News

If Lawrence Dallaglio wants to conclude his career with a trophy, he will have
to do it the hard way. London Wasps, ever realistic, believed that the EDF
Energy Cup was the competition most likely to bring them silverware this
season and send their captain into retirement in appropriate style, but
Leicester put a spoke into that particular wheel on Saturday with a 34-24
victory.

Steve Meehan, the Bath director of rugby, had to order his players to
celebrate on Saturday after victory put them back at the top of the Guinness
Premiership. At the end, after Peter Short, Bath’s replacement flanker, had
bundled Declan Danaher, the London Irish flanker, into touch a metre from
their tryline, there was only relief. Bath had been winning easily, but were
forced to hold on grimly in the last 15 minutes of a 19-16 win.

Harlequins’ run of good form continued with a 28-15 bonus-point win at the
Memorial Stadium yesterday, their fifth victory in six games. It lifted them
above Sale Sharks into fourth place and play-off territory, although Dean
Richards, their director of rugby, was wary of eulogising about a young side
with an average age of only 24.

It has been a tough few months for Scotland’s professional players as the optimism built up during the World Cup evaporated. For the Edinburgh contingent, at least, just getting back to their club and back to winning ways with their five-try demolition of Connacht has gone a long way to lifting the gloom.

Despite a typical show of defiance from Ian Barnes, their coach, Edinburgh Academicals are going to have to win their final game and hope other teams do them a favour if they are to avoid the spectre of their 150th anniversary season being ruined by relegation from the top flight of the Scottish Hydro Electric Premiership.

You cannot keep a good man down and Shane Williams is having the time of his
life on the left wing, whether it be for Wales or for the Ospreys. The force
is undeniably with him. Whatever he touches has the mark of a player at the
top of his game, playing with confidence and a touch of class.

Jim Mallinder, the Northampton director of rugby, believes that his club are now fully equipped to compete in the Guinness Premiership next season after their promotion from National League One. Their 18-8 victory over second-placed Exeter Chiefs on Saturday clinched a prompt return to the top flight and Mallinder believes the problems that led to relegation last season have been rectified.

THE fires of the Wales Grand Slam burned on at the Millennium Stadium as the
Ospreys came storming through against Saracens to reach the final of the EDF
Energy Cup for a second year – and they will face the same opponents in
Leicester.

”I think that a load of crap is spoken about rugby, by people who want
to sound clever. You can get bogged down with nuances and your head can
spin. The game is more simple than that.” That was Martin Johnson, just over
a year ago, when he was still deciding where and when, and in what capacity,
he would reenter live rugby.

Danny Cipriani may be English rugby’s hottest property, but he was upstaged in
this EDF Energy Cup semi-final battle of the Premiership heavyweights by
Andy Goode, an England reject whose once stocky frame earned him the
nickname of “Andy Food” among his teammates. However, this was no disgrace
as Cipriani kept Wasps in the hunt with two spectacular tries, and was only
overshadowed because the new, slim-line Goode orchestrated the Tigers
superbly throughout, unpicking the Wasps defence so effectively that this
victory was much more comprehensive than the four tries apiece scoreline
indicated.

THIS has been a bruising week for Brian Ashton. The little rugby men of the
management committee who, like spoilt children, are crying for a big name to
run their national team want Ashton out and Martin Johnson in full charge.
Whoever takes control must recognise June’s tour to New Zealand as a fresh
start, not a continuation of the Six Nations campaign, which itself should
not have been the extension of the World Cup into which it misguidedly
evolved.

Martin Johnson, one of the most inspirational and iconic figures ever produced
in British sport, is considering this weekend whether to take over the
running of the England national rugby team, lock stock and barrel, with the
power to appoint his own coaching team and back-up staff, and having the
final say in team selection.

IN THE only Guinness Premiership game of the day, Bath edged out London Irish
to go top of the table and deny Mike Catt a happy return to The Rec. Catt
broke his nose playing against Gloucester a fortnight ago, but the former
Bath star wasn’t going to let that stop him from playing here one last time.

It is Thursday afternoon, four days before Easter, and Wasps’ training ground
at Acton in west London feels like the West End. Women hang bunting from the
ceiling – one of their number is having a party; James Haskell breezes into
reception, stopping and talking; Josh Lewsey looks out at the rain and the
muck of the practice pitches and says it was the facilities that made him
sign on for one more year.

When the end came, it was swift and it was dignified. No blood on the hotel
carpet, no swinging doors. Eddie O’Sullivan didn’t even have to leave his
home in Moylough, County Galway.

Australia will complete their European tour next season with an historic match
at Wembley Stadium against the Barbarians and are also hinting heavily at a
grand-slam tour of Britain and Ireland in 2009.

No one should undervalue Wales’s success in winning this year’s RBS Six
Nations Championship. From failing to qualify for the knockout phase of the
World Cup less than six months ago to grand-slam heroes is a giant stride
and the nature of the rugby they are playing suggests that they can
challenge South Africa when they play the world champions in June.

Hope blown apart. Hope slowly being rebuilt. It can never be the same, once again for the Scotland team and supporters who went into the RBS Six Nations Championship daring to dream of honours and finished it by escaping the wooden spoon by just two points over a five-match campaign.

One hundred years, almost to the day, after winning the first grand slam,
Wales won their tenth and the euphoria will sustain the country’s power
supplies for weeks. The transformation in fortunes, not only since the World
Cup last September but from a dire first half against England at Twickenham
on the first day of this RBS Six Nations Championship, has been remarkable
and heart-warming.

The sooner England double their quota of Dannys, the sooner England’s back
line will have the pace to frighten any team in the world. Danny Care, the
21-year-old scrum half, scored the decisive try yesterday as Harlequins beat
another team above them by 22-16 and moved to fifth in the table. Behind a
pack playing out of their skins, Care provides the constant threat around
the fringes that will surely lead Brian Ashton, the England head coach, to
call him up. “I would not be surprised if he went to New Zealand [on
England’s summer tour],” Dean Richards, the Harlequins director of rugby,
said.