A week watching Rugby Union

What a crazy, wonderful 7 days we have had watching rugby union and reporting on the latest rugby news. We didn’t realise the arrests of James O’Connor and Ali Williams in Paris could lead to so many tweets about white lines!

There were comments about line speed, crossing the white lines and the list went on. It’s not only Twitter that caused amusement over serious incidents. The highly respected Nigel Owen found himself centre of attention issuing a yellow card to the ball boy – the video is now viral on You Tube and Facebook.

University rugby - #unirugby – remains a focus for the TalkingRugbyUnion team. The newly formed BUCS Super Rugby competition saw Hartpury crowned inaugural champions and the Cup competition starting with Live Streaming from Cardiff, as Cardiff Met played Nottingham Trent in awful conditions. The coverage was manful and the players desperately produced a competitive game; in the final moments should NTU have had a try from a charge down? The cup started and tonight our two friends in University Rugby, Bath and Durham, delivered a one point game with Bath taking the win.

We also discovered the BUCS Super League has no relegation this year; only promotion with the aforementioned Nottingham Trent taking on Bristol for a place in next years’ elite competition. Keep viewing all our university rugby news; there is plenty to come

Turning to the National Leagues, we watched Leicester Lions twice in 7 days. Firstly on the 4G of Preston Grasshoppers and on Saturday versus Sedgley Park. The new surface at Preston is superb and it looked like the team had been waiting all season to play on 4G as they took the win against the Lions. The possibility of avoiding relegation presented itself; sadly they lost by one point to Luctonians on Saturday. In something “soccer like” the following day, The Rugby Paper carried a quarter page advertisement for a new Director of Rugby – brutal

Sedgley Park hosted Tigers v Lions and it was the home team who played excellent rugby to take the win. Sedgley winger Riley scoring a wonderful try and we suspect they will be picked up by @EnglandRugby and @SamsungSport as #TryOfTheMonth. The game itself was a charity event on behalf of Bury Hospice and it was great to see the management of the Tigers put this commitment into the local community and also showcase all their sponsors on a specially designed shirt via Max Skofic and www.redpanda-sports.com

We remain confused as to why the ladies of Lichfield and Thurrock seemed sidelined, as the RFU announced a significant investment in the womens’ game.

Having started in France, we finish there. Our three favourite teams are Lyon (big fans of Carl Fearns), Pau (big fans of Sean Dougall) and Grenoble (big fans of Bernard Jackman). Both Lyon and Grenoble won their games but we need them both to pull clear of the drop zone. Anything is possible in the crazy world of rugby