Chris Hewett
Glad we were spared Gianni’s sycophancy
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED JUST for once, we must congratulate World Rugby on getting it right. Their staging of the pool draw for the next global...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 week agoChris Hewett: Eben Etzebeth top billing in Springboks rogues’ gallery
Clint Eastwood knows a thing or two about cinema, but if anyone is to make a sequel to his Springbok-inspired Invictus...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 weeks agoChris Hewett: Key pieces might yet emerge for England chief Steve Borthwick
The World Cup is all that matters, right? Everything else is 50 shades of beige. If England’s second-string success in Argentina...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 weeks agoChris Hewett: These Flying Fijians deserve place in sun
Few historians of the ancient world put it quite this way, but the Peloponnesian War was won off the bench.
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 weeks agoChris Hewett: Without Jac Morgan, Wales will not be all right
The differences are obvious: he doesn’t have a shock of guitar-hero hair, or a nose so busted it resembles the last...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 month agoChris Hewett: I’d stick with Ben Earl in the back row, Steve Borthwick
Welcome to the “Yeti Syndrome”, a vivid way of categorising the many things we seek in rugby but no longer expect...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 month agoChris Hewett: ‘Finishers’ need to be put in their place
Imagine you are peering across halfway at a pack of forwards so big, knotted with muscle and profoundly pug-ugly that the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 month agoGalthie’s secret squirrel exercise
CHRIS HEWETT FACED with last week’s espionage bulletin from France, the owlish master spy George Smiley would have cleaned his spectacles...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 months agoChris Hewett: Too much talent can be a problem
We have heard much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Tom Willis, largely from those who assumed the France-bound Saracens forward...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 months agoChris Hewett: The two-team solution has worked for Scotland
On a bad road day – the sad truth is that most days turn bad the moment you sit behind the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 months agoChris Hewett: Change is the only permanent thing
It is 15 years since Bruce Craig, not obviously a man to be found wanting in the ambition department, bought himself...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 months agoChris Hewett: The pantomime villain who stole the show
It seems we must bid another fond farewell to Nic White, a modern master of scrum-half jiggery-pokery who first called it...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 months agoChris Hewett: Ollie Lawrence looks a good fit for 13 shirt
Nearly there. Ollie Lawrence, the talented Bath and England centre, is within touching distance of a return to competitive rugby after...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 months agoChris Hewett: Captains need the consent of others
There are almost as many good jokes about leadership as there are leaders who fall into the “bad joke” category. Here’s...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Rassie Erasmus is in search of a brave new world with the Springboks
There is something unashamedly Old Testament about South Africa’s first-choice pack, possibly because its most accomplished components are more ancient than...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Bonus points? They are entirely pointless
Would we be in any way impoverished if they disappeared tomorrow? Unusually, we are not referring to our glorious leaders at...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: France and England lead charge for 2027 World Cup
The last time the World Cup was played out on Australian soil, a little over two decades and a thousand poison-dart...
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British and Irish Lions
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Andy Farrell not alone with his ‘home’ Lions selections
“There's an epidemic sweeping through the England team, but it isn’t catching.” Attributed to John Arlott (who else?), the exquisite one-liner...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Wallabies make the obvious choice with Giteau Law change
Inevitable. Had to happen. Written in the stars. Quite why the Australian rugby hierarchy spent so long umming and aaahhing about...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Tough calls needed to take the initiative
The Lions may have reaffirmed their rugby sovereignty over the Wallabies during 80 mesmerising minutes in Melbourne, but they were well...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: It’s a long, hard road for – Bank of Dad, or not
Ten thousand hours seems a suspiciously convenient round number, but there are plenty of big brains who see it as the...
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British and Irish Lions
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: France v the British and Irish Lions would be a stretch
Suddenly, rugby’s 24-hour news cycle is full of chatter about a French seat at the British and Irish Lions table. Abdel...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: One kick to win it… so who do you want?
Whoever it was, it couldn’t have been Carwyn James. For one thing, the most celebrated coach of all was a Welshman...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: Elite will have no time for Los Pumas
Phil Kearns never played a game of Test rugby against the British and Irish Lions: a stranger-than-fiction fact that bears repeating....
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Whatever the voice, messages are mixed
If David Campese and Michael Lynagh were singing from the same hymn sheet as the Wallabies dominated the last decade of...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Let’s hope Wallace Sititi can return to his best
So he’s crocked again, which is sad to the point of depressing. Like every other attention-craving spectator sport engaged in the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Can Bath outdo the team that Jack Rowell built?
The dear departed Jack Rowell rather fancied himself as a master of the caustic punchline and remained particularly proud of one...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Jonny Wilkinson just shouldn’t be the lone star
You have to laugh. Otherwise, you’d cry yourself a river. According to a public vote organised by the folk who run...
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British and Irish Lions
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Questions at No.3 are key for Andy Farrell’s British and Irish Lions
Prop forwards of the tighthead variety were not put on this earth to be like everyone else, and by and large...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Perhaps Paris isn’t the best of places
Can there be a rugby aficionado in the world who wouldn’t move heaven and earth to experience a weekend’s worth of...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Without jeopardy, the game is nothing
The journey time between the sublime and the ridiculous can be speed-of-sound short: Clement Poitrenaud, the quintessence of French rugby cool...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Roll up for the next circus in town, the R360 League
Here's an idea: let’s launch a new rugby tournament to run alongside…er…forgotten its name already. Ah, that’s right. R360. The one...
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Champions Cup
/ 7 months agoDamian Penaud and Louis Bielle-Biarrey: A pair of aces who fill our hearts with joy
If the level of mastery is unusually high, the depth of mystery is unfathomable.
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: Time to speak with one voice
Back in the age when men were men and Willie John McBride was wearing the red shirt of the British and...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: Danny Care still shines in list of the finest 9s
On the face of it, the easiest way to get noticed in big-time rugby is to bag a contract with Harlequins,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: Dangers of pushing the profit margins
According to George Orwell, who knew a thing or two about a thing or two, the “greatest cruelty one can inflict...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoEngland’s World Cup fast-track begins in Argentina
Your starter for 10: what might Jason Leonard, Richard Cockerill, Danny Grewcock and Martin Corry have in common, apart from a...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: Leinster need to spread the love
"Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” The American author Gore Vidal was an acknowledged master of the “ouch”...
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British and Irish Lions
/ 8 months agoChris Hewett: If there is any justice, George Ford will be a British and Irish Lion
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed The difference between time and eternity? It’s all relative – get it? – but in...
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Chris Hewett
/ 8 months agoChris Hewett: Geoff Parling is thriving as the quiet ‘Australian’
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Whatever lights might be hidden under rugby’s bushel, precious few of them belong to Australian...
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Chris Hewett
/ 8 months agoChris Hewett: Dan Biggar’s lessons in staying strong
The last time Wales won a game of rugby against someone other than the Barbarians – those struggling to recall that...
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Chris Hewett
/ 8 months agoOwners should be careful what they wish for
By Chris Hewett The ambition among some Premiership owners to turn the league into rugby’s version of cricket’s T20 is a...
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British and Irish Lions
/ 8 months agoBritish and Irish Lions: Come on, Andy Farrell, put a bolter on your list
Thinking Allowed by Chris Hewett Henry Pollock is the most headline-grabbing talent to emerge in English rugby since Maro Itoje, who...
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Chris Hewett
/ 9 months agoExplosion of tries is turning into a circus
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Some of us remember “Mr Creosote”, the Monty Python character who, after a light dinner...
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Chris Hewett
/ 9 months agoTwo point tries for rolling mauls? The giants who are spoiling it for all of us
Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Poor old Italy came up with plenty of solutions to the problems posed by Ireland in...
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Chris Hewett
/ 9 months agoOscar Jegou shows the All Blacks how it’s done
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed All the talk down New Zealand way is of “Succession”. No, they haven’t made a...
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Chris Hewett
/ 9 months agoHowzat! Azzurri are left stumped
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Box office: England’s Elliot Daly scores against Italy in last year’s Six Nations match PICTURE: Alamy AS...
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Chris Hewett
/ 9 months agoLytchett Minster 2s? Now they were decent…
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Anyone seeking to capture the essence of rugby’s transformation over recent decades need not wrestle...
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Chris Hewett
/ 10 months agoA win’s a win for England? Up to a point, my lord…
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed If England intend to make a habit of winning games on their backsides, they should...
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Chris Hewett
/ 10 months agoThe time’s ripe for a summit of the egos
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Summits are all the rage right now, “rage” being the operative word, and as the...
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