Rugby

Perfection in sport: unattainable, but sometimes you can come close. Moments, people, actions you never tire of watching: Roger Federer’s backhand; Virat Kohli’s cover drive; Mo Farah’s acceleration off the final bend or little Lionel Messi dribbling through a crowded penalty area as if his opponents were shadows; Fred Couples’s sensuous golf swing. Last weekend another moment: the long pass from England’s Owen Farrell to Elliot Daly for that decisive try in the final minutes at the Principality Stadium. This 25ft rocket, superbly timed and delayed long enough for Farrell to be in touching distance of the defensive battery, was so quick and flat it left the defence flummoxed. It

Perfection in sport: unattainable, but sometimes you can come close. Moments, people, actions you never tire of watching: Roger Federer’s backhand; Virat Kohli’s cover drive; Mo Farah’s acceleration off the final bend or little Lionel Messi dribbling through a crowded penalty area as if his opponents were shadows; Fred Couples’s sensuous golf swing. Last weekend another moment: the long pass from England’s Owen Farrell to Elliot Daly for that decisive try in the final minutes at the Principality Stadium. This 25ft rocket, superbly timed and delayed long enough for Farrell to be in touching distance of the defensive battery, was so quick and flat it left the defence flummoxed. It

The name of Jozef Venglos won’t mean much to most of us apart from a few Aston Villa completists with long memories, and possibly Prince William, though by all accounts the amiable Czech is a pretty stand-up guy. He was also the first foreigner to take charge of an English top-flight club. It wasn’t much of a success, and his year at Villa (1990-91) left them two places above the relegation zone. (Sound familiar?) Now of course you can’t move for foreign managers: on the style pages, the food pages, the news pages — and jabbing each other in the technical areas. It’s not a great time for English managers

The return heavyweight bout between England and Wales lived up to its billing as the most thumping rugby match of the Six Nations. It was also the perfect result for both sides. England’s win brings the Grand Slam in sight, but Wales get to feel smug that they could have won if they had played on for a couple more minutes against an England team clutching at air with the bench emptied and the two leaders, Dylan Hartley and Chris Robshaw, withdrawn. There’s nothing the Welsh like more in the absence of a win than claiming the moral high ground. In a masterstroke of man-management, the England coach Eddie Jones

Last December it was reported that Ampleforth and Rugby schools both have new on-site bars, where pupils are allowed to drink in moderation. ‘We are trying to create somewhere where [the pupils] can let their hair down but we’re all on call,’ said David Lambon, the school’s first lay headmaster. ‘It’s a fine balance with children of that age — they need to be treated like adults and feel independent.’ The only shock was that this was presented as news. Booze and sex are the death and taxes of adolescence: they’re unavoidable, so you might as well find a way to manage them. Schools have had provision around alcohol since

My son is only 12 yet he has already suffered a fractured skull and a concussion from playing rugby. After his second serious head injury last year, I told him he had to stop playing. That was hard, both for him and for me but I was adamant: I wasn’t going to let him risk another serious head injury, not at his age when his skull was still growing, his brain was still developing and we had no idea what the long-term effects of such injuries might be. But don’t, please, leap to the conclusion that this is another one of those articles bemoaning the dangers of rugby and calling

Today, I have joined 70 doctors and academics in writing to the government calling for a ban on tackling in rugby matches, saying that injuries from this ‘high-impact collision sport’ can have lifelong consequences for children. I speak from both professional and personal experience. I remember as if it were yesterday, that autumn afternoon 11 years ago when my son’s school phoned me at work to tell me my child had been injured and hospitalised for a second time while playing rugby. I was sickened, upset, anxious and angry. School should be a safe place for children. The first time my son was injured the school had described it as ‘bad luck’ and promised

Back in 1882, exactly 100 years before I was born, the Four Nations rugby competition was formed. It was originally contested between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and the fortunes of the different teams have varied through the years. Scotland and England shared early successes, but with the turn of the century came numerous changes. Four became five with the addition of the French — but the team didn’t have the same flair that we know well from the modern game. The French struggled, winning only once in their first five years — how my heart bleeds for them! War left the Five Nations on the sidelines, but when it

Not since Walter Palmer, a cudddly Minnesota dentist, put down his drill and vanished off the face of the earth having made sure that Cecil the Lion took a crossbow bolt for the team, has there been a disappearance quite like it. I refer of course to Craig Joubert, the hapless Durban-born referee last seen leaving scorch marks in the Twickenham turf as he sprinted for safety after mistakenly (as it turns out) awarding the Australians a penalty in the last minute of the Rugby World Cup quarter-final against Scotland. Now Joubert has been chucked under the bus by World Rugby, the governing body, who agree that he shouldn’t have

The Scots do not know what to do. For once, they have a justified grievance. In recent years, this once-proud nation has been bawling and belly-aching and girning over fictitious complaints to such an extent that Wodehouse’s crack about the ray of sunshine and the Scotsman with a grievance was out of date. It seemed as if all Scotsmen had a grievance at all times. Tam o’ Shanter’s beldame nursed her wrath to keep it warm. But poor Kate could be forgiven, knowing that her blethering, blustering, drunken blellum of a husband would be getting fou with Souter Johnny. The Scottish Nationalists have neither the justification nor the fun. Now,

Why do lefties hate rugby union so much? Not all of them, of course. There are one or two who enjoy the sport, but the majority loathe it. Tomorrow marks the start of the rugby World Cup, which is being hosted by England. You can be sure there will be plenty of moaning about the supposedly ‘elite’ sport. In 2013, Ian Stewart, a Labour party member and blogger, wrote in an article that he was partial to rugby, an admission he conceded many of his comrades would find ‘as outrageous as professing a liking for bullfighting’. People, perhaps, like David Bowden, associate director of the Institute of Ideas, who has

Sebastian Coe’s new job as head of world athletics will be a heck of a lot easier thanks to the outstanding World Championships that just finished in Beijing. He has a chance to push athletics back to the forefront of world sport — after all, what is more thrilling than one human being trying to outrun another? The star was Usain Bolt, but even that unassuming giant of a man cannot go on for ever. Athletics needs characters, champions that people can identify with, preferably in the blue–riband events. And Beijing showed there are outstanding athletes waiting to step forward. Julius Yego took gold in the javelin with a throw