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Articles by Sandra McDonnell

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About Sandra McDonnell

As an Englishwoman married to a Scot, Sandra experiences some tension at home during Six Nations tournaments. Her enthusiasm for rugby was acquired through early visits to Fylde club matches with her father and her proud boast is that she has missed only two England home games at Twickenham since 1995. Sandra has three grown-up children, none of whom follow rugby. More Posts

European rugby misgivings

I have blogged about this before, but the first weekend of the 2016/2017 European Rugby cup competitions has reinforced my impression that Northern Hemisphere rugby union is rapidly going the way of top flight football with bells on – and not necessarily in a good way. Let me list some of the [...]

October 16, 2016 // 0 Comments

Sport and attrition

Sport is one of the most wonderful activities that human society has ever devised and regulated. Although I’ve being trying but struggling to identify other species capable of organising sporting contents – my presumption is that such games and leisure pastimes as animals, fish and birds [...]

October 7, 2016 // 0 Comments

Rugby may be going the way of all sports

One of the uncomfortable home truths coming home to roost in world sport in the last five years is the extent to which the powers-that-be [and in that description I include both sports administrators generally and those club owners (in team games) and personal managers (in individual sports) who [...]

September 11, 2016 // 0 Comments

That crystal ball thing

It’s now only four days and counting down until rugby union’s 2016/2017 Aviva Premiership season begins and so those of us who are occasionally moved to comment or report upon it have begun sharpening our pencils and making our preparatory notes. Although rugby is still basking in the warm glow [...]

August 30, 2016 // 0 Comments

The long-term effects of living life to the full

Beyond the familiar issues of corruption and performance-enhancing drugs (drugs cheats) that bedevil the governing bodies of major world sports, one of the biggest coming up fast on the rail for physical contact sports and games is that of concussion and its long-term effects. Here’s an [...]

July 9, 2016 // 0 Comments

Responsibility lies with the man in charge of decisions

The biggest controversy arising from yesterday’s announcement of England rugby head coach Eddie Jones’s squad for the tour of Australia next month is the selection of Harlequins’ wing threequarter Marland Yarde, apparently at the expense of Saracens’ free-scoring Chris Ashton. The argument [...]

May 24, 2016 // 0 Comments

Setting off down the runway

England rugby head coach Eddie Jones announced his training squad to go into camp between 17th and 19th May at Brighton College – see a media report here – THE GUARDIAN Jones-watching has become a fashionable pastime amongst rugby fans ever since the RFU – bending to public opinion, as it [...]

May 9, 2016 // 0 Comments

And so we face/the final curtain …

And thus we reach the twilight of another English rugby union season – the last matches of the regular fixture list in the Aviva Premiership  this weekend, with only the semi-final play-offs and Final to come; and of course the elite European cup rugby finals, the Challenge Cup next Friday [...]

May 7, 2016 // 0 Comments

What goes around comes around (maybe)

The tribal gulf between adherents of Rugby Union and Rugby League, caused by the hundred years ‘parting of the ways’ in 1895 when the Northern Union clubs (League wasn’t called League until about 1922) split off over the question of ‘broken time’ payments, i.e. professionalism, remains [...]

April 28, 2016 // 0 Comments

The resumption of normal service

Yesterday, because of family commitments upon this Easter weekend, I watched ‘live’ on television only parts of the back-to-back Aviva Premiership games between Saracens and Exeter Chiefs and then Worcester Warriors and London Irish – both courtesy of BT Sport whose overall coverage I think [...]

March 27, 2016 // 0 Comments

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