Chris Hewett
Chris Hewett: Forget world rankings, it’s trophies that count
Chris Hewett argues that while world rankings have their uses, they count for little compared with winning trophies as rugby’s biggest prizes remain the true measure...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 week agoChris Hewett: France’s battalion of centres is unmatched
Chris Hewett believes France’s extraordinary depth at centre gives Fabien Galthie a decisive edge ahead of the 2027 Rugby World Cup...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 weeks agoChris Hewett: Captain, my captain (but maybe not yours)
Chris Hewett explores what makes a great captain, arguing there is no single blueprint for leadership as he compares Ben Stokes...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 weeks agoChris Hewett: Champions Cup revamp sounds good to me
The most predictable story of the week concerned yet another revamp of the much-maligned, used-and-abused Champions Cup, which was once the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 weeks agoChris Hewett: When ‘record highs’ can be low on quality
Chris Hewett questions whether rugby’s growing number of one-sided finals and record scorelines signal a sport in danger of tipping the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 month agoChris Hewett: Wayne Smith’s ‘new lab’ will be a revelation
Wayne Smith’s return to coaching is a welcome boost for rugby. Chris Hewett explains why the game still needs its great...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 month agoChris Hewett: Is Rugby World Cup expansion over-ambitious?
It would be nice to think that at some point this side of eternity, rugby will have created sufficient depth at...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 month agoChris Hewett: It could be a golden age for our best refs in World Rugby
Good news from the shop window: rugby is doing right by its referees by picking the right referees.
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 month agoChris Hewett: Yes, Nick, Afolabi Fasogbon deserves his chance with England
Chris Hewett argues England are missing a World Cup opportunity by overlooking Gloucester prop Afolabi Fasogbon, whose rise could provide Steve...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 months agoChris Hewett: A fine French feast that could feed us all
Chris Hewett examines why French club rugby is becoming the game’s biggest attraction, and asks whether more supporters are turning to...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 months agoChris Hewett: When fresh ambition takes on old rivalries
World Rugby moves at a pace best described as geological – in a footrace with continental drift, the non-governing governing body...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 months agoChris Hewett: Changing Premiership game still needs derby passion
If there is a god in rugby’s heaven, Leicester and Northampton will be still be squaring up to each other this...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 months agoChris Hewett: Super Rugby’s survival is far from guaranteed
Remember the days when Super Rugby was so hot, you could toast yourself on it?
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 months agoMulti-taskers who are pushing out specialists on the World Rugby stage
Contrary to popular belief, hybrid players – those who can play in the pack, as well as the backs – are...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 months agoChris Hewett: An epic drama? No, just drowning in tries
A quarter-final classic”, proclaimed the BBC. Hyperbole? Quite the opposite. As the avalanche of superlatives triggered by Bath’s victory over Northampton...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: And with that, it’s back to the studio! The Geoff Parling-Craig Doyle incident
A little over 20 years ago, Alan Partridge committed one of broadcasting’s cardinal sins by shooting a chat show guest live...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Wales boss Steve Tandy has reasons to be more cheerful
March is not the cruellest month, as every student of 20th Century poetry knows, but it may be the most unfathomable.
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoBreaking down the borders is just the job
ROBBIE Deans, eh? And Brendan Venter too. London is a multinational, multicultural kind of place in virtually every walk of life,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Less snooze-on-sofa, more edge-of-seat…
After the Lord Mayor’s Show comes… you know the rest, so let’s not go there.
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Henry Pollock should listen to Sir Clive Woodward
“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
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Chris Hewett
/ 4 months agoChris Hewett: Another one right in the eye for TMOs
It does not take an unusually sardonic soul, let alone a satirist measuring 9.5 on the Evelyn Waugh Scale of Savagery,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: Dave Rennie should leave Brodie Retallick where he is
Let the fun and games begin. Dave Rennie, freshly-appointed head coach of the All Blacks with a World Cup looming large...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: Chris Boyd can transform Gloucester
An effigy of Francois Pienaar swinging from the roof of the Shed as the World Cup-winning Springbok captain made an early...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: Difficult choices in the game of survival
There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going, as rugby discovered to its acute discomfort following the fumbled embrace of professionalism...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoEngland numbers fall short at No.9
CHRIS HEWETT IT remains perfectly possible that England will beat the French in Paris in the final round of Six Nations...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: ‘Fast, faster, fastest’ is Fabien Galthie’s new look for France
Rugby is a game of assumptions about the future, rooted in the here and now.
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: Italians put on a show in the scrum
Just when you thought the scrum was dying on the ample backsides of its specialist practitioners, along come the Italians –...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: Wingers who light up the greatest show
The key ingredients of a successful World Cup are few in number but broad in sweep: a critical mass of genuinely...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoTime for the scrum to have its own clock
CHRIS HEWETT ANYONE watch the Super Bowl, which used to be the most ad-intrusive sporting event on the planet until ITV...
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Chris Hewett
/ 5 months agoChris Hewett: Blow the whistle on all these changes
Imagine, if you will, a rugby version of the once-loved, long-departed BBC children’s programme Play School and repeat after me:
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: For once, a cheer for the governing classes
Rugby's governing classes have a long track record of not knowing what day of the week it is, so it is...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: South Africans must go big – or go home
We cannot know for sure – when it comes to honouring rugby’s code of inner-sanctum omerta, the Bulls of Pretoria have...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: No Damien Penaud? That’s what I call bizarre
There are those who believe that Fabien Galthie, the extravagantly bespectacled head coach of France, should order himself a new pair...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Junior Kpoku on course to power up Red Roses
On the basis that Junior Kpoku is 6ft 8ins and 120kgs, his opponents must be dreading the day they run into...
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Chris Hewett
/ 6 months agoChris Hewett: Why we need to see more of referee Luke Pearce
Alfie Barbeary turned in an eye-catching performance as Bath squeaked their way past Exeter at a rapt Recreation Ground last weekend....
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: We must guard our friends in the north
There are a mere 320 miles of road separating Exeter from Newcastle, the geographical poles of top-flight rugby in England, and...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoBut you’re part of the problem, Beirne
CHRIS HEWETT TADHG Beirne is one of the quiet marvels of the rugby age, so it is worth listening especially hard...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: Five reasons for us to cheer in the New Year
A Champions Cup so lacking in substance and purpose, it resembles a ghost searching for someone to haunt; a pre-shrunk Lions...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: Time to restore some meaning in Europe
The ability to fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time...
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Chris Hewett
/ 7 months agoChris Hewett: Glad we were spared Gianni Infantino’s sycophancy
Just for once, we must congratulate World Rugby on getting it right. Their staging of the pool draw for the next...
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Chris Hewett
/ 8 months 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
/ 8 months 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
/ 8 months 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
/ 8 months 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
/ 8 months 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
/ 9 months 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
/ 9 months 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
/ 9 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
/ 9 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
/ 10 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...
Autumn Internationals
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Autumn Internationals
England hold their nerve to deny Argentina
Autumn Internationals
Jamie George: Owen Farrell’s helping England flyer Noah Caluori get it right
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