Rugby Union

SportingSpeak Review of the Week

16.02.2015

Top Four

  • Premier League TV rights: worth a staggering £5.1 billion, apparently.
  • Everyone’s talking about Jonathan Joseph after his two scintillating tries during England’s 47-17 Six Nations win over Italy at Twickenham. He’s not the new Jeremy Guscott, though…
  • Katarina Johnson-Thompson: back from injury and breaking records already. With Morgan Lake also excelling, the future of British heptathlon looks bright.
  • Tattoos. Zalatan Ibrahimovic received a yellow card for his shirtless goal celebration, showing off his (temporarily) tattooed torso, but apparently it’s all about world hunger.

In the relegation zone

Sport on Pay to View: It’s Not as Bad as We Might Think

Broadcasting rights are a hot topic: recently we’ve heard that the Six Nations will consider offers from Pay to View television operators for its next UK broadcast rights deal, we’ve learned that Sky will broadcast The Open Championships from 2017, and then of course there’s the Sky/BT £5 billion mega-deal for the Premier League. With regards to the Six Nations and The Open, both these stories were greeted with an outcry: moving to Pay to View is regarded by many as selling out – chasing the big bucks at the expense of keeping the ‘bigger picture’ in sight. This bigger picture takes into account not just revenue, but the sport’s popularity at grassroots level – and the associated health and social benefits of participation in sport. It is assumed that this correlates with TV viewing figures, but delve a little deeper and the evidence does not unequivocally suggest that in order to support this bigger picture, live sporting events must remain on terrestrial television.

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SportingSpeak Review of the Week

26.01.15

Top Four: 

 In the relegation zone: 

SportingSpeak Review of the Week

08.12.14

Top Four:

 

In the relegation zone:

SportingSpeak Review of the Week

01.12.14

Top Four:

In the relegation zone:

Wasps’ move to Coventry is a natural progression as rugby finds its way in the professional era

The announcement that Wasps will be relocating to Coventry’s Ricoh Arena in December has not been met with universal acclaim – far from it. Supporters of the traditionally London-based side have taken to social media in droves (pun completely intended) to protest against the move. The overwhelming sense among a large number of fans is clear: they feel the club has forgotten its roots, and disregarded, disrespected, and therefore ultimately lost many of its once loyal fans. As a life-long Wasps fan myself, I can empathise with these sentiments: fans were not consulted, the deal was conducted in secret, and of course travelling to Coventry for games will be a far less convenient, or completely non-viable, option for many supporters. However, fans must look at the context in which this decision was taken. The options were to move, or to go out of business. A club that has been to the brink of bankruptcy, and survived so much uncertainty, may just have guaranteed its future: this should be a cause for celebration.

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Head injuries in Sport: Risk and Responsibility

Last year, headlines were made when some 4500 former NFL players, many of whom had suffered with mental health or cognitive problems, sued the league over head injuries sustained whilst playing.  My instinct when news of this lawsuit broke was to be sceptical: surely the risk of injury whilst playing a sport such as American football is something that, as a professional, you accept and take responsibility for when signing up to play in the NFL. Playing sport, at any level, involves some level of risk when it comes to your body – go for a run and risk shin splints, play netball and risk a broken finger, play football and risk a twisted ankle. At any rate, risk is an inherent part of anything we do, and surely it had not come as a surprise to former NFL players that the risk of head injury came with the territory when playing top-level American football?

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Why Scotland must stay (in the 6 Nations)

Prior to Scotland’s last-gasp defeat of Italy in Rome last weekend, much talk was being bandied around regarding Scotland’s future in the 6 Nations, Paul Hayward leading the charge with his recent piece in The Telegraph[1].  A defeat to nil by England at Murrayfield was regarded by Hayward, among others, as the straw that broke the camel’s back after a series of disappointing performances from the Scottish side. All sorts of statistics were dug up from the doldrums in an attempt to illustrate that Scotland were no longer a side fit for top-flight international rugby: that they have won only two out of their last 12 fixtures, that they have 3 wooden spoons to their name since the 5 Nations became the 6 Nations in 2000 (which, incidentally, means that they have not finished last in 11 out of the last 14 tournaments, but to mention that would be to detract from the headline making sensationalism our media so enjoys). Scotland couldn’t compete, couldn’t win, they couldn’t even produce a pitch worthy of an international fixture at Murrayfield – they should go.

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