The Rugby World Cup is the pinnacle tournament for players, coaches and fans alike.

Former Springbok coach Nick Mallett has analysed and debated rugby for over 30 years. Known for his brilliant and often forthright commentary, gathered here is a collection of his ideas and opinions and anecdotes for the coming world cup:

• The Magic of the World Cup
• The Springbok Machine
• The Springboks in 2023
• Competition Stronger Than Ever
• Playing in France
• The Rassie Factor
• Matches that will decide the RWC
• Key Players
• The Referees
• The Coaches and Captains – leadership is key
• Handling the pressure – the mental challenge
• Nick’s predictions

The first comprehensive overview of the 1994 World Cup – a watershed moment in football.

Featuring extensive research from both modern sources and archived accounts, USA 94 charts the World Cup tournament process from the bid through to the final match, played in front of 94,000 fans.

A group of volunteers begged, borrowed and remortgaged a house on their way to convincing FIFA to hand them the keys to the 1994 World Cup. When they got the green light, the USA was tasked with presenting the greatest show on earth.

While nobody expected the USA to succeed as hosts, with their nation of non-believers, what followed was a glorious summer of shattered attendance records and millions of fans. This alongside memorable kits, missed penalties, a car chase, internal politics, triumph and tragedy in equal measure made the 1994 world cup one that will be remembered for decades.

The best-selling collection of football facts, stats and stories is back for another fantastic new edition!

World Football Records 2026 offers lively, fun and fascinating facts and stats from the world of international football. Focusing on all the major world and continental tournaments, national team records, exceptional matches and the stars who made it all possible, this exhaustively researched annual tells the stories of these key moments and the players and teams behind them.

This new edition includes updated stats and facts for all recent major tournaments, awards and international teams. You'll also find the latest record-breaking achievements of more than 35 featured nations from around the world, including a sidebar with key stats, as well as updates and records for all the other FIFA members.

Now filmed as INVICTUS directed by Clint Eastwood, and starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2008 As the day of the final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup dawned, and the Springboks faced New Zealand's all-conquering All Blacks, more was at stake than a sporting trophy. When Nelson Mandela appeared wearing a Springboks jersey and led the all-white Afrikaner-dominated team in singing South Africa's new national anthem, he conquered the hearts of white South Africa. Playing the Enemy tells the extraordinary human story of how that moment became possible. It shows how a sport, once the preserve of South Africa's Afrikaans-speaking minority, came to unify the new rainbow nation, and tells of how - just occasionally - something as simple as a game really can help people to rise above themselves and see beyond their differences.

In late 2024 Ireland, with a population of just 7 million people, stood at the top of rugby union's world rankings.

Ireland's rise to such an exalted position has been the great triumph of rugby's professional era. For a nation that fought tooth and nail to keep the game amateur, their progress since 2000 has been extraordinary. The trophies, once so rare in Irish rugby hands, have become almost commonplace. Six Nations Championships, Triple Crowns, Millennium Trophies have all stood in the IRFU offices in Dublin.

But that is the top tier of the game. What is the health of the sport at other levels all around Ireland? In this book award-winning international rugby writer Peter Bills seeks to take the pulse of the game at every level - schools, clubs, provinces - as well as the fast-expanding women's game. For if rugby at grassroots level withers, the decline will affect everyone. And how can rugby learn to live side by side with the ubiquitous GAA?

Featuring interviews with some legendary names of Irish rugby, such as Keith Wood, Willie John McBride, Tony Ward, Bill Mulcahy, Gordon D'Arcy, Trevor Ringland, Nigel Carr and Tommy Bowe, we also hear from men and women from junior and club rugby, at clubs like Dingle, Kinsale, Monkstown, Boyne, Westport, City of Derry, Donegal Town, Omagh and Oughterard. All of them are doing stirring work behind the scenes for their local clubs and communities as Bills goes in search of the soul of Irish rugby.

Sir Alex Ferguson's compelling story is always honest and revealing he reflects on his managerial career that embraced unprecedented European success for Aberdeen and 26 triumphant seasons with Manchester United.

Sir Alex Ferguson's best-selling autobiography has now been updated to offer reflections on events at Manchester United since his retirement as well as his teachings at the Harvard Business School, a night at the Oscars and a boat tour round the Hebrides, where he passed unrecognised.

The extra material adds fresh insights and detail on his final years as United's manager.

Both the psychology of management and the detail of football strategy at the top level can be complex matters but no-one has explained them in a more interesting and accessible way for the general reader than Sir Alex does here.

My Autobiography is revealing, endlessly entertaining and above all inspirational.

Who is Erik ten Hag? Calm and cool-headed, he ignores critics, follows his own methods and relentlessly pursues perfection on the pitch. His uncanny ability to analyse and solve problems - the 'process' as Ten Hag calls it - has unfailingly led to breakthrough. There is no magic. There is only intelligence at work, personal devotion to players and near-obsessive attention to detail.

At Ajax, Ten Hag brooked no dissent and moulded his team into a smoothly operating unit of attack. His team enjoyed an astonishing run, winning three league cups in a row and reaching the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in a quarter of a century. Along the way, they produced some of the brightest and most entertaining football seen in Europe for years.

Maarten Meijer's definitive biography follows Erik ten Hag, from his upbringing in the Dutch countryside to his domestic triumphs and European victories. Meijer's book is the ultimate guide to the man with the momentous task of ending a decade of disappointment at Manchester United, and beginning a new era of great and winning football.

One of the greats of South African rugby shares the many layers of his colourful and eventful life. From rugby legend to businessman, wine farmer, cultural custodian, musician, father and grandfather, Schalk Burger’s memoir is an intensely personal and honest journey of the triumphs and hardships that have shaped the life of a much-loved South African.

Burger is a storyteller extraordinaire and he’ll have you snorting into your beer as you read about run-ins with officialdom, fisticuffs on the field, how he became the first white Springbok selected from a Coloured team, and the day Cheeky Watson asked to wash his feet.

This is a glimpse into the life and times of one of the country’s most recognised figures, and told in the stories of the many lives that intersected with his. “Who am I, and how do I live? That is something this story will bring out of me.”

A love letter to the 1986 World Cup.

A tournament viewed via the shimmering satellite images of an age before the dawn of high-definition coverage - which was introduced four years later, at Italia '90 - it was the last World Cup where the commentaries sounded like they were broadcast from the surface of the moon. Mexico took on the tournament after Colombia failed to deliver on their host candidature, relinquishing the rights in 1983.

With a devastating Mexico City earthquake just eight months before the big kick-off, it was a miracle that the Estadio Azteca was still able to be the venue of Diego Maradona's greatest and most infamous hours. As well as Argentina's most gifted son, Mexico '86 was blessed by the presence of Sócrates, Platini, Francescoli, Butragueño, Belanov and Elkjær to name but a few of the icons on display.

This is the story of an evocative World Cup that seemed to be held together by Sellotape.

The laws of rugby are as extensive as they are confusing, their nuances and interpretations argued over relentlessly by rugby fans around the world and virtually impenetrable to those who are new to the game. In an effort to provide some much-needed clarity, Paul Williams takes an irreverent, hilarious, p*ss-taking tour through the labyrinth that is rugby's rule book - or, for the pedantic, rugby's law book. Hilarious, off-beat and (surprisingly) insightful, this is the perfect gift for rugby fans all around the world.

Jonty Winch traces the complicated history of South African rugby from its establishment in the Cape in 1879 through to the 2019 World Cup championship.

As he explores key events and questions entrenched narratives, Winch opens a compelling new window on colonialism, apartheid, and the evolution of South African society.

The game of tennis raises many questions that are of interest to a statistician. Is it true that beginning to serve in a set gives an advantage? Are new balls an advantage? Is the seventh game in a set particularly important? Are top players more stable than other players? Do real champions win the big points? These and many other questions are formulated as "hypotheses" and tested statistically. Analyzing Wimbledon also discusses how the outcome of a match can be predicted (even while the match is in progress), which points are important and which are not, how to choose an optimal service strategy, and whether "winning mood" actually exists in tennis. Aimed at readers with some knowledge of mathematics and statistics, the book uses tennis (Wimbledon in particular) as a vehicle to illustrate the power and beauty of statistical reasoning.

While most research on inequality focuses on impoverished communities, it often ignores how powerful communities and elites monopolize resources at the top of the social hierarchy. In Privilege at Play, Hugo Ceron-Anaya offers an intersectional analysis of Mexican elites to examine the ways affluent groups perpetuate dynamics of domination and subordination. Using ethnographic research conducted inside three exclusive golf clubs and in-depth interviews with upper-middle and upper-class golfers, as well as working-class employees, Ceron-Anaya focuses on the class, racial, and gender dynamics that underpin privilege in contemporary Mexico. His detailed analysis of social life and the organization of physical space further considers how the legacy of imperialism continues to determine practices of exclusion and how social hierarchies are subtlety reproduced through distinctions such as fashion and humor, in addition to the traditional indicators of wealth and class. Adding another dimension to the complex nature of social exclusion, Privilege at Play shows how elite social relations and spaces allow for the resource hoarding and monopolization that helps create and maintain poverty.

When George S. Halas was asked to rebuild the Staley Company's football club in Decatur, Illinois in 1920, nobody could have imagined that his efforts would forever change Sunday afternoons in America. Halas helped found the National Football League, and with it the Chicago Bears, the most storied franchise in the league's history. From the Galloping Ghost, to the Monsters of the Midway, to that indomitable "46" defense -- the "Grabowskis" as their coach named them -- Bears teams and players have made such an impact on the city of big shoulders that Chicago will be forever known as a "Bears town."

The City by the Sea boasts an ambitious baseball history dating back to the early days of America's favorite pastime. In 1897, the Newport Colts became the first professional baseball team to ever tie in a playoff series. By the 1900s, baseball was being played daily on open fields and diamonds throughout Newport. The city has sported six major ball fields, including Cardines Field, host to the oldest continuously running amateur baseball team in the country. Discover the humble beginnings of players like Newport native Frank Corridon, who allegedly invented the now outlawed spitball, and the legacy of the great Trojans baseball club. Team up with baseball historian Rick Harris and walk through the history of Newport baseball from amateur games to the major leagues and all the strikes, homers and grand slams in between.

If there was ever a place in America where a city and its baseball team were as close as family, it was Brooklyn. The legacy of this relationship comes down to us in stories of childhoods spent at Ebbets Field and in the stories of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, whose courage changed the face of America. Baseball in Brooklyn goes back to the beginning of the sport, when a young city embraced a new game and, like missionaries, carried it to the nation. This book tells the story of that beginning and concludes with the heart-wrenching move of the franchise to the West Coast after the 1957 season.

Brooklyn Dodgers carries us from the birth of baseball in the streets of Brooklyn through the decades in Flatbush when Ebbets Field was the center of the Brooklyn community. That was a time when the players lived in the neighborhoods not far from the ballpark, side by side with their followers. Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, and Johnny Podres all make appearances in this exciting selection of photographs. A large part of Brooklyn Dodgers is dedicated to those teams of the 1950s and their irrepressible fans.

Three years ago, when Cavan footballer Alan O'Mara was twenty-two, he spoke out about his battle with depression which led him to contemplate suicide. Only the thought of his parents and the pain that they would experience in his death prevented him from taking his own life. Now, in The Best is Yet to Come, he tells his story. From the role the GAA played in his life, to the decision he made to share his journey, this is an account of an ordinary young man, a GAA star, who found a way to move past the dark thoughts that beset his mind during his worst days, and who discovered that the only way out of the darkness is to ask for help. 'In summoning his courage and becoming the first active inter-county player to speak of his experiences with depression, Alan O'Mara gives a much needed voice to an aspect of human experience that has been cloaked in silence and stigma. This book, which is needed now more than ever, gives a rare glimpse into the complex inner world of depression and will give hope to those suffering in silence, guidance to those seeking solutions and inspiration for families and friends supporting loved ones.' Conor Cusack

Bring all the excitement and thrills of a football match inside! With this mini desktop game, you can stage your very own World Cup right on your dining room table or office desk. Get into the game with this kit's football pitch mat, two goal posts, a ball, two pairs of football boots for your fingers, and a 32-page book of rules, tips, tactics and trivia. No refs, no crowds, no mud, no dirt, just you and the competition - just how Mini Finger Football was meant to be played.