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Chris Hewett
/ 10 months agoScrums in danger of falling off the stage
By Chris Hewett We do not yet know whether the Sabercats or the Seawolves will emerge the stronger, or whether the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 10 months agoGoggleboxers must not lose sight of reality
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed There was an overpowering whiff of something significant in the air as the 1984 John...
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Chris Hewett
/ 10 months agoLet us permit No.8s freedom of expression
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed The great and good of World Rugby are clearly intent on turning scrum-halves into the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 11 months agoThe best Six Nations? Here are my top three
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed The turn of the century was as notable for the things that failed to happen...
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Chris Hewett
/ 11 months agoSix of the best who deserved a chance during the Six Nations
Thinking Allowed by Chris Hewett A great rugby coach is rarer than radium, as England have discovered in recent decades. Precious...
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Chris Hewett
/ 11 months agoCaptains don’t have to play the full 80
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed It seems your columnist’s hotline to the England head coach Steve Borthwick has turned positively...
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Chris Hewett
/ 11 months agoWe need to watch rugby in the raw
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed According to Inkoo Kang, a leading critic at The New Yorker magazine and, almost by definition,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 11 months agoA star-studded XV that would lead by example
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Like “business ethics” and “military intelligence”, the phrase “rugby leadership” is not an oxymoron. Almost,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 12 months agoLet’s hope Brizball can stay in fashion
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed This is not obviously the time to be talking balls – the Twickenham elite have...
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Chris Hewett
/ 12 months agoNo Franco Mostert? That’s got to be a mistake
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Here's a funny thing: one of the more prominent rugby sites on the worldwide web...
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Chris Hewett
/ 12 months agoNo Mostert? That’s got to be a mistake
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Class act: Franco Mostert scoring for South Africa PICTURE: Getty Images HERE’S a funny thing: one of...
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Chris Hewett
/ 12 months agoNo Mostert? That’s got to be a mistake
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Class act: Franco Mostert scoring for South Africa PICTURE: Getty Images HERE’S a funny thing: one of...
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Champions Cup
/ 12 months agoThe global travellers who light up game
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed There is nothing especially funny about short-term memory loss, but it may just have an...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoOh, for a one-stop TV shop for the lot
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Gogglebox: Bath taking on La Rochelle on Friday night PICTURE: Getty Images HERE’S a brain teaser: if...
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British and Irish Lions
/ 1 year agoScotland deserve fair share of British & Irish Lions
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed We may be exaggerating here, but not by much: since the wonderful Tom Smith made...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoKolbe’s majesty is a delight to behold
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED CHESLIN Kolbe won the “man of the match” award for his two-try contribution to South Africa’s victory...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWe will all suffer in the land of the giants
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed It was the rugby version of Easy Street, the 1917 silent movie in which Charlie...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoPundits need that forward thinking
Ian Robertson put it most colourfully. “I work with backs,” said the celebrated BBC radio commentator on being asked to coach...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWhen value for money is not part of the deal
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED ENGLAND’S bench strategy against New Zealand – goodbye “bomb squad”, hello “squib squad” – has been investigated,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoShame that Georgia are kept out of sight
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed The most significant contest of the November international series? Take your pick. Ireland-New Zealand in...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoBath’s ‘bomb squad’ needs to be defused
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED CLOSE your eyes and imagine batting on a fiery Caribbean track in the 1980s, when West Indian...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoIt would be grand for Wasps to return
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Prize assets: Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and, inset from top, Tom Willis, Gabriel Oghre, Alfie Barbeary, Asher...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWorldwide Springboks still get it together
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Assuming those with their ears to the ground haven’t gone deaf, Handre Pollard, the Springbok...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWallace Sititi is following in father’s footsteps, but for how long?
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Cast your minds back, those of you who are sufficiently long in the tooth, to...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoFiji deserve to play with best in world
By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Every underdog has its day, as Daniel Dubois reminded us in knocking an entire cathedral’s...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoToo much of a good thing can be overkill
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED "People might think it’s arrogant,” said Rian Oberholzer, the chief executive of the Springbok domain, just the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoEnergetic thinking urgently required
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED CRITICAL supporters of Bristol in the late amateur era believed their team was being straitjacketed by a...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoRobertson needs to redress the balance
Chris Hewett Thinking allowed It was a cheap shot, admittedly, but only a pacifist or a fool would spurn the opportunity...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoAge of protectionism must come to an end
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Powered up: Argentina scrum-half Gonzalo Bertranou celebrates victory over the All Blacks last weekend PICTURES: Getty Images...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoGlad to see clock ticking on scrum
CHRIS HEWETT THOSE of us who have spent our entire careers writing against deadline know all there is to know about...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWhat counts is how the money is spent
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED IT WAS a close-run thing but, after crunching the numbers harder than a caffeine-fuelled psephologist on election...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWhy SVNS makes sense for the future
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Rugby sevens – or SVNS, as a London-based team of funkily-dressed marketing executives have somehow succeeded in...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoDay when the Real McCoys stood up
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED THE governing bodies of the union game are not renowned for their speed off the mark –...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoA drop of magic is just what we need
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED STRANGE as it may sound to generations of rugby lovers raised on a fizzy-drink, dopamine-heavy diet of...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoEuropean elite keen to exclude outsiders
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Whichever way you care to define the i-word, it was an interesting few hours for Canadian sport....
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoSlipper deserves place at top table
Wallaby props? How we used to snigger at them over here in England as Jason Leonard, Phil Vickery and Andrew Sheridan...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoTrio who tempt us to search for genius
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED What do we mean when we talk of genius? It is a question as old as Noah,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWhistler’s authority must be protected
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED In the middle: Sara Cox took charge of the Women’s Premiership final between Gloucester-Hartpury and Bristol last...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoCheika’s first job: to speak ‘Tiger’
As top-flight English clubs go, none are as English as Leicester, with their grizzled battalions of steadfast Midlands yeomanry – all...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoWhy less might not be more for stars
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED MARTIN Johnson spent a rugby eternity perfecting his survival skills in the engine room of the scrum...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoSorry, but Obano did not have to do that
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED The best definition of madness in rugby? There are several contenders: picking a fight with Eben Etzebeth...
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Chris Hewett
/ 1 year agoAnother lesson from the French
CHRIS HEWETT Now that Vannes have made it into the top tier of French rugby and the people running things across...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoLet the ‘waterboys’ just get on with it
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED It's the burning question of the moment: what is Jacques Nienaber? Not “who is Jacques Nienaber”, or...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoThen and now: It’s tough to compare
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Whenever the incomparable Antoine Dupont does the kind of things he did in dragging Toulouse over the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoTalk of jeopardy is wide of the mark
THINKING ALLOWED It happened during the early stages of the 2003 World Cup in Australia, when two of the union game’s...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoTime for us to see some new thinking
Remember the elderly joke about the flight from Australia to New Zealand? “There’s a time difference between the two countries,” the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoToo many coaches taking liberties in selection
It should not be difficult to distinguish between a Premiership rugby match and a game of county cricket: one, full of...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoMako reinvented job of loosehead
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Eddie Jones coached Mako Vunipola during a brief spell in charge of Saracens, and coached him again...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoRugby’s holy trinity prove the difference
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED SINCE time immemorial, rugby has been cloaked in its own cliches: Prince Obolensky was always “dashing”; Colin...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoMo’unga likely to be back in black
SO he hasn’t gone for good, after all. Not quite. If the All Blacks have their way, as they invariably do...
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