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France might serve up less garbage if they rest PSA for the tour. The tests should be exciting during the unstructured phases of play as the French players will have a go when they have to play off the cuff. It's the structured parts of their game that they've really struggled with because...

He probably won't make the same impact on the field as Dougie Howlett did at Munster, but hopefully he can have a similar influence off the field. Can't be a bad thing to have him around the young guys at training, you don't need to be at your peak to pass on tips or inspire someone.

Organization certainly won't be a problem for Japan. Trying to convince Japanese sports fans who are baseball and soccer mad to give the sport a fare shake might be though. Certainly rugby is much further behind these and other sports than Aus rugby is behind AFL, NRL or the A-League. But the...

I only mention August because you mentioned the peak temperature which is actually in August. I then made a comparison between the two to support your assertion that June and July would be manageable if not ideal. On the rainy season I would imagine that teams will want to avoid it and...

Believe me the weather in Japan in the rainy season June/July and the peak heat August are in no way comparable. IF Super Rugby is played in Tokyo then it's most likely to be played in Chichibunomiya. Tokyo Dome is primarily used for Baseball, concerts etc. and has an official capacity of 55k but the...

It may be simply to fit in with a franchise model. The idea of a franchise is that it can be bought and moved lock stock and barrel to another location like US professional sporting franchises. Can't see something like that happening for a very long time, but if the Saudis decide in 20 years...

The super comp will also span the Japanese rainy season which should provide some extra fun watching players try to play in that.

You can't please everyone so they've gone for the tried and trusted don't please anyone approach.

Well to be fair most of Asia is in the NH so having them in the SH club competition would indicate that Bill isn't the only SANZAR union official who was out smoking behind the bike sheds during geography classes. But you won't get too many NH unions complaining about it. On a practical sense...

How will the knock-out stages go with 4 conferences? Surely you can't have automatic qualification for conference winners if SA has two conferences with only 4 teams in each. At least further down the line it leaves the possibility that if the 4 team conferences expand to 5 each you could have...

I agree that clubs should put a very big focus on local support and realise that their community is very important to them, I've posted about that on here many times. But in addition to that clubs should also be marketing overseas like football does. It doesn't have to be an either or scenario...

In the HEC Semi Final yesterday between Toulon and Munster, Zebo scored a try for Munster in the corner but initial pictures didn't show a clear grounding. Referee Wayne Barnes was in a very good position behind the players and checked with immediately checked with his touch judge that Zebo...

For me the Munster display was encapsulated by the performance of their 2 wingers. Zebo was excellent, scored a try, saved a certain try. Earls made lots of mistakes and got himself a yellow card. A few more performances like Zebo's and a few less like Earls' and they might have nicked it.

It'll be a big ask for Munster to win away against Toulon but come Semi-Final time when you can smell them polishing the trophy for the final there's extra motivation for the away team. Add in the fact that the game is at a larger less partizan ground and you always feel you have a much better...

If RU really wanted RL converts to fail to make our game look better surely the various unions in on this fiendish conspiracy would be targeting less talented and cheaper RL converts. Spending such vasts amounts of money on very talented sports men from another code only to hope they fail is a...

I still don't see why it's an either or with Super Rugby. I would imagine that an NRC that included the current Aus Super Rugby teams could work well with a truncated Super Rugby competition akin to the HEC. Qualification for the pool stages of the Super Rugby comp could be through the NRC. It might even add spice to what...

There's still a lot of politics in French rugby. It's just that in Europe our major rugby teams tend to be part OF the community instead of just being IN the community as a new franchise tends to be. Look at the new franchises up north, they also struggle to attract the level of support that...

Oh they definitely should be working on development prior to the RWC to put themselves in the best position to leverage the boost the game will get. But I don't see how 1 new franchise without a beefed up domestic league is going to benefit Japanese rugby as a whole. It's more likely to be...

You could definitely get a competitive team based in Tokyo but I'm not sure that would be good for domestic development. The concentrated franchise system used in Super Rugby seems to have undermined domestic competition and I'm not sure it's a mistake that should be repeated when expanding the...

I said in another thread that I think the difficulty faced by the Super Rugby competition is that it's trying to fill two roles as a premier domestic club competition and an international club competition. The advantage that the club games has up here is that we have 3 domestic leagues that provide all...