relegation costs a lot of money to the club – even more so in France as there is no salary cap and the budgets that clubs set can be immense (Toulouse’s budget is in the region of €15 million per season).

I think the Heineken Cup is the best club/provincial tournament in the world already. The finances it generates, and the Rugby it can produce, is wonderful and it’s just very very different to what the Southern Hemisphere offers. However, that’s merely my opinion.

When it comes to it, if a player feels he is worth so much for his services and a club comes along and offers an amount which he feels is fair then it’s difficult to turn it down.

And saying that, Toulon’s squad is looking quite fearsome this season although they’re only 3rd in the Top 14 behind Clermont (who lost to Leicester today) and Toulouse.

Spiro, you are nothing but an Anglophobe who has a very slanted take on things in my view.

If it hasn’t hit you, the Lions are touring Australia in less than two years time and they’ll bring how many visitors to your shores? And you refer to SANZAR holding all the economic cards? The truth is that Australia and New Zealand aren’t the key players in the market – the money is indeed in Europe and South Africa. What would happen if South Africa happened to take stock and decide that the more favourable timezones, travel distances and economic advantages of the Heineken Cup and Six Nations were to their suiting? More variety and more interest.

The Bledisloe Cup looks far more bleak.

I could accept your argument if it revolved around Bill Beaumont being a less suitable candidate than Lapasset. Indeed, Bernard Lapasset has done a very good job (not according to the ARU or NZRU, however). But your continued typecasting is old, boring and quite misguided.

Furthermore, your article is full of empty arguments without source which creates a unbalanced (and untruthful) statement. For example:

– “Apparently neither Beaumont nor Pickering (who like Beaumont sees himself as a future IRB chairman) took their demotions with very much grace. They were clearly angry and made threats to some of the delegates about the future of Lions tours to their countries if the trend against Home Union dominance of the IRB continues.”

Proof?

– “In the 1980s the ARU’s Sir Nicholas Shehadie and the NZRU’s Dick Littlejohn could not even get a meeting with Home Union officials to discuss the concept of a Rugby World Cup tournament. In the end, the NZRU and the ARU went ahead with the project themselves and carried all the monetary risks of the tournament in 1987”

Then why did a gentleman called John Kendall Carpenter (a ghastly English international) become a key figure on the organising committee when it was instigated by the Australians and New Zealanders?

Absolute legend.

His professionalism was unreal, and he is one of the best stand-offs to have played the game. I think he has been unfairly labelled as a one-dimensional player, which is obscene as some of his handling skills are incredible. Sonny Bill Williams reckons that Wilko’s skills are the best he’s ever worked with, which is quite something.

The impact he’s had in England, getting thousands to watch and play Rugby, is now being felt in France where he is a darling of the game playing for Toulon.

The truth is that Rugby League in general isn’t treated overly seriously because the administrators were too narrow minded to expand it when it had the opportunity. In the 1980s and early 1990s it was a big sport in terms of TV ratings and kudos, whereas Rugby Union was seen an an elitist sport.

The shoe is firmly on the other foot now – when it turned professional in 1995, Rugby Union shirked the middle-class tag and quickly rose to become the number two winter sport behind Football (which is another reason why I think the Super League switched to summer games to avoid the competition). The average attendance of the Aviva Premiership is roughly the same as the NPower Championship (English football’s second tier, one below the Premiership).

It’s funny that fans were booing him, as Thurston is a quality player with all the skills which mark him out as world class. It reminds me of when Sam Tomkins was booed by his own crowd at Headingley when England played the Exiled – maybe it’s no wonder that so many English players see Union or the NRL as a viable switch if talented youngsters so much vitriol for mostly petty reasons.

League in England has shot itself in the foot, and if you go on Wikipedia, look at the Engage Super League and observe the location of the clubs within the UK and you’ll see you could throw a blanket over them for proximity to each other.

I’d put it this way; Australia is Rugby League…

Full of humour, indeed =)

It would seem the Australian Rugby Union have badly neglected the issue of scrummaging, and in the past have actively promoted the demotion of the scrum to become a mere restart of play rather than a competitive phase of the game. The level of the Wallabies scrum isn’t good enough, and is distinctly average.

The depth of the player pool in Australia isn’t as large as other countries, but you virtually cannot win a Rugby game without securing ball at the set-piece. I mention virtually because the Wallabies do have this crazy knack of winning some games on the back foot.

Maybe there should be a fundamental change within the heart of Australian rugby? Just imagine if David Pocock was in a pack going forwards, and imagine how much it would make a change for Will Genia and Quade Cooper to be bossing the gain line on the front foot? Bloody scary in my opinion.

So, a message to the Australian Rugby Union: Forwards do win Rugby matches (especially at Test level).

http://ht.ly/6Yd0Y

Here’s a link posted on the BBC website which goes over the ruling and a case study of how it applies. Being a referee I totally agree with what they say. Regardless of whether he drove him into the ground or not the issue of the tackle being dangerous underpins everything.

Could you imagine if Alain Rolland didn’t take action? He would have been whipped by Paddy O’Brien and probably lose the opportunity to referee another potential World Cup final. He had no option in my view.

I don’t see where the confusion is arising. He knew as soon as he lifted Vincent Clerc’s legs he was on dodgy ground, and everyone knows the IRB directives about dump tackles nowadays. Straight red every time.

Bryce Lawrence isn’t a test standard whistler. He’s too focussed on what he looks like on the TV camera instead of fading in the background and allowing the players to play the game.

And as for awarding the Wallabies a scrum after Horwill was totally offside and saying “the ball was out” is beyond me. Everyone knows that when a ruck has formed then so does an offside line. Crazy stuff, I was shaking my head in disbelief when he said it.

I hope when he chats to his referee assessor tomorrow he’ll get a good telling off, because as Francois Pienaar said on ITV (UK television), those decisions at the latter stages of the tournament could result in gigantic consequences.

The worrying thing for the Wallabies is two-fold: their lack of consistency is killing them and the fact that they couldn’t produce a Plan B when Ireland had them under pressure.

The set-piece was a disaster, and unfortunately Australia will always have a reputation for fielding dodgy front-fives. Quade Cooper has proven that he is over-rated (in my opinion) and that when the pressure is raised he tries things that just don’t come off.

In terms of being outpowered up front, I’d say you were lucky you didn’t face a strong English or French pack on the steamroll. Bryce Lawrence should’ve carded Kepu for continually bringing the scrum down.

The funny thing is that people slate Northern Hemisphere rugby for being muscular, bland and rigid. Well, that’s knock-out Rugby full-stop at the end of the day.

No, I do apologise for the last post of mine. It was a bit short and borne out of my tiredness. But I’m not a troll as all the things I pointed out were legitimate.

But like a previous poster said, the notion of a hit in the scrummage is slowly destroying the whole process. It is being turned into a power exercise where the principle is to overwhelm your opponent. But in the scrum, you need a certain amount of collaboration in order for the scrummage to stay up. One of the great ironies…

About a year ago I received some coaching from an ex-England lock called Nigel Horton (who also coached the England and 1997 Lions scrummage). He puts the majority of the blame on Jacques Fouroux in the early 1980s, the French scrum half-turned-coach who was obsessed with blitzing the opposition through sheer power. He eventually fielded a front row of three props (such as Gerard Cholley and Robert Paparembourde) and gargantuan back rowers (such as Jean Pierre Bastiat). They were closet professionals in the heady world of French club rugby at a time when the IRB and the rugby world were staunchly amateur.

The All Blacks later took the idea forward of winning the ball on the hit. If I’m correct, the front row of Dowd, Fitzpatrick and Brown would engage and simultaneously strike for the ball on the hit and therefore making the scrum into a virtual non-contest due to the virtue of efficiency – around the 1996 Tri-Nations…

However, a hooker still has to strike for the ball. Otherwise it’d mean that every win would be off a crooked feed, and it’ll be difficult because the IRB directives have specifically stated to referees to clamp down on scrum-halves bending the laws on a straight feed into the scrummage.

Once again, I apologise for my previous post. Yours in Rugby..

Are you serious? Regarding this as a textbook for scrummaging play? I’d imagine most people up here would be wetting themselves as it’s quite comical in some parts.

For a start, why would a Loosehead realistically want to bore in on a Hooker? The Loosehead is aiming to keep the channel clear and strong to allow for the Hooker to strike the ball.

And the hit isn’t a dark art, it’s a phase of the scrum whereby you try and engage quicker than the opposition with the idea of having more momentum when the scrum is in progress. Barely a dark art at all.

And as for James Slipper being the victim of Castrogiovanni boring in on him? Get real! The Wallabies front-row have always been known for holding on the engagement in the first place for decades. The pure truth is that Martin Castrogiovanni is one of the most destructive tightheads in the world due to his technical and physical prowess. And if he goes in on the hooker? Well, if you get away with it then that’s great play. It’s all about pushing the boundaries at that level.

Now, for people who wish to learn a bit about scrummaging – get out and do it. There’s nothing like first hand experience. But don’t ask Matt Dunning or Al Baxter after that 2005 humiliation at Twickenham…