Last weekend saw a thrilling start to the Rugby World Cup, and you can find all the action from the latest round of matches and Nick Cain‘s preview of England vs Japan in The Rugby Paper this Sunday.
Nick will be in Nice, also covering Wales vs Portugal the day before, while we will have reports from all of Saturday’s matches as Samoa take on Chile and Ireland face a tough test against Tonga.
On Thursday night, tournament hosts France survived a scare to beat Uruguay and maintain their unbeaten start, and we’ll also have a rundown of what happened on Friday night, as New Zealand look to get their campaign back on track against Namibia following last Friday’s defeat to Les Bleus.
As well as looking ahead to the England’s second game, there are two other games on Sunday with Paul Rees casting an eye over Australia’s hotly anticipated match against Fiji and Ben Jaycock previewing South Africa vs Romania after the Springboks win on Sunday against Scotland.
Back on English shores in the Premiership, Paul speaks to one of the longest players in the Northampton Saints squad James Grayson about his and the team’s ambitions for the season, while one of the club’s legends Ben Foden picks his Dream Team.
Alex Codling describes his roundabout route to land a top coaching job at Newcastle Falcons, and Bath‘s Ewan Richards reveals his ambitions for the season following an injury hit 2022/23.
Elsewhere among our features, former Ireland, London Irish, Bristol, Cardiff, Harlequins, Munster and Leicester fly-half talks about his journey through the game in My Life in Rugby while Richie Simpson – who plays in the same poisiton for Ayshire Bulls, Scotland U20s and Glasgow – talks about the start of his own in the Young Guns column.
And Brendan Gallagher‘s Rugby Matters column focuses on Pacific Island born players playing for tier one nations and the immense influence they’ve had.
Finally, don’t forget to check out this week’s podcast, which features former Scotland international and ITV commentator Scott Hastings.
Stream this week’s edition of the pod on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify (also above), Castbox, Google Podcasts, or your favourite podcast app.
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