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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

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

Being careful what you wish for

This week England head coach Stuart Lancaster paid a visit to Toulon in order to assure brothers Steffon and Delon Armitage that the ‘door was not wholly closed’ as regards them playing for England at some point in the future – by which he presumably meant between now and the end of the  [...]

April 25, 2014 // 0 Comments

Food for thought

The power and influence of the National Rust, now building upon its daily readership of 1.584 million, continues to confound even our own expectations. Barely 24 hours after my demand that the rugby authorities should investigate Saturday’s savage and unsavoury Premiership clash between [...]

April 14, 2014 // 0 Comments

Rugby culture hypocrisy

You may call me sad if you wish, but – in classic ‘busman’s holiday’ mode – at 3.00pm yesterday afternoon I settled down to watch BT Sport’s ‘live’ coverage of the Premiership match between Gloucester and Bath. I could have gone shopping, prepared the family evening meal, done the [...]

April 13, 2014 // 0 Comments

One for the men in green

There are plenty of things imperfect about rugby union’s Six Nations tournament – not least the fact that it is a hugely commercial sports product of a cosy, self-serving cabal of ‘old world’ countries specifically designed to preserve the existing Northern Hemisphere order – but each [...]

March 16, 2014 // 0 Comments

Wales humbled at HQ

That’s the odd, and compelling, thing about sporting contests. They very rarely pan out as you think. Or, to put it another way, sometimes the result does – but not in the way that you had anticipated. In advance of yesterday’s England v Wales rugby match at Twickenham, I was forced to give a [...]

March 10, 2014 // 0 Comments

Respecting the referee

After a weekend in the county, yesterday I finally got around to reading my copy of the latest The Rugby Paper, rugby union’s weekly newspaper. One of its articles was a full-page diatribe by a regular contributor against the increasing preponderance of on-field chat/advice to the referee [...]

February 26, 2014 // 0 Comments

An epic encounter at Billy Williams’ cabbage patch

Any slight frustration I felt at about 6.00pm last night, my long record of hopeless sporting predictions still intact after England’s 13-10 victory over Ireland at Twickenham, was surpassed by sheer delight and wonder at the pulsating game of rugby that I had just witnessed on television. Those [...]

February 23, 2014 // 0 Comments

So little to choose between them …

Having retired to bed last night at half-time during the Wales v France Six Nations contest with a home victory plainly in sight, I awoke a few minutes ago with a growing sense of anticipatory tension and excitement over the England v Ireland clash at Twickenham this afternoon. Can Stuart [...]

February 22, 2014 // 0 Comments

What goes around, comes around

As the 21st Century marches on, some sports are developing in ways that gradually take them away from the versions that we oldies grew up with and loved. Change is inevitable, of course, but sometimes you wonder. Take cricket. Back in the day – for me personally, the 1960s – county cricket was [...]

February 2, 2014 // 0 Comments

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