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'Tuipulotu shows what Glasgow have been missing'

'Tuipulotu shows what Glasgow have been missing'

BBC News20-05-2025

The Sione Tuipulotu effect is real.The Warriors have been disappointing of late, struggling to reach the levels of expectation, but Tuipulotu showed his worth on his return from a four-month injury absence.In his 40 minutes on the field against Leinster in Dublin he proved why not only he is integral to Glasgow and Scotland but will be a key piece in the British and Irish Lions team this summer.His individual class created one of the few moments of the first half Glasgow had. He offers so much, causes confusion for opponents, brings confidence to his team-mates and direction in attack.Both sides of course had already clinched a top-four spot but it felt like they were there to leave a mark.While the result did not go much-changed Warriors' way, the manner of defeat is weirdly one to be confident about. Seb Stephen, 19, at hooker put in a tremendous shift and is definitely one to be excited about for the future.A two-week break may now allow some players to return from injury before the home knockout game against the Stormers.The South African side finished fifth and were beaten on their own patch earlier in the season when Tuipulotu ran the show.

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Where Premiership champions Bath rank in our top 10 title winners
Where Premiership champions Bath rank in our top 10 title winners

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time10 minutes ago

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Where Premiership champions Bath rank in our top 10 title winners

The following list covers the period since the play-off system was introduced to decide the English top flight in 2002-03. It takes into consideration how teams fared in the regular season and Europe, their performance in the final and whether they backed up their title in the ensuing campaigns. Nevertheless, this is still a highly unscientific exercise, prone to my own biases and unreliable memory. 10. Northampton, 2024 Would have been ranked higher but for a slightly underwhelming performance in the final in which Beno Obano's red card swung the tide in Saints' favour and a disappointing follow-up league season in which they finished eighth, albeit slightly counterbalanced by a run to the Champions Cup final. However, Saints' triumph stands out both for the fact they had one of lowest wage bills in the Premiership and engineered a complete stylistic revolution that extended across the league and influenced how England approach their rugby. Also a brilliant sign-off to possibly my favourite English player of the modern era in Courtney Lawes. Key player: Courtney Lawes Underrated player: Fraser Dingwall Favourite player: Courtney Lawes 9. Exeter, 2017 Only Leicester City's 2015 Premier League title surpasses the Chiefs' rise to the top of the English rugby pyramid in terms of fairy-tale value in English sport. This was an epic final against a Wasps side that might just have featured the most loaded backline of all time – Wille Le Roux, Christian Wade, Elliot Daly, Jimmy Gopperth, Josh Bassett, Danny Cipriani and Dan Robson. Gareth Steenson kicked a penalty to take it to extra time and then another one three minutes from the end. Given that they lost three other finals to Saracens, it also featured a cathartic semi-final defeat of their great rivals, featuring the most ballsy kick to a corner I have ever seen live from Henry Slade. Incredible finish to the Exeter and Saracens game! What balls from Slade! The Chiefs are in the final! — RugbyLAD 🏉 (@RugbyLAD7) May 20, 2017 Key player: Don Armand Underrated player: Phil Dollman Favourite player: Thomas Waldron 8. Sale, 2006 A personal favourite team of mine, from a back row of Magnus Lund, Jason White and Sébastien Chabal – yes please – to the canny half-back duo of Richard Wigglesworth and Charlie Hodgson and a fabulously balanced back three of Jason Robinson, Mark Cueto and Oriol Ripol. Philippe Saint-André's side were up against an excellent Leicester team – see next entry – but mastered the rainy conditions and the occasion superbly. Stuart Barnes's commentary of 'drop goal, it has to be three points' only for Hodgson to pull off a sensational dummy for Ripol to score just before half-time is also rooted in my head. There are some classic moments in this 📼 Here's a throwback to 2006, when @SaleSharksRugby beat @LeicesterTigers 45-20 to become champions of England for the first time 😮‍💨 #GallagherPrem — Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) June 11, 2025 Key player: Charlie Hodgson Underrated player: Oriol Ripol Favourite player: Ignacio Fernández Lobbe 7. Leicester, 2007 Sometimes you just need to forget everything else and focus on the performance and this amounted to the most brutal beat-down ever witnessed in a Premiership final. Gloucester arrived at Twickenham as the darlings of the league, playing a dazzling brand of rugby. A bit like the famous fight scene in Game of Thrones between the Viper and the Mountain, for all Gloucester's razzle-dazzle Leicester just focused on crushing the Cherry & Whites' skull with a display of fearsome power. 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Key player: Finn Russell Underrated player: Quinn Roux Favourite player: Ted Hill 5. Exeter, 2020 The high point of the Exeter project as Rob Baxter's side completed a Premiership and Champions Cup double. Such a shame that Covid restrictions prevented more people from witnessing the culmination of Exeter's remarkable rise. Their strength lay in blending a home-grown core of Henry Slade, Luke Cowan-Dickie and Jack Nowell with canny recruits such as Dave Ewers and Jacques Vermeulen. Everything about Exeter was about industry and work-rate. Their close-range pick-and-go tactics might not have always been the prettiest, but they were pretty much impossible to defend until the laws changed. Key player: Henry Slade Underrated player: Sam Skinner Favourite player: Olly Woodburn 4. 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Dutch stadium could hold blueprint for Murrayfield's green ambitions
Dutch stadium could hold blueprint for Murrayfield's green ambitions

Times

time14 minutes ago

  • Times

Dutch stadium could hold blueprint for Murrayfield's green ambitions

Later this year, as part of the Murrayfield centenary celebrations, the Scottish Rugby Union is expected to put forward wide-ranging plans aimed at transforming both the stadium and its surrounding footprint. The union will hope to harness a mix of private and public funding in an effort to not only bring Scotland's largest venue into the 21st century but also position it as a beacon of customer experience that can drive revenue on far more than a handful of international match days each year. For a shining example of the power of collaborative working, and how placing sustainability at the heart of its plans could aid the bottom line as well as the planet, the SRU might look to Amsterdam's Johan Cruyff ArenA, a venue constructed in the mid-1990s around the same time that Murrayfield last underwent serious redevelopment. 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So if you had batteries, your cost of production was increased a little, but it was still really, really worth it financially overall.' The ArenA has also invested heavily in LED lighting, both to aid pitch growth and to improve the performance of the floodlights, which benefits both those in the stadium and, by eliminating flicker in slow-motion replays, the sharpness of the images served to the television audience and VAR. Every step of the way, sustainability meshes with innovation, quite literally in the case of the stadium escalators. The energy generated by people riding down is captured and used to offset the energy required to power the movement of those moving up. A giant biodigester transforms food waste from the stadium and local businesses into green energy, which is then fed back into the stadium itself, while water from the nearby Ouderkerkerplas lake is used to cool the dressing rooms and stadium offices. Rainwater from the stadium roof is collected and reused to water the pitch. Like Murrayfield, the ArenA has diversified into music — Robbie Williams is playing two nights next week, before Imagine Dragons, Stray Kids and Kendrick Lamar take the stage in July — and they report that concert promoters are increasingly using a venue's environmental credentials as a key criterion in their selection process. 'We are seeing that from the general consumer, in this case the match-going fan, as well,' Roudet says. 'People know more about sustainability, what is possible, and what others are doing and so they expect more from businesses and stadiums too.' Other venues are rising to the challenge. The Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, has also gone heavy on solar panels and LEDs, while a stormwater management system grants scope to store more than two million gallons on site and reduce flood risk in the surrounding area. These and other water-efficient features mean the stadium uses 47 per cent less water than baseline industry standards. Back in Europe, the Bluenergy Stadium in Udine, northern Italy, last year installed a smaller-scale version of the ArenA's solar panel/battery combination, while in September 2021 the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium staged the first net-zero football match at elite level, with emissions from a London derby against Chelsea offset into a reforestation project in east Africa and a local tree-planting initiative. This all sounds a far cry from some of the more fundamental challenges that visitors to Murrayfield experience, particularly if they are a woman who does not want to spend hours queueing for the loos or a parent looking to wash their child's hands with hot water after a half-time bathroom break. Nonetheless, they do underscore how customer expectation is changing, and how other venues are responding. The lesson, Roudet believes, is to think both big and longer-term. 'Sustainability can sometimes be a hard sell because with things like batteries and ventilation systems, it's not necessarily visible to the public. But then you think of something like the light show the French rugby federation is able to put on with LEDs at the Stade de France now — that's incredibly visible, it improves the fan experience and over time it consumes much less power. 'What [event] organisers and the public need and want from a venue is changing over time, and the most successful stadiums will be those which anticipate and respond to those changes.'

Premier League star 'buys SIX flats in one day' - as the midfielder looks to expand his budding property empire
Premier League star 'buys SIX flats in one day' - as the midfielder looks to expand his budding property empire

Daily Mail​

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