Articles by Sandra McDonnell

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

End of term report

What to make of England’s rugby tour to New Zealand this month? In advance it was viewed both by the England coaching hierarchy and UK pundits as a chance to make a statement of intent as regards next year’s Rugby World Cup – who can forget the Martin Johnson team’s 13-15 victory at [...]

June 23, 2014 // 0 Comments

The attraction of uncertainty

One of the eternally-fascinating aspects of sport is its unpredictability – and I’m not saying that from a punter’s perspective because I’m not a betting girl. Last Sunday Jensen Button began the last lap of the Montreal (Canadian) Grand Prix in 8th place and – through no intervention of [...]

June 10, 2014 // 0 Comments

Strap yourselves in!

Family considerations already taken into account, I shall be up early – well 0800 hours UK time – on Saturday 7th June in order to watch Sky Sport’s ‘live’ coverage of the first of three rugby tests that England play on their tour of New Zealand. In this piece I shall make [...]

June 5, 2014 // 0 Comments

To refer … or not to refer

For my sins – including leaving my husband and kids to fend for themselves at no small cost to the quiet order of the McDonnell kitchen – I spent much of yesterday glued to the BT Sports television channel, watching first the English Premiership Final between Saracens and Northampton Saints and [...]

June 1, 2014 // 0 Comments

They’re all wrong

Having said my piece yesterday on the issue of whether newly-crowned European Player Of The Year Steffon Armitage should be considered for inclusion in England rugby squad [I’m in favour, in case you missed it], I awoke this morning to find that not only has head coach Stuart Lancaster indicated [...]

May 27, 2014 // 0 Comments

Trying to square the circle

Even though the 2013/2014 domestic rugby union season is not quite over – the Premiership Final takes place this coming Saturday – I wish to comment upon two linked issues of crucial importance to the future of the sport. The first touches upon the vexed question of whether the national rugby [...]

May 26, 2014 // 0 Comments

Prospects in rugby, even at the top, are limited

In 2010 I read somewhere that the average career longevity in English rugby’s Premiership was less than four seasons. Of course, the factors contributing in this brevity can range from informed personal choice (e.g. an active change of career direction, a family illness, shifting [...]

May 14, 2014 // 0 Comments

It may be a stage of life thing …

If media reports are to be believed, some 500,000 tickets for the 2015 Rugby World Cup matches will be dished out to RFU-affiliated clubs this month, with another 2.3 million tickets going on sale in September. Whilst fully accepting that this may partly be a product of advanced age, I find that my [...]

May 8, 2014 // 0 Comments

A hardy annual appears again

To begin, let me declare an interest – when it comes to English club rugby union, I always have been, and will remain, a support of league promotion and relegation. You could call me old-fashioned and a traditionalist for holding this view and I wouldn’t care. There’s both logic and romance [...]

May 4, 2014 // 0 Comments

Bending the rules to suit a game

Last night’s crucial Premiership match between Bath and Northampton Saints at the Recreational Ground in Bath – depending upon who had won – could have either secured Bath a play-off finish or the Saints a home semi-final. In the event, with me watching live on BT Sport, it did neither by [...]

May 3, 2014 // 0 Comments

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Quilter autumn internationals

November 9, 2025 // 0 Comments

À friend of mine something of a rugby aficionado sent me a Guardian article forecasting this England side might provide expansive rugby. I had my doubts as over the years I [...]
Fiorentina sack Pioli

November 5, 2025 // 0 Comments

With Fiorentina bottom of Serie a, it came as no surprise that head coach Stefano Pioli was sacked yesterday. Results have been terrible and last Saturday we lost 0-1 at home [...]
Annabelle Croft

November 2, 2025 // 0 Comments

The highlight of my sporting weekend was not the ATP tennis, not the sports on offer, but Annabelle Croft’s appearance on Michael Berkeley’s Radio 3 programme [...]
The Premiership

November 2, 2025 // 0 Comments

Who would have thought that Sunderland promoted in the play-offs would stand just one point behind Liverpool with a game in hand? It’s surely Arsenal’s to lose with their [...]
the Autumn Internationals

November 2, 2025 // 0 Comments

Time was when the autumn internationals were a winter break from the Premiership and an appetiser between the Rugby Championship and the Six Nations but now it’s fully [...]