Rugby Union: Ireland v England looks set to be the biggest game in Six Nations history



By Will Greenwood, Rugby World Cup winner and Telegraph columnist

There are certain games you have just got to be at. You have them in your diary six months in advance and you know that whatever else is going on, you are going.

Whatever school play my seven-year-old son might be in, the excuse is coming out. It’s a miss-a-family-event kind of game. Maidenhead v Old Pats, the top two in South West 1 East, going head to head, and my Maidenhead, who I coach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, will be ready. That is Saturday 11 March. I can’t believe it’s not in your diaries.

A week later is what’s shaping up as the biggest game in history, multiplied by 100: Ireland v England. Flights are booked, my seven-year-old has been told, it will be a monstrous game. We could have the Six Nations up for grabs, British and Irish Lions tour places to be decided, England going for a world-record 19th successive win, the survival of the human race at stake. What a prospect.

Star player: Owen Farrell deserves to start for Lions in New Zealand Credit: Getty

Personally, I think England are better than Ireland. There isn’t a level playing field in the Six Nations because one team’s at home and the other is away but even though the Aviva Stadium will be as hostile and raucous and rocking as ever, England are good enough for that second successive Slam.

And while we’re on the Six Nations, the introduction of bonus points is a big step forward. I love that there’s a three-point bonus for winning the Grand Slam. A few years ago no one would have thought of that.

Imagine this scenario: a team winning four games by big margins (thus earning bonus points) could finish above a team winning all five narrowly (earning no bonus points). The Grand Slam champions could finish second in the Six Nations! Not now. Little things like this show that rugby has its house in order.

Another keen spectator in Dublin will be Warren Gatland. The Lions head coach knows the importance of picking form players and those who perform in big games. This is exactly the game on which to judge potential Test Lions.

Gatland has a tough call at 1 and 3 – there’s every chance Jack McGrath and Tadhg Furlong of Ireland and England’s Mako Vunipola and Dan Cole are the midweek and Saturday props for the Lions.

If you go on the field ready to go and have a dig, you’ve got a chance

There are selection quandaries everywhere – are Kruis and Itoje his second row? There’s Billy V against Jamie Heaslip at No8. Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton are formidable at half-back. What about Robbie Henshaw in midfield? Are Andrew Trimble and Rob Kearney in the back three?

The Lions squad is looking heavily Anglo-Irish. Elsewhere I see Scotland’s Stuart Hogg playing, Wales’s George North having a sniff, Toby Faletau and Alun Wyn Jones having a look-in, and Scotland’s Jonny Gray having a chance.

Some have written off the Lions and of course New Zealand will be phenomenally hard to beat. Their ability to score 14 or 21 points in six minutes is streets ahead of anyone else; from 60 to 80 minutes they are amazing.

And winning with the Lions is so hard – but that’s why we get on a plane and go. There have been five winning Lions tours in 125 years. The reason you go and watch sport is to be there when it happens.

As Robbie Deans told me when I was coaching the Barbarians with him, the great thing about rugby is you get what you deserve. So if you go on the field possessed and ready to go and have a dig, you’ve got a chance. Think Sheffield Eagles against Wigan Warriors, or Leicester City.

One player who epitomises this spirit is Owen Farrell, who has to be in Gatland’s team. Every now and then someone comes along, like Jonny Wilkinson, who redefines standards of excellence and desire and commitment and drive and self-belief.

Farrell is one. He is your original David. He would take any Goliath. And I would pay money to watch him do it. That’s why the first Test on 24 June 2017 is also in my diary. I’d better tell my son now.

Tennis: will Andy Murray maintain his iron grip on the No1 tennis spot?

By Simon Briggs, Telegraph tennis correspondent

Andy Murray’s time has come at last. After a decade spent chasing the coat-tails of legends ahead of him, Murray finished the 2016 season with a flourish, beating the world Nos 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 in seven days at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals.

And what about No 1? That was Murray. Only a week earlier, his victory in the Paris Masters had carried him to the top of the chart for the first time. This was a big moment in the context of the tour and earned him more messages of congratulation, he suggested, than his three grand slam titles put together.

Top spot: the rankings system and sheer determination will help Andy Murray retain his title as tennis world No1 Credit: Getty

So how secure is Murray’s grip on the top spot? And how much does he want to stay there? In his autobiography, John McEnroe described No 1 as “a very strange place indeed – the peak of the mountain, those icy winds blowing around my head … It was very difficult to get comfortable”.

Yet Murray seems unlikely to cede this precious pinnacle easily. Not after the agonies he put himself through to get here.

Mathematically, his prospects look strong. Murray’s 905-point lead over Novak Djokovic might not sound like much, but the tennis rankings work on a rolling 12-month system and the vast bulk of his 12,410 points were earned since the start of April.

He will work his socks off to try and stay No1

He has very little to defend for the next three months, and a lot to gain. For Djokovic, who was almost unbeatable in the first half of 2016, it is the other way around.

Motivation will not be a problem. Once Murray’s season had finished, he went to Scotland a couple of times to celebrate his father Willie’s second marriage. Then it was Miami for a fortnight of lung-bursting drills under coach Ivan Lendl.

“He will absolutely work his socks off to try and stay No1,” said Leon Smith, Murray’s first coach and now the British Davis Cup captain.

Athletics: the IAAF World Championships in London will stage Usain Bolt's farewell sprint

By Ben Bloom, Telegraph athletics correspondent

There are probably fewer than 30 seconds left in Usain Bolt’s major championship career. With the fastest man on the planet dropping the 200metres for his farewell season, his involvement at the summer’s IAAF World Championships in London is likely to consist of three 100m races – unless he is persuaded to add one last relay anchor leg before exiting stage right.

Bolt’s retirement will be the day so many in the sport have feared. Never before has athletics been blessed with such a charismatic and popular figurehead and it can be forgiven for squeezing every last drop out of the Jamaican’s star quality next year.

Fast one: Usain Bolt will retire after the IAAF World Championships in London Credit: Getty

The eulogies will deservedly flow and there are few within the athletics world who do not wish to see him bow out with yet another gold medal. But as the sport’s president Lord Coe is well aware, athletics must work doubly hard to build on Bolt’s work.

In Wayde van Niekerk there is considerable hope that the sport has already found its next sprint star. The manner in which the South African shattered Michael Johnson’s longstanding 400m world record to win Olympic gold in Rio was the most astonishing track feat of the Games and, should he attempt to double up with the 200m in Bolt’s absence, van Niekerk could leave London with two gold medals and the gaze of the world upon him.

With Jessica Ennis-Hill retired, Greg Rutherford will probably be Britain’s only other Olympic or world champion competing in London

The biggest championships in Britain since London 2012 will also be a final chance to see Mo Farah, the host nation’s most successful track athlete in history, inside the Olympic Stadium before he turns his attention to the road and marathon running.

No one has come close to beating him over 5,000m or 10,000m at a major championships for four years and he is a clear favourite to achieve the feat again.

With Jessica Ennis-Hill retired, Greg Rutherford will probably be Britain’s only other Olympic or world champion competing in London and it will fall to a crop of young athletes in sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson, middle-distance runner Laura Muir and Sophie Hitchon, the ballerina turned hammer-thrower, to build on recent achievements and win medals on home turf.

Whether they will line up against athletes from Russia – currently exiled from international competition for running a state-sponsored doping regime – remains to be seen. The sport’s governing body is yet to reveal a timeframe for the nation’s return to the fold and indications suggest the Russian flag may still be absent from London this summer.

Cricket: England to reap rewards in the Champions Trophy, but Australia will be ready for the Ashes

By Michael Vaughan, Ashes-winning England captain and Telegraph columnist

This promises to be a wonderful year for English cricket on and off the field. In fact 2017 could be a landmark 12 months, potentially bringing a first trophy in a global 50-over tournament, victory in Australia and the approval of a new Twenty20 domestic league that could revolutionise the game here.

England’s one-day team have been a revelation over the past 18 months. Since being knocked out of the 2015 World Cup after some abysmal performances, the team has reinvented England’s approach to the one-day format.

Under captain Eoin Morgan and coach Trevor Bayliss, the team has adopted an attacking, ultra-positive approach that makes them one of the most exciting England teams to watch in any sport. They are a rival for any other one-day side in the world.

Back on form: England's resurgent one-day cricket side defeat Pakistan at Trent Bridge Credit: Getty

Jos Buttler, Joe Root, Alex Hales, Ben Stokes and Jason Roy can destroy a bowling attack. They give Morgan a great opportunity to win the ICC Champions Trophy, which will be held in England in June.

Home advantage has worked for England before – they have made the finals of the two previous tournaments held in this country. The difference is that those teams in 2004 and 2013 were not very good. This England side would beat both. So if they could go all the way to the final in the past then there is no reason why they cannot go a step further in 2017.

The Champions Trophy is a mini-World Cup. It is short with a compact schedule so teams need to get on a roll quickly. England host Ireland – for the first time – with two matches as preparation but then it is straight into the tournament.

The top two teams in each group of four go through to the semi-finals and England have a tough section to crack first. It will basically be two from England, New Zealand and Australia who will go through to the last four.

Bangladesh are in England’s group and knocked them out of the last World Cup but should not pose the same threat in English conditions. If England go through they then have two matches to win a trophy. They can do it.

We need something new, and for cricket to reach a different audience

Hosting the Champions Trophy makes this a lopsided summer. England’s main Test series will come, first, against South Africa with four Tests starting in July. Whoever is in charge of the side by then, he will face a tough challenge against South Africa’s seamers, who recently blew away Australia in their own back yard.

After that it is England’s first ever day-night Test, at Edgbaston for the first of three Tests against West Indies. In a series that could have an end-of-summer feel about it, it is a good step to add novelty with the floodlit match. A pink ball in the hands of England’s seamers could make it a short game.

The schedule for 2017 is crazy. There is too much cricket and somehow the team has to keep going with an Ashes series to end the year.

Right now England are in a much better place than Australia, but they have recently made big changes following the loss to South Africa and could have recovered their poise by the time England arrive in November.

Off the field, the ECB will be hopeful of gaining approval for a new Twenty20 league run along the lines of the IPL and Big Bash. We need something new, and for cricket to reach a different audience. It has worked everywhere else and could be a huge success both commercially and for interest levels in the game. I am a big fan of the proposals and it promises to be a fascinating year.

Wondering what the New Year holds? Read more predictions for 2017 from Telegraph writers sharing what they think will happen in the worlds of science, money, style, politics, travel and culture.