Ollie Phillips: Whoever wins in Dublin will go on to win the Champions Cup May 13, 2022 Last Weekend’s European rugby quarter-finals were a brilliant watch, and I was enthralled by the Champions Cup penalty shootout win for Toulouse against Munster, but this weekend I expect the performance levels to increase further. This is the pinnacle of the club game and the teams are just one win away from the finals later [...]
Premiership Rugby to return to terrestrial on ITV with live games and highlights January 20, 2022 Premiership Rugby has agreed a deal to show live matches and highlights on ITV in a move that ends the English top division’s exile from free-to-air television. BT Sport will remain the primary broadcast partner but ITV will simulcast a handful of live games each season, including the Premiership final, and air a weekly highlights [...]
Sport sponsorship: Forecasting the impact of the big events in 2022 January 2, 2022 Six months on from wading through the smashed bottles and broken dreams that littered Wembley Way after the calamitous Euro 2020 final, sports fans and sponsors can look forward to an abundance of major global events in 2022. As it happens, this year has been designated the United Nations International Year of Glass, so it’s [...]
Rugby World Cup fans help Heathrow airport post record October traffic November 11, 2019 Heathrow airport enjoyed its busiest October on record as 6.9m passengers travelled from and to London’s international hub, thanks in part to fans flying to Japan’s Rugby World Cup. Airport traffic grew 0.5 per cent year on year, Heathrow revealed today, with the number of passengers flying to and from the Middle East rising 6.5 [...]
Japan pulled off an incredible Rugby World Cup this year capped off by Siya Kolisi lifting the trophy December 19, 2019 Without doubt, the highlight of the year was the Rugby World Cup. It was held in Asia for the first time and Japan did a magnificent job as hosts. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly; it is truly an amazing place. Despite the tragedy of Typhoon Hagibis, which ripped through the country and caused devastation, [...]
Which Premiership clubs will be hardest hit by the Rugby World Cup? September 17, 2019 It is always a special occasion when Bath Rugby play Bristol Bears under the floodlights at Ashton Gate in a West Country derby, even more so when it is the opening fixture of a new Premiership season. On this occasion, however, there will be some notable differences. The Premiership’s opening weekend will take place later [...]
Bottle Opener: The best wines for this week’s Rugby World Cup matches September 26, 2019 The 2019 Rugby World Cup is upon us. Despite my status as a proud Welshman, even I cannot bring myself to recommend Welsh wines as an accompaniment to savouring an international rugby match (to all those Welsh wine producers out there, I look forward to being proven wrong). Indeed, many British rugby fans would regard [...]
Ed Warner: English football of all levels penetrating hyper-commercial US sport November 3, 2022 Does anyone in England call the Premier League the EPL? I ask because I had a random encounter at Heathrow last week with one of a group of five Crystal Palace fans headed to Selhurst Park for their “first EPL game”. The Ted Lasso effect maybe? I only hope they made it to the Clifton [...]
What football can learn about the implementation of VAR from the Rugby World Cup October 15, 2019 Since the video assistant referee’s introduction to the Premier League this season, the technology seems to have caused as much controversy as it was intended to resolve. The current Rugby World Cup, which has shown the benefits of a sport accustomed to an additional match official overseeing a feed of the action, has only thrown [...]
England will have to go the extra mile to win the Rugby World Cup September 11, 2019 If England needed any reminding of the logistical hurdles to winning the World Cup, they received it on Monday when they were held up at Tokyo Narita Airport for six hours on their arrival to Japan due to travel chaos caused by Typhoon Faxai. Eddie Jones’s side already had one of the most demanding schedules [...]