Rugby

1:54 AM BST The first half of Super Rugby Aotearoa is in the books after Round 5 was completed over the weekend. There were wins for the Crusaders and Hurricanes, with Saturday night’s match in Christchurch certainly delivering on its pre-match hype. Catch up with some of the key talking points from the weekend’s action

5:47 PM BST England hooker Jamie George has signed a new three-year contract at Saracens, the Gallagher Premiership club have announced. The reigning English champions will be relegated at the end of the season after breaching salary cap rules, meaning the 29-year-old will feature in the second-tier Championship in the 2020-21 season. “I couldn’t be

5:30 PM BST The Gallagher Premiership will resume on Aug. 14 and the remaining nine rounds of matches will be crammed into six weeks, before the playoffs and final on Oct. 24 — less than a month before the next season kicks off at the end of November. The coronavirus pandemic has meant no club

5:31 AM BST Passion. Determination. Community. They’re three words associated with rugby clubs all over Australia, particularly when you consider the shambolic nature of how the game has been run in recent years. With the game slowly starting to emerge from the hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Super Rugby AU kicking off last

3:34 AM BST The future of the SANZAAR alliance has been cast into further doubt after a leaked report suggested New Zealand’s Aratipu review will recommend the country pursues a trans-Tasman provincial competition from 2021. A Newshub report on Tuesday suggested the alliance could be broken up once and for all, leaving the national unions

1:18 PM BST The Rugby Football Union (RFU) has announced it is to cut 139 jobs in a bid to cope with a £107 million shortfall due to the coronavirus pandemic. RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney announced the cost-cutting measures in a statement on Monday. “As you will be aware the long-term financial challenges are

12:46 PM BST Former Scotland captain Greig Laidlaw will be playing for Japanese Top League side NTT Shining Arcs when the season begins next year, the Chiba-based club said on Monday. Shining Arcs also announced the signing of Australia flanker Liam Gill and New Zealand hooker Anaru Rangi. 1 Related Scrumhalf Laidlaw won 76 test

4:55 PM BST English Premiership clubs will take another step towards a restart after the players were permitted to resume close contact training next week, the Professional Game Board (PGB) said on Friday. The Premiership was suspended in March in response to the coronavirus pandemic. 1 Related The government gave permission for elite sport to

9:30 PM BST New Zealand fly-half Beauden Barrett will miss Super Rugby next year and play for Suntory Sungoliath in Japan’s Top League, but he will be available for the three-times world champions’ international programme, the Blues said on Friday. Barrett last year signed a four-year contract with New Zealand Rugby (NZR) and the Blues

Jul 2, 2020 Former South Africa player Chiliboy Ralepelle has been handed a career-ending eight-year ban for doping, some 18 months after testing positive for a banned substance, South Africa’s Institute for Drug-free Sport said on Wednesday. It is a second drugs ban for the 33-year-old hooker, who served a two-year suspension between 2014 and

8:07 AM BST Leicester Tigers have confirmed England centre Manu Tuilagi has left the Gallagher Premiership club after opting not to sign a new contract on reduced terms in line with the league’s revised salary cap rules. Tuilagi is one of five players to have departed, alongside Kyle Eastmond, Telusa Veainu, Greg Batemen and Noel

6:00 AM BST Former All Blacks flyhalf Dan Carter will make a return to his native Canterbury for his first rugby game in New Zealand since 2015 at the weekend, but will still wear the blue and white colours of their intense provincial rivals Auckland. The 38-year-old Carter, who spent his entire New Zealand professional

6:00 AM BST Crusaders captain Scott Barrett could be out of action for up to four months after undergoing foot surgery, his coach Scott Robertson said on Thursday. Robertson said it would be about 12-16 weeks before Barrett would be able to play again, which could also affect his chances of playing for the All

7:53 AM BST After all that has happened in Australian rugby over the past 18 months, it seems fitting that a new competition will begin with the nation’s oldest rugby rivalry – in a game that promotes the best of its ‘generation next’. Friday night’s Super Rugby AU opener between Queensland Reds and NSW Waratahs

12:24 AM BST England lock Maro Itoje says the singing of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ by fans at Twickenham makes him uneasy but the Rugby Football Union (RFU) should try to educate supporters on its origins rather than ban the popular anthem altogether. The song, believed to have been written by a slave in the

4:00 PM BST England internationals Courtney Lawes and Lewis Ludlam have signed contract extensions at Northampton Saints, the club announced on Tuesday. Fellow England teammates Teimana Harrison, Piers Francis and George Furbank also extended their deals at the club, while Wales fly-half Dan Biggar and Scotland centre Rory Hutchinson also agreed new terms. This year’s

12:50 PM BST New Zealand were awarded the men’s and women’s World Sevens Series titles on Tuesday after World Rugby cancelled the remainder of the season because of the coronavirus outbreak. Tournaments in London, Paris, Singapore and Hong Kong were cancelled on the men’s tour, while the women’s circuit lost rounds in the United States,

1:28 AM BST NSW Rugby chief executive Paul Doorn has played down reports of player strike action, saying the Waratahs, at least, are 100 percent committed to Super Rugby AU and helping the code survive in the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic. On a day when NSW Rugby announced an organizational restructure, which includes the