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ENGLAND HEAD COACH Eddie Jones has defended his April trip to Japanese side Suntory Sungoliath and insisted coaches need to practise coaching during the off-season. The 61-year-old used some of his annual leave following a disappointing Guinness Six Nations to visit Tokyo and continue a long association with the Top League outfit. Jones has held a consultancy role with Suntory for more than two decades and spent time with Beauden Barrett when he travelled there, with the New Zealand star thanking the Australian for his “little pieces of gold” and revealing he had been “more in the background and dealing with coaches”. It still sparked criticism following a fifth-place showing…

THE FIELDS OF Athenry was ringing around the Sportsground as Connacht’s season-concluding win over the Ospreys drew to a close, the western province’s non-playing squad members working up a racket to greet the end of the 2020/21 season. Andy Friend and co. would love to still be in the hunt for a Rainbow Cup final spot but instead they will put their feet up tonight and toast the end of a long, strange campaign. Click Here: cheap adidas superstar It wasn’t a satisfactory season for Connacht – missing out on the Pro14 and Rainbow Cup finals and exiting the Challenge Cup at the quarter-final stage – but it hasn’t really…

BENETTON’S CLASH WITH the Ospreys this weekend in the Rainbow Cup is in doubt, meaning the Italian side could advance into the final of the competition without playing their fifth-round fixture. The42 understands that the Ospreys have recorded a number of positive Covid-19 cases in their squad this week. Click Here: Discussions were ongoing today regarding the viability of Saturday’s scheduled game in Bridgend going ahead. Previous cancellations in the Pro14 and Rainbow Cup have seen the match points awarded to the team who had not recorded positive Covid-19 cases and were therefore not deemed to be responsible for the cancellation. If Benetton were awarded four match points, they would qualify…

IT’S BEEN A problem for most rugby clubs around the country for many years now – getting players from their youth teams all the way through onto their senior side. Coolmine RFC, a junior club based in Dublin, are looking to change that trend at their Ashbrook grounds as part of their ‘Drive to ’25′ initiative, which essentially aims to see the club promoted into the All-Ireland League by 2025. A core part of the plan is helping to bridge the gap from the youth teams – the club has 700 players across their minis and youths – into the senior side of the club and to do so, they’ve…

SPRINGBOKS HEAD COACH Jacques Nienaber has underlined SA Rugby’s belief that the Lions tour should definitely go ahead and stressed that his players are all desperate to be involved in the “special” occasion. South Africa is currently dealing with its third wave of Covid-19, with the spread of the Delta variant causing a major rise in the number of infections and reportedly pushing some hospitals to breaking point. Nienaber and the Springboks are finally back in action against Georgia on Friday night, when they will be without two players due to positive Covid-19 tests and another two players who were deemed to be close contacts. The Boks head coach believes…

TWO WINS FROM two, and so far it’s all going to plan for Ben Moxham and the Ireland U20s ahead of Thursday’s Triple Crown showdown with England in Cardiff. The Ulster back, who started at wing in the wins over Scotland and Wales, feels that he, and the team, have been growing across the opening stages of the tournament following a year of disruption. “I think in the Scotland game, we just needed to get used to playing with each other for a bit,” Moxham says. “It was my first game with the lads and with the forwards out in the wide channels, I think it just took a big…

A BUSY summer of sport continues, with the Euros in full swing and the GAA continuing in earnest, while it’s not long now until the Olympics begin and the British and Irish Lions get their tour of South Africa underway. As always, The42 will be here to cater for what promises to be an exciting few months. This week’s edition of Behind the Lines will feature former Chelsea and Everton star Pat Nevin, who will be discussing his new book ‘The Accidental Footballer’ with Gavin Cooney. We’ll also have the latest edition of GAA Weekly, with Kerry legend Marc Ó Sé, our GAA editor Fintan O’Toole and host Maurice Brosnan discussing…

IT HAS BEEN confirmed that the United Ruby Championship will be available on free-to-air TV for Irish fans. A statement released today announced: “RTÉ and TG4 are proudly partnering to deliver world-class club rugby to Irish audiences. The public service media organisations have announced that they have secured broadcasting rights for the new United Ruby Championship (URC) ensuring it will be predominantly free to air for Irish audiences for the next four years.   Click Here: “RTÉ has secured the rights for live TV, radio and online coverage of 26 games featuring the Irish provinces in the league, plus additional knockout matches. “TG4’s Rugbaí Beo will continue to be the station’s flagship rugby programme…

NO IRELAND TRIP to Cardiff would be complete without some reference to that try in 1989. You know the one, a young fella from Ballinasloe racing down the wing before touching down. Well, today we had the sequel, Shane Jennings scoring a superb effort for the Ireland Under 20s in their comprehensive win over Scotland in the opening game of the Six Nations. Like Noel Mannion, Jennings is a Ballinalsoe man. Unlike Mannion, he does his talking in the centre rather than in the backrow. It just so happens that Noel Mannion – capped 16 times for Ireland – was his mentor as a kid. “A friend of the family’s,”…

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