#james-slipper

#james-slipper

I'm really excited to be joining Sale. My body feels good and I'm still performing at a high level. I feel like I can compete with the best of them, and then some, and I think if I retired now, I'd probably regret it when I was older.

Emma Orr's performance was pivotal for Bristol Bears, scoring two crucial tries in the second half that turned the game around and secured a vital victory.

Martin Johnson, England's World-Cup winning skipper, believes there is no huge mystery to being a great captain. If you haven't got a good team it doesn't matter how good a captain you are. To suggest that calm, sure-footed leadership is irrelevant in top-level sport, however, is another matter. Even the greatest sides need decisive, intelligent direction, regardless of who supplies it.

No. It's out of our hands really. We can only do a certain amount. It's a game for us to play against an opponent that's had the upper hand on us for years. We're playing them away from home. They've got a brilliant record at home. It's a challenge but a real opportunity for us to go and deliver an even better performance than we did last week.

In likes of Tommy O'Brien, Robert Baloucoune and Jamie Osborne, Andy Farrell has a fresh crop of winners ahead of Rugby World Cup. As the man with the deaf dog says 'it can be hard to call it'. That has been the case in the majority of this year's Six Nations but when Ireland play Scotland we now expect Ireland to win.

I reflect on my seven years at the club with a huge amount of gratitude. I arrived at the club in 2019 with a few suitcases and a girlfriend, I'm leaving the club with a lot of memories, new friends, a wife and baby,

One minute you are riding the perfect wave, the next you're being dumped from a great height and having your world tipped upside down. Which is essentially how Razor will now be feeling after being ousted as All Blacks head coach barely two years into his tenure. On the surface he was everything New Zealand rugby could have wished for. The serial domestic winner who had guided the Crusaders to seven successive Super rugby titles, the empathetic everyman with the break-dancing skills to match.

Noah Caluori scored four tries to help Saracens thump Newcastle Red Bulls 73-14 at a blustery StoneX Stadium. Sarries ran in eleven tries in their first match since it was announced long-standing director of rugby Mark McCall is to step down at the end of the season. The home side put aside a difficult opening 15 minutes against The Prem's bottom club to secure the biggest margin of victory in the competition so far this season.

Henry Pollock has been such a prominent figure in the recent rugby landscape that we had to double check that Saturday will be the first time he has started a game for England. Such has been the meteoric rise of the effervescent 21-year-old, it's easy to forget that up to now, each of his seven Test caps has come from the bench. That will all change against Ireland at Twickenham this weekend.

Tony Ward, voted the first European Player of the Year two months earlier, was dropped. He had won the award largely for his dazzling form in that season's Five Nations Championship. Then, ahead of the First Test on Ireland's tour of Australia, he was canned. It made the six o'clock news. Ward was a gifted footballer. He would go on to play in the League of Ireland for Limerick United FC, starring for them against Southampton in the Uefa Cup.

"Goodness me. What is Delap doing? "It is as if he is thinking, 'I have all the time in the world'. He ambles to it and he takes his time. What are you waiting for? "Liam Delap has not had a good four minutes. He has given it away twice and missed a sitter. Delap has been poor and he has been given the opportunity tonight. Delap looks very lazy, his performances have to improve."