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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoIt’s time to decide who we really are
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED JUST the other day, during a sandstorm stoppage at a Cricket World Cup match, the commentators on...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoChoosing the right word is not easy
CHRIS HEWETT Does language matter? We are not talking Bongi Mbonambi-Tom Curry here, although no one should underestimate the importance of...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoNext time, Dupont will take what is his
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED DID the spirit of rugby romance go to meet its maker in the immediate aftermath of the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoKolbe’s magic hidden from view
CHRIS HEWETT AMONG the many mysteries of this World Cup –Why isn’t Patrice Lagisquet coaching a competitive nation? Why doesn’t Ben...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoOne Goon show we could all do without
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED It is just about possible, if you’re seriously odd, to imagine that Dan Cole might stand a...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoTravelling coast to coast is a delight
CHRIS HEWETT A good many moons ago, this column identified the No.14 shirt as the latest cutting-edge fashion garment in the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoSacrificial lambs who took one for the team
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED RUGBY being a hard old game even when things are going your way, the willingness to suffer...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoBunker mentality makes it easier for refs
Where football leads, rugby inevitably follows. So when can we expect the equivalent of a VAR cock-up to lord it over...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoIt wasn’t so easy back in Rory’s day
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED RORY Underwood. Remember him? You should. To this day, the Leicester wing stands tall – rather taller...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoTime to take the show on the road, England
According to those who know their stuff when it comes to the scorched landscape of domestic politics, there is a prime...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoBiggest boots are made for winning
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED If catches win cricket matches – a fact of sporting life mischievously underscored by the recent joke...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoSure you are in the right place, Sonny Bill?
CHRIS HEWETT There are still those of us, generally of “a certain age”, who continue to defend the BBC as though...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoTime for an elite 16-team contest
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST OCTOBER 2003 was a busy old month, what with Mother Teresa being beatified by Pope John Paul...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoFor me, anthems strike the right note
CHRIS HEWETT FAR be it for us to fly in the face of public opinion in this corner of the paper,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoCipriani’s spat more suited to Colosseum
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED ONE of these fine days, with the grace of God and a following wind, a World Cup...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoToo many clubs, not enough players
If it ever turns out that the governing body at Twickenham has a monopoly on rugby wisdom, we are all up...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoShould we care about the world rankings?
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED THE way Clive Woodward saw it back in 2003, the International Rugby Board’s new-fangled ranking system was...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoDiamonds on the soles of his shoes
Siya Kolisi? What a man. If rugby is built on the stories it tells about its finest practitioners – the fables...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoBig cats likely to dine on minnows
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED IT MUST be a sobering prospect for the makeweights, travelling to a World Cup with a bunch...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoHansen’s secrets not hard to guess
There has been quite the hue and cry down there in All Black country following the latest twist in trans-Tasman affairs....
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoA brief history of tackles which changed a game
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED It has been fiendishly difficult to identify rugby union’s precise place in the constellation of professional sports...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoIgnore the league tough guys, it’s better to be soft and safe
CHRIS HEWETT Contrary to popular belief, there are still differences between the two codes of rugby. Union still has its flankers...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoA hat-trick for Sam would be deserved
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED We'll know soon enough if Sam Whitelock is finally past it. The venerable All Black lock from...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoSorry we won’t see Hooper in France
CHRIS HEWETT Wayne Shelford lost matches as captain of the All Blacks as often as he finished second in hand-to-hand combat....
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoCrowds need to be part of the action
CHRIS HEWETT THE best part of 84,000 spectators congregated at “The G” for last weekend’s Bledisloe Cup contest in Melbourne, which...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoThe day Mouritz showed his desire
CHRIS HEWETT Every so often, rugby sheds its hard skin and shows us its soft side. Not that Mouritz Botha was...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoThe greatest tour ever? Not likely…
CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED IT IS no exaggeration to place exaggeration very high on the list of rugby’s deadly sins. It...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoAlways room for Bakkies and Co
CHRIS HEWETT SAY what you like about Bakkies Botha – most people don’t, for reasons of self-preservation – but there are...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoUnder-20s proved the future is bright
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST DID you hear the one about the trainee fortune teller who gave up because he couldn’t see...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoEddie’s a head honcho in a hurry
CHRIS HEWETT Eddie Jones is not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, even if his most trenchant...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoBarrett J has keys to the kingdom
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST Rugby is a game of infinite possibility, especially when it comes to dreaming up collective nouns. A...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoLet’s not abandon Fiji for the sake of US
CHRIS HEWETT Not for the first time, the ever-knowledgeable Paul Rees has treated us to a thorough account of the thinking...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoWhen law and spirit are not the same
CHRIS HEWETT We've heard an awful lot – far too much, frankly – about the spirit of cricket just recently, and...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoAnother lesson from the French
We are still a few days away from Premiership Rugby’s latest “big reveal”: the fixture list for the 2023-24 campaign, featuring...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoTime to balance a weighty problem
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST ACLEVER man once predicted that progress would eventually turn out to be a circle rather than a...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoThere’s more woe from the Smiths
Rugby's optimists – and there are still some of you out there, just as there are people who continue to think...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoLaw-tinkerers are a danger to the game
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST THE odds on Owen Farrell travelling to the World Cup as England’s starting No.10 are even shorter...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoA new trophy, same old tricks …
CHRIS HEWETT It is one thing for a populist Prime Minister to ride a wave of duplicity before crashing head-first into...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoSo, who is set to fly in under the radar?
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST Remember Jean-Marc Doussain’s international debut for France? Probably not. The poor bloke would happily forget it himself,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoWood is just the man to talk sense
It would be stretching a point to suggest that Tom Wood, the brick-hard Northampton flanker who won a half-century of caps...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoWhen the collective carries all before it
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST Dings Crusaders? Crazy name, cracking club. One of the oldest and most successful of the dozens of...
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Chris Hewett
/ 2 years agoTongans have a plan for Ireland
CHRIS HEWETT Interesting rumblings from down Tonga way, where Toutai Kefu, the magnificent Wallaby No.8 who rumbled all the way to...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years agoTime we got round to telling full story
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST "No story lives unless someone wants to listen.” So said J KRowling, who knows a thing or...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years agoFreedom of speech cuts both ways
If Steve Hansen did a million things right over the long stretch of a storied career as an All Black think-tanker,...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years agoMasterful Skelton is the talk of the town
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST IF Simon Shaw of England was a 20-storey tower block of a lock blessed with penthouse levels...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years ago‘Chilling’ Nowell leaves us shivering
CHRIS HEWETT When a front-line England player tells his national coach that he is unavailable for World Cup duty – not...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years agoNo debate, Hill has to be the Immortal No.6
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST UP, you could not make it. BT Sport, whose coverage of English club rugby has been close...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years agoHow England could use that Limerick spirit
CHRIS HEWETT BACK in the dim and distant, when down-to-earth Munster were the side to beat in Ireland and hifalutin Leinster...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years agoWhy Ojomoh could be in with a shout
CHRIS HEWETT GUEST COLUMNIST SO Bath won the big one against Saracens Under-12s and secured their Champions Cup qualification at the...
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Chris Hewett
/ 3 years agoSmith has vision to see through the fog
Wayne Smith, who secured a place in the pantheon of great coaches long before his astonishing triumph with the Black Ferns...
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