Want to know what happened in French rugby’s Top 14 this weekend? Read all about it by clicking on this link to my latest Top 14 post for Rugby Wrap Up…
Category Archives: Top 14
Here’s my latest post for the American-based rugby website Rugby Wrap Up. You can see it in all its glory here. CASTRES, FRANCE – Toulouse new boy Toby Flood enjoyed a memorable Top 14 debut. He scored all his side’s points as they scraped past a dogged Oyonnax at Stade Ernest Wallon. But it’s Brive, […]
Here’s my preview of the opening weekend of the Top 14 season for Rugby Wrap Up. CASTRES, FRANCE – LESS than three months – 76 days, if you want to be accurate about it – after Toulon lift the Top 14’s Bouclier de Brennus, they will kick off the new season atBayonne. Almost under the […]
Here’s my latest Top 14 blog for Rugby Wrap Up – Please read it there, too, as they’ve got pictures… Grenoble 28 (15) Toulon 26 (12) WHAT defines a great game of rugby? Fast, free-flowing moves? Near-constant shifts in momentum? Immovable defence and unstoppable attacks? Tension so high it’s in danger of landing on Mars? And […]
I’m now blogging on the Top 14 American rugby blog Rugby Wrap Up – here’s my published first article… I’m quietly proud of it Southwest France – Last weekend’s Top 14 results made a mockery of many a pundits’ opinion – especially Oyonnax’s stuffing RWU’s favorites for the Brennus, Clermont; Biarritz beating Montpellier and Stade Francais showed fortitude in taking out Perpignan. They say there is a thin […]
It was, for bookies and fans of certain sides in the Top 14, the best of weeks. It was, for many a Top 14 pundit, the worst of weeks, as the results made a mockery of what they believed should have been a series of relatively straightforward forecasts. Still, at least it will keep us […]
Toulon v Racing Metro – or, as it was known in whispered conversations in rugby clubs up and down France, Wilkinson v Sexton – was widely touted as the battle of the kickers in the Top 14 this week – but an exhibition of straightforward, effective, clinical rugby by the expensively assembled Toulonnaise made a […]
On Friday, August 16, 2013, Toulon exhibited all the get-up-and-go of The Magic Roundabout’s doped-up rabbit Dylan as they kicked off the new Top 14 season with a laboured, barely deserved draw at Montpellier. A week later, pundits and fans alike expected them to charge at Racing Metro like a sex-starved rhino on bad acid. […]
One down. Twenty-five to go… Not afraid to make a fool of himself after last weekend’s opening matches in the Top 14, James Harrington rushes in to play pundit ahead of the second set of games Toulon v Racing Metro Any look ahead at this early season meeting of two of the Top 14’s biggest-spending, deepest-pocketed […]
Rugby union’s new scrummaging laws had their first serious workout this weekend as the Top 14 season kicked off in France. For years, it has been widely accepted that the scrum is a mess. That lengthy instruction: ‘Crouch. Touch. Hold. Engage,’ was almost inevitably followed by a raised arm and the shrill sound of a […]
