Tag Archives: Forward Thinking

The time for talk is over. All teams have completed their on-field preparations for the biggest competition of them all, the Rugby World Cup. The twenty competing teams are officially the world’s top twenty as listed in current World Rankings. Argentina’s opposition offer a mixed bag with Pool C containing …

Rugby World Cup 2015, like previous tournaments will bring together teams who otherwise never play against one another. World Champions New Zealand will face both Georgia and Namibia for the first time, South Africa vs Japan will be another first as will Wales vs Uruguay. There are a variety of …

Professional rugby is such serious business these days that the 2015-2016 Top 14 season has began already, long before the end of summer. The 2015 Final was as recent as June 13, or a mere 69 days before Toulon hosted Racing 92 in the season opening on Friday. I can …

Daniel Hourcade’s naming of his squad of 31 players for the upcoming Rugby World Cup was genuinely well accepted. Questions were raised over certain selections, most notably being the decision to take only two hookers but three inside centers. Little though was spoken about in relation to a widely unknown phenomena, …

Rugby has expanded tremendously from the limited base that existed prior to 1987. The IRB’s change to be called World Rugby is a significant part of modernizing the brand to give it a more credible appearance and one which is far more commercially sound. Next up is the power structure …

With a population of 46.7 million Colombia is the fourth most populated country in the Americas with only the populations of the USA, Brazil and Mexico being larger. Those three have all regularly come up as being key markets by World Rugby in their strategic plans with the central reason …

Rugby World Cup 2015 is almost here. The opening fixture of England v Fiji is just 53 days away. It will begin a long tournament played from September 18 to October 31 which the organizers claim as being the biggest sporting event of 2015 and the third biggest of all …

Despite media reports in the British Press describing Uruguay as being an entirely amateur rugby nation, the reality is much different. The sport remains amateur but those in preparation for World Cup places are being paid to take time off work to concentrate on their rugby. In addition Uruguay has professional players based abroad including Felipe …

Just days out from the fourth edition of the Rugby Championship the extent of Daniel Hourcade’s impact on Los Pumas is profoundly clear. In this week’s edition of Forward Thinking I will look into the impact of Hourcadism on Argentina’s fortunes over the past year. Daniel Hourcade, the former Portuguese assistant coach …

Played every November, excluding Rugby World Cup years, the November or autumn internationals see European nations hosting incoming test teams from across the globe. It is a time when not only southern nations such as Argentina, Australia, Fiji, Namibia, New Zealand, Samoa, South Africa and Tonga tour the north but …