Rugby

Burst Bubble

Published by on October 30, 2020 | 2 Responses
Burst Bubble

The Barbarians are a team that only play a few times a year. Every year they get a new coach who gets to select any players he wants to play in the series. You might ask how a team can be successful with a new coach and group of players every year.  However winning isn’t […]

Rugby culture

Published by on October 23, 2020 | 2 Responses
Rugby culture

In my opinion one of the factors that makes rugby one of the best sports around is the culture that that has developed around the game. Rugby culture is based around the core value of teamwork, discipline, enjoyment, sportsmanship and respect. The picture below I think sums up rugby culture so well, two players from […]

The worst type of fan

Published by on October 9, 2020 | 2 Responses
The worst type of fan

Social media has affected rugby in a positive way for example it has increased the number of people that rugby has been able to reach through fans feeling closer to the players. However social media has also been a disaster in some senses. How is this so? Social media has given the worst type of […]

Villains of Rugby

Published by on October 2, 2020 | 2 Responses
Crowd for England 15s team at twickenham

One thing COVID-19 has done is highlight financially struggling businesses. Although rugby is a sport the RFU have to operate as a financially viable business. This is where it gets more complicated because rugby has two forms; rugby 15s and rugby 7s both in effect being subdivisions of the rugby business in England. Rugby 15s […]

Rugby has changed

Published by on September 25, 2020 | 4 Responses
Referee Nigel Owens |(MBE) awarding a penalty .

Professional rugby is back on TV and I’m glad to be watching again. However over the lockdown period the game has changed. Previously I have mentioned two ways that the game has changed: one being that the players had had a prolonged period of rest so the skill level had dropped, but after a few […]

Rugby feels different

Published by on September 18, 2020 | Leave a response
A picture of "The Shed' at Gloucester Rugby's Kingsholm Stadium

Rugby is back but it doesn’t feel like it did before. I think this simply comes down to the empty stadiums. Even if you are watching a game from home you still pick up on the atmosphere of the stadium. I believe the fans and the atmosphere they create plays a massive role in making […]

What is Rugby?

Published by on September 11, 2020 | 1 Response
What is Rugby?

How did Rugby come about? Rugby was invented in 1823 when William Webb Ellis a student at Rugby School (a private school near where I live) became bored of playing soccer and did the radical thing of picking up the ball and running with it. He then decided with his friends that he wanted to […]

Rugby is back

The last few months have been a rollercoaster navigating through lockdown due to COVID-19. It feels strange saying rugby is my escape from everyday life because it was part of everyday life to me. Life just felt different without the normality of getting to run out onto the pitch and watching games at the weekend.

                                         

The wait is over. Its been 23 weeks but at last ‘Premiership Rugby is back’ something I’ve been waiting for so long to hear. The stage is set, safety measures in place. The familiar sound of the referees whistle and we’re off. I’m expecting for this first tackle to be so spectacular you can feel it through the television. So spectacular it makes up for all this time without rugby. Then reality kicks in, this big collision I was waiting for stopped by a dropped ball.

With hindsight maybe I shouldn’t have expected for one game to make up for the amount of games that have been missed. This is like any other start to the season.  The players are rusty and need to get back to the level they finished the previous season. When the players do reach this level its going to be thrilling to watch players that have had time to recover from underlying  injuries and take their fitness to a new level. All of this can only lead to a more physical, faster and overall more exciting style of rugby.

National governing body road map for return to play

What does this mean for the non-professionals?

Despite the joy of knowing live rugby is back I know that it doesn’t indicate that life is back to normal we are still in a pandemic. However it feels like a big step in the right direction. Hopefully soon us non-professionals will be able to take to the field once again, but for now its non-contact training in small groups.

What am I looking forward to now?

Now rugby is back its made me want to be on the pitch even more, I don’t know which part of the game I’m looking forward to most. Is it for that first carry or the opportunity to get one up on my opposite number at scrum time? Or is it the rush after propelling an attack on our try line?  Could it be something as simple as the moment shared with the team before the game when all the preparation is done and we’re about to battle for each other? I don’t know which of these it will be but it can’t come soon enough.

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