I've teamed up with leading South Africa-based sports website rugby365.com

Over the past three years, I've done a fair amount of work for titles in South Africa and I'm pleased to announce I've started a collaboration with leading rugby website www.rugby365.com.

The merits or otherwise of national teams selecting players based in other countries - or, indeed, other hemispheres - is a hot topic, and former Springboks assistant coach Gary Gold adds to that debate in my first contribution to the website.

 Belfast-based Bok Ruan Pienaar



I hope to do more with Quintin, Jan and the other guys at rugby365 soon, so keep an eye out.

Rugby and race

As football continues to destroy - or at least degrade - itself through racism rows, here are a few thoughts of mine on the issue of racism (or its absence) in rugby. It follows a story about an unsavoury incident in Redruth that I broke on BBC Sport Online a few weeks ago.
I'm not reopening old wounds here or seeking to sensationalse, I just want to ensure this abhorrent behaviour doesn't gain any sort of foothold in a game that is generally - and rightly - known for its warm, inclusive spirit.

Freddie Burns - who better to ask about the West Country derby?

He still regards Bath Rugby as his home team and openly admits to an enduring affection for the club. But on Saturday afternoon Freddie Burns will be seeking to bamboozle and out-gun anyone in blue, black and white as though his life depended on it.

As a teenager, Burns jumped ship from the Bath Academy and headed to the cherry and white of Gloucester. It was a colossal call for a 17-year-old to make, and the fly-half admits to having had a few moments along the way where he’s questioned the wisdom of the decision. But, 80 games for Gloucester and an England Saxons call-up later, there are zero regrets.

Greetings from the West Country

“Bath is definitely my home-town club – I spent many years growing up and sneaking into games at The Rec,” said the 22-year-old ahead of Saturday’s derby at Kingsholm. “But when I left Bath, it was a case of me wanting to get out there and test myself.

“Gloucester were known for playing a lot of youngsters, and at the time Butch James was the fly-half for Bath – he’s world-class. I thought about where I was going to have the best opportunity to become the best player, and I was impressed by how Gloucester structured their academy.

“They set out a plan for how they’d blood me. Dean Ryan (the then Gloucester director of rugby) said ‘You’ll be at Cinderford this year, Moseley next year if Gloucester don’t need you’. As a youngster, all you want to see is a bit of a pathway through and I felt Gloucester had that in place.

“It was a big call. It wasn’t easy. I had a lot of conversations with my parents and Bath players past and present – people I hugely respect. It took a long time to make the decision and I had my doubts over the years. But, especially over the past 18 months or two years, it’s definitely been worth the move in terms of how much I’ve played for Gloucester.”

Burns still enjoys bantering on Twitter with his mates from Oldfield Old Boys and regularly returns to the city; there is clearly still a part of him that’s rooted in Bath. And how couldn’t there be? He went to Beechen Cliff School and City of Bath College, started playing rugby aged five at Avon, and played for a host of sides in the city.

The build-up to a Bath-Gloucester derby has added a bit of frisson to this week, but Burns says he isn’t one to get carried away.

“It’s a West Country derby and that means a bit more excitement, however I’m not really the type to get too nervous or get caught up in it,” he said. “I’ll go through my week like it’s a normal week with the added bonus that it’s my home-town club I’ll be facing at the end of it. I do get a bit more stick from my mates in texts and on Twitter, though!

“My family and I still keep an eye out for Bath. It’s always going to be a club that’s special in my heart – it’s just a case of putting that to one side for an afternoon and getting the win.”

Freddie isn’t the only Burns on Gloucester’s books. His younger brother, Bill – four years his junior – also moved to the Cherry and Whites from Bath. The move took place after Bill, who turned 18 in June, was rejected by the Bath Academy.

Lightning appears to have struck twice, with Bill quickly following in his brother’s footsteps and rapidly rising through Gloucester's ranks. He played at fly-half against Newcastle in the A League on Monday, came off the bench for Gloucester’s first-team in a LV= Cup match last season, and has already played for England U18s.

“I’m lucky,” says Freddie. “The whole family comes with me to Gloucester and with what happened to Bill – with the Bath Academy not wanting him and the Gloucester Academy saying they'd have him – it’s strengthened the family connection with the club.”

The strength of that connection will be shown on Saturday when Burns will make every attempt to whip up the notoriously partisan Gloucester crowd to what he hopes will be Bath’s detriment.

“I’ve always been a bit of a showman and like to feed off the crowd and have a bit of banter with them,” he said. “I think you have to feed off The Shed on derby day.”

Showman is the right word. With flair, vision and a desire to take the ball on the gainline, Burns has established himself as the Cherry and Whites’ master of ceremonies. And there can be little doubt that many visiting fans on Saturday will wish that this showman still wore blue, black and white.

This article first appeared in The Bath Chronicle, which this week contains interviews with Bath coach Mike Ford and players David Wilson and Dan Hipkiss in the build-up to the derby.

Bristol's Chris Booy - a sure-footed chairman in the itchy-footed world of pro sport

Things have been a tad quiet on here of late, for which I apologise. In mitigation, I can only plead time-poverty. Making the transition to freelancer has been demanding, especially when set against the domestic backdrop of the imminent arrival of child number three. Still, at least I'll soon have a complete frontrow at my disposal.

 

I spoke to Bristol chairman Chris Booy just before the new season kicked off to do a piece for The Rugby Paper. In it, Booy spoke about how promotion from the Championship wasn't "the be all and end all" for his club this season. With multi-millionaire financial services big-hitter Steve Lansdown now on board, Booy said the emphasis at the Memorial Ground was on building a squad that would be capable of staying in the Premiership once it got up there, rather than going up and down between divisions like the proverbial courtesan's negligee.

 

Well, with the start Bristol have had, it's a good job promotion isn't the be all and end all.

 

It's been pretty grim so far, with three defeats in their opening five Championship matches. Two of those losses have been at home, the latest a 22-21 reversal against Moseley.

 

But don't strike a line through Bristol's promotion propects just yet. They have a phalanx of players due back from injury, and I liked the cut of  Booy's jib when I spoke to him back in late August. Measured, grounded and pragmatic, I think Booy's chairmanship, buttressed by Lansdown's deep pockets, will make Bristol a force to be reckoned with over the medium term.

 

“Getting promoted is not the be all and end all,” he told me. “We can go again. When we win the Championship, we want to make sure we stay in the Premiership. We don’t want the yo-yoing that we’ve had previously. That was down to financial instability and we don’t have that now. The plan is to build so that when we do get our prize we stay in the Premiership. We are in for the long-term. We are in the best place that the club has been in for a long time."

 

Refreshingly, the level-headed Booy is the perfect antidote to the worryingly expanding breed of impatient, trigger-happy CEOs and chairmen who bin coaches at the first sign of trouble. (Sale's Steve Diamond springs to mind.) Instead of waving the metaphorical axe in head coach Liam Middleton's direction, Booy offers a sympathetic ear.

 

“The head coach position in all sport is a dreadful position," he said. "You have the pressure of the directors’ ambitions on you, and then underneath you have the whole club reliant on the direction you choose. It’s a lonely place to be.

 

“So we have set up a series of mentors and friends of the club so that Liam has that network to help him. We have a young coach and we’ve had conversations with him so he has the best support. You need to get it right.”

How enlightened an approach in this increasingly itchy-footed, cut-throat world of professional sport. But whether Booy will be so sympathetic if things don't pick up for Bristol over the next couple of months is, I suspect, quite another matter.

Premiership Rugby needs consistency on TMOs

I wrote this article for The Rugby Paper at the start of August. A month on, and with the Premiership season starting tomorrow, it would be nice to see some progress here. For the sake of fairness, there surely needs to be equality of technological assistance for the referee across all matches.

Plans to introduce Television Match Officials at all Aviva Premiership matches for the forthcoming season have stalled as clubs ponder whether to stump up the £350,000 needed.


Talks over the use of TMOs at non-broadcast matches have gone quiet since a four-match trial at the end of last season.

Among those leading the push for the blanket use of TMOs are Exeter, but the Chiefs chairman and chief executive, Tony Rowe, says discussions among the Premiership Rugby board have been limited since the trial ended on April 21.

Rowe says Premiership clubs between them already pay over £1 million per season towards elite refereeing, making further costs for TV adjudication difficult for some clubs to bear. He believes the RFU should step in and shoulder some of the financial burden.

Exeter benefited during last season's TMO trial, with a match-winning try at Gloucester awarded to them after it was referred to the TV official.

"We would like to see TMOs at every match," said Rowe. "We would vote for it. TMOs are very important to the game. We have got to have enough strategically-placed cameras.

"After the game at Kingsholm we think it's a must going forward. I think there is widespread support but the issue fora lot of clubs is a financial one - having to pay for all the cameras.

"I don't know how long it would take to introduce. I've not been involved in any discussions since the trial last season."

Explaining why he believes the RFU should chip in, Rowe said: "Well over £1 million a year is paid by Premiership Rugby to the RFU for elite refereeing. At the moment, the money involved has got to come from Premiership Rugby rather than the RFU.

"The RFU wants elite rugby and makes most of its money from elite rugby with events at Twickenham so I think they should [contribute financially]."

Currently, only live Premiership matches broadcast by either Sky or ESPN benefit from TMOs. When Premiership Rugby announced the four-game trial at non broadcast matches last season, it said it was being carried out to help ensure the integrity of the competition.

A Premiership Rugby spokesman said this week: "It is an important innovation and it's something that could be reignited over the next couple of weeks.

"It will be on the agenda at the next Premiership Rugby board meeting in September. It's something that needs to be agreed by all clubs."

The broader use of TMOs is under consideration by the IRB, which in May announced it was considering widening TMOs' jurisdiction so they can rule on incidents of foul play, as well as play leading up to a try.

But Rowe is doubtful whether the Premiership will see the uniform use of TMOs at any point this season.

"If I was a betting man, which I'm not, I'd bet they won't be introduced this season - and that's because there's money involved," he said.

West Country rugby seeks inoculation against 'Welsh flu'

Former England coach Jack Rowell once complained that the Bath side he had just taken charge of suffered "Welsh flu" whenever they crossed the Severn Bridge for a match. Now the West Country side are hoping to leave a few other clubs feeling queasy after signing their own Welsh bruisers.


Wales utility prop Paul James and former Wales U21 lock Dominic Day have both been recruited to give Bath more grunt in the front five. James, who has 38 caps, moved after nine years at Ospreys while Day has moved to The Rec from Scarlets.

And with Ben Morgan 's move from Parc y Scarlets to Gloucester, they represent something of a eastwards migration over the Bridge.

"A lot of the time people here don't understand what Paul and I are saying to each other," laughs Day. "Paul's a Valleys boy and we both have thick accents.

"But Paul is a clever guy and a quality player and it's great to have someone of his experience also joining Bath. I've played against him and I know he doesn't take a backwards step."

Day and James are the latest Welsh players to head to either England or France following the introduction of a £3.5 million salary cap on the Welsh regions' player budgets.

But Day doesn't believe the move will harm his and James's international prospects. He believes the move to the Premiership will give his play a harder edge.

"As long as I'm playing well and if I am in contact with the Welsh Rugby Union, then we'll see," he said. "Stephen Jones, James Hook and others - a lot of these (international) players are leaving the country. I'm sure Paul still has ambitions to carry on playing for Wales.

"A lot of players are leaving Wales at the moment for one reason or another, and for me personally it was because I felt I needed a change. Things were getting a little stale at Scarlets.

"Part of the reason for coming here is that I want to improve my forwards play. The Premiership's got a reputation as a hard league with big forwards and there are quality sides to play week in week out."

Day admits to having been taken aback by the ferocity of Bath's pre-season programme.

"It's the work rate and the workload; it's been a lot higher this pre-season," he said. "Whether it's weights or contact sessions, it's been tough. I've had to learn a lot."

It might be a steep learning curve, but there is little chance that Day or James have been homesick, at least over the past month, thanks to the distinctly Welsh flavour to Bath's warm-up matches: London Welsh, Ospreys and Cardiff Blues.

The art of the sporting cliche

Cliches abound in sport. If anyone disagrees with that statement, then they clearly aren't snatching defeat from the jaws of victory enough during the business end of the season. Or being forced to dig deep enough during the relegation dogfight.

A classic sporting cliche is all too often trotted out when a squad is unveiled for a match or tour. "There is a nice blend of youth and experience," bleat the pundits. Zzzzzz.

But here's a blend that I think is working at the moment, at least in Bath Rugby's case: traditional one-for- all-and-all-for-one bonding methods and bang-up-to-date training techniques.

I rattled on last week about how Gary Gold and his team are using scientific methods to monitor each player's performance at training. In today's pages, Matt Banahan gives that regime his seal of approval, even though it involves a camcorder being pointed at him should he so much as breathe in the gym.

"We need to make sure we know the difference between fiction and reality," Toby Booth said to me earlier this week when I asked him about the painstaking measurements that are taking place. "Everybody knows where they are, rather than it being reputation and myth."

That's the science. But what about the old school bonding tricks?

On Sunday, the Bath squad were driven to an Army camp in Wales. Since then, the players' mobile phone use has been severely restricted and they've been involved in traditional team-building exercises as well as some frank discussions.

Yesterday they were constructing rafts, lugging cannons around and abseiling off cliffs. Best of all, they were made to attempt some archery while on the cusp of exhaustion.

In the weeks leading up to his departure from Bath, Sir Ian McGeechan kept insisting that the culture at Bath was good and that the foundations were laid for a strong future.

But it seems to me that Gold and his team have set about achieving a wholesale overhaul of the club's ethos. And on the basis of last season's performance, you could argue that that's no bad thing.

A recurring theme from the new coaches is that it's a clean slate and that a line's been drawn in the sand.
Perhaps those cliches have something going for them after all.