There can be only one All-Black rugby team

Launceston RFC is being threatened by New Zealand’s RFU with legal action over their use of the name “All Blacks”.
Launceston, who also wear an all-black kit, wanted to trademark the name “Cornish All Blacks”, but the churlish Kiwis objected.
“While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, the [...]

[Read more →]

Next season, rugger buggers will mostly be wearing this…

Here’s a first look at the new British Lions shirt, which the team will wear on next year’s tour of South Africa.
It’s red, it’s made by Adidas (for the fourth tour in succession) and it looks, er, like every other Lions shirt… except it has no collar. [...]

[Read more →]

Danny Cipriani picked on the wrong man

After Wasps beat Castres in the Heineken Cup at the weekend, Josh Lewsey and Danny Cipriani hugged and made-up. According to the Sun, Lewsey even “threw a couple of pretend haymakers that Cipriani suitably ducked”. Ho ho.
The England stars had come to blows on the training-ground, a dust-up that [...]

[Read more →]

Wilko’s injury curse not funny anymore

Jonny Wilkinson is set to miss the 2009 Six Nations championship after it was confirmed his latest injury will keep him out of action for almost six months.
Wilko’s dislocated knee, suffered while playing for Newcastle against Gloucester last week, will keep him on the physio table until March - by [...]

[Read more →]

Argentine prop shows Josh Lewsey how to do it

So Josh Lewsey left Wasps team-mate Danny Cipriani with a swollen lip after a training-ground dust-up. A swollen lip, boo hoo.
Perhaps Lewsey, a former officer in the British Army, should have taken notes from Federico Mendez’s famous haymaker, which connected square with Paul Ackford’s jaw during an [...]

[Read more →]

Rugby superstar can’t take his ale

We discovered today that Kelly Brook’s fella can’t take a punch; on top of that, he reveals that he can’t take his beer, preferring instead a tipple of such horrendous girliness that it’s a wonder he’s allowed to play professional rugby.
Click below to find out what Cipriani’s poison is…

[Read more →]

French rugby team unveil eye-popping shirt

Stade Francais’s new strip features Warholesque images of Blanche de Castille, aka the wife of Louis VIII, not to mention - surely even worse - mock-denim sleeves. Whilst we applaud the maverick French for daring to be different, this is surely a step too far.
It’s not the first time Stade [...]

[Read more →]

He can’t stay away from Nobu, that Dawson

In this day and age, with so much choice, it’s actually a challenge to go to the same restaurant more than once. Unless, of course, you happen to be Matt Dawson, who at the last count had been to Nobu in Berkeley Square roughly twenty-nine times in one [...]

[Read more →]

Rugby player learns not to mess with rugby players…

It’s easy to forget that Cipriani is so young, and lessons need to be learned. In fact, just yesterday, he learned that it’s unwise to tell Josh Lewsey (pictured) to “shut up or be shut up”, unless he wants to be knocked out with a right hook [...]

[Read more →]

Big tough rugby players forced to wear skirts

It’s a fact that all rugby players love to drink their own urine, sing songs about drinking urine, and many other juvenile, urine-based pursuits. So when the captains of each of the teams involved in this season’s Heinken Cup (a competition sponsored, ironically, by a company that produces [...]

[Read more →]