The must-have companion to the greatest event in world rugby, the Rugby World Cup France 2023.

Containing everything rugby fans will need to enjoy the World Cup, this official guide is packed with images, profiles, previews and charts, making it essential reading for any fan and the perfect companion to all of the tournament action.

Contents include:

• Team-by-team profiles
• Star player profiles
• A guide to every venue
• Fill-in tournament progress chart
• History of the Rugby World Cup
• Rugby World Cup records
• Qualification round-up

And much, much more besides.

Cheslin roared with happiness as the final whistle blew in Yokohama. They were champions! Later, as his captain lifted the 2019 Rugby World Cup trophy into the air, he felt prouder than he'd ever been before - of himself, his team and his country.

Cheslin Kolbe tells the story of a kid from Kraaifontein, Cape Town, whose talent took him to international sports stardom, first to Toulouse, France, and eventually to the call-up that would change his life forever: to play for the Springbok 2019 World Cup squad. It's the heartwarming story of a small player with a big heart whose signature sidestep helped the Springboks win the World Cup trophy for South Africa.

Cheslin Kolbe is part of the "Road to Glory" series, which covers some of South Africa's sporting legends as they set out on their journeys to becoming national and international stars.

Praise for Eddie Jones 'A genuine super-coach' - The Sunday Times 'His gifts of leadership and organisation are remarkable' - The Daily Mail Eddie Jones is one of the most successful sports coaches of all time. From coaching three different nations to Rugby World Cup finals and enjoying a winning record with England of nearly 80 per cent, he knows what's needed to lead and manage high performance teams. For the first time, Eddie reveals what it takes to operate in high pressure environments, the successes and setbacks, and how these lessons can be applied to every walk of life, from coaching a children's sports team to leading a multinational organization to simply doing your job better. Forthright and unflinchingly honest, Eddie Jones reveals what he has learnt from Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Pep Guardiola, as well as from the founder of Uniqlo and Ron Adams of the NBA. Drawing on stories from nearly thirty years of coaching, Eddie explains how you need humour, humility and relentless curiosity to lead an eclectic mix of superstars - from Maro Itoje to James Haskell, George Smith to Kyle Sinckler - and create teams that are relentlessly hungry to win. Leadership is the ultimate rugby book about what it takes to be the best. Written with Donald McRae, two-time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, Leadership is the book for anyone who wants to learn how to build and lead a team to success.

Rugby Union as a sport has seen continual evolution over the years, and never more so than since the game officially became professional in 1995. While on the pitch tactics have seen more formalized approaches to skill acquisition, it is off the pitch where the biggest changes have occurred and no area has developed more than strength and conditioning. Players have gone from traditionally training for 'fitness' as an add-on to their rugby training to seeking out structured athletic training interventions. Furthermore, with modern rugby players being physically bigger and faster, the need to ensure that they are more robust and free from injury has led to the demand for a more scientific approach to the prescription of strength and conditioning. In Strength and Conditioning for Rugby Union, ex-international player Joel Brannigan presents the underpinning science of strength and conditioning in rugby. Using the fundamental principles of training, he details a structure of assessing rugby players that in turn will allow appropriate training inverventions to be planned out and, most importantly, coached to a wide range of rugby playing levels.

A talented yet ferocious player, and one of the acknowledged 'bad-boys' of rugby, Mark Jones' on-field brutality was a direct consequence of the off-field torment he suffered with a debilitating stammer. In Fighting to Speak, his revealing and uplifting autobiography, Jones explains how his frustration with his stutter led to a self-loathing and the internalising of an explosive hate that only playing rugby could release - with his unfortunate opponents often on the receiving end of his rage. Sent off six times and banned for over 33 weeks for violent conduct during his career, the dual-code Wales international and Great Britain RL forward was desperately unhappy and detested the thuggish reputation he'd created. After one exceptionally ugly incident, when he broke another player's eye socket, Jones realised that in order to defeat his demons and control his bad behaviour he needed help to conquer his stammer. Mark Jones fought and won the hardest battle of his life with a steely determination and has now found the inner peace and dignity he'd longed for as a young man. He has decided to tell his story in order to seek redemption for his violent past on the rugby field, and to help others overcome their stammers.

What does it take to become one of the most successful coaches in the world? Eddie Jones is one of the most successful sports coaches of all time. From coaching three different nations to Rugby World Cup Finals and with a winning record with England of nearly 80%, Eddie Jones knows what it takes to lead and manage high performance teams. What can sport teach us about leadership? For the first time, Eddie Jones shows just what it takes to be a leader in a high performance and high pressure environment and how these lessons can be applied to every walk of life, from coaching the U9 rugby team to leading a multinational organization to simply doing your job better. Have a voracious ambition to improve every day As he explains the High Performance Cycle of Success at the heart of his philosophy, Eddie Jones reveals the lessons he has learnt from Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Pep Guardiola as well as from the founder of Uniqlo and Ron Adams from the NBA. He also gives a detailed analysis of his own performance as a coach as well as how he gets the best out of the players and coaches around him and what he saw in Tom Curry that no one else saw, which makes him think that he could be the next Richie McCaw. Always start with the end in mind Drawing on stories of nearly thirty years of coaching, including the 2003, 2007, 2015 and 2019 World Rugby campaigns, the full story of England's 2021 Six Nations campaign as well as why it takes humour, humility and relentless curiosity to lead an eclectic mix of superstars from Maro Itoje to James Haskell, George Smith to Kyle Sinckler, to create teams that are relentlessly hungry to win, Leadership is the ultimate rugby book about what it takes to be the best. Written with Donald McRae, two-time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, Leadership is the book for anyone who wants to learn how to build and lead a team to success.

Is there always someone else to blame for your failures? Afraid of putting the real work in to achieve your goals? Are you sick of just being average and do you want to start winning? It's time to drown out self-doubt and the distracting noise of everyday life, to conquer your fears and approach challenges without caution. One of rugby's most ferocious flankers and successful players, James Haskell has always strived to be at the very top of his game. To achieve a global rugby career, he knew he had to keep his body strong. To go on to found an award-winning production company and become a successful DJ and bestselling author, he knew he had to keep his mind even stronger. Revolutionary and revealing, Approach With(out) Caution presents James Haskell as you've never known him. James takes the lessons he's learned, both on and off the pitch, and turns them into a five-pillar plan to help you take control of your life.

The story of the Springboks 2019 Rugby World Cup victory is one of the most inspiring in South African sporting history.

It is about how two men – coach Rassie Erasmus and captain Siya Kolisi – led a team of warriors into battle and conquered the world when inequality and division are still undeniable realities in South African society. When the Boks won the 2007 World Cup final, they did so with 20 white players in their match-day squad of 22.

In 2019, there were five black Africans in their starting line-up for the Yokohama final and the images of Kolisi lifting the Webb Ellis Cup will be replayed forever.

None of this seemed possible in 2017 when the Boks had reached an all-time low. They had slipped to No 7 in the world and had lost the faith of the rugby-loving public. Erasmus came in with just 18 months to prepare for the competition.

Sports writer Lloyd Burnard takes the reader on a thrilling journey from the time when no-one gave the Boks a chance of winning, to the delirious victory tour. He covers the key roles played by Erasmus and Kolisi, and their special relationship. There are ups and downs en route to victory: the first signs of self-belief when they beat the All Blacks in Wellington, Kolisi’s injury, the fall of Aphiwe Dyantyi when he was caught with banned substances in his system, and the Langebaan incident involving Eben Etzebeth that threatened to derail the team.

In 1995 rugby union finally became a professional sport following more than a century as an amateur game. This book offers a critical analysis of the sport in the professional era and assesses the relationship between the local and the global in contemporary rugby union.

Coach Loffie is 'n alles-in-een-handleiding vir alle aspiranten reeds gevestigde afrigters, sportlui en sportliefhebbers. Dis geskoei op die koestering van drome, Loffie se persoonlike belewenisse tydens sy grootword- en weermagjare en sy ervaring as speler en afrigter. Hy fokus op genot en veiligheid binne die sportstrukture en rugsteun sy benadering met waardevolle bydraes deur 'n biokinetikus, 'n mediese dokter, 'n fisioterapeut, 'n dieetkundige, 'n tegniese spesialis, 'n sportagent, 'n lewensafrigter en 'n geestelike leier

Thando Manana was the third black African player to don a Springbok jersey after unification in 1992, when he made his debut in 2000 in a tour game against Argentina A.

His route to the top of the game was unpredictable and unusual. From his humble beginnings in the township of New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, Thando grew to become one of the grittiest loose-forwards of South African rugby, despite only starting the game at the age of 16. His rise through rugby ranks, while earning a reputation as a tough-tackling lock and later openside flanker, was astonishingly rapid, especially for a player of colour at the time. Within two years of picking up a rugby ball, he represented Eastern Province at Craven Week, and by 2000 he was a Springbok. But it isn’t solely Thando’s rugby journey that makes Being A Black Springbok a remarkable sports biography. It’s learning how he has negotiated life’s perils and pitfalls, which threatened to derail both his sporting ambitions and the course of his life.

He had to negotiate an unlikely, but fateful, kinship with a known Port Elizabeth drug-lord, who took Thando under his wing when he was a young, gullible up-and-comer at Spring Rose. Rejected by his father early in his life, Thando had to deal with a sense of abandonment and a missing protective figure and find, along the way, people to lean on.

Thando tells his story with the refreshing candour he has become synonymous with as a rugby commentator, pundit and member of the infamous Room Dividers team on Metro FM. He has arguably become rugby’s strongest advocate for the advancement of black people’s interests in the sport, and his personal journey reveals why.

Who are the fifteen best rugby players ever to have represented the Lions? Was Willie John McBride better than Martin Johnson? Was Barry John better than Johnny Wilkinson? Was anyone better than Gareth Edwards? As incisive and decisive as he was on the pitch, Jonathan Davies has the answer to all these questions and more. -- Welsh Books Council

Crowood Sports Guides provide sound, practical advice that will help make you a better player whether you are learning the basic skills, discovering more advanced techniques or reviewing the fundamentals of your game. This new, substantially revised, and updated edition includes Star Tips, Kit Checks, Rules Checks, and Key Points. Covering skills and techniques at every level, this book features action and sequence photographs; helpful, detailed diagrams in color; and an introduction to rules and equipment. Aimed at those learning the basic skills as well as those who wish to discover more advanced techniques or to review the fundamentals of the game.

In 2016, Doddie Weir's life - as much-loved sporting hero and Borders farmer - switched direction with the same speed and power this indefatigable No. 5 once displayed on the rugby pitch. Reeling from his own MND diagnosis, Doddie became a standard-bearer for all those valiantly seeking to halt Motor Neuron Disease in its tracks. It's a platform Doddie has unhesitatingly used to the max. 'I never set out to take the lead,' he says. 'It just happened - like MND itself. But we are making a fight of it.' And so he continues to live life at full tilt: as a tireless fundraiser for the My Name'5 Doddie Foundation and as a family man with a debilitating, unpredictable and incurable disease. During these unprecedented times, Doddie has received an OBE, celebrated his 50th birthday, helped pledge close to GBP10 million for MND research and his fellow sufferers - all amid a whirl of golfing challenges, charity cycle rides, book festivals and awards ceremonies . . . Now DODDIE'S DIARY lifts the lid on the highs, the lows, the laughter and the tears of the last few years. Each day shows an astonishing, inspirational man who simply refuses to give in as he brings his down-to-earth positivity and legendary sense of humour to the battle against MND. Just as on the pitch, it's a battle he's determined to win.

Originally published in 1928, this is a wonderfully comprehensive look at 'rugger'. It includes personal reminiscences of some of the top players from the 1900s and goes on to offer a complete training and tactics guide. Illustrated throughout with photographs and diagrams, the book still has much practical advice to offer the modern rugby enthusiast, as well as the historical interest. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include - James Baxter - Vice-Admiral P. M. Royds, C. B., C. M . G., Royal Navy - PART 1. - RUGGER REMINISCENCES: Early Days and School Rugger - Flying and Football - Trial by Ordeal - Cambridge Reorganisation and the Varsity Match of 1922 - The Services Championship and First R. A. F. Victory, International Matches - Cambridge Tour in France - The 1924-25 All Blacks Tour and County Rugger -Recent International Matches - Players and Personalities I Have Met - The Spirit of the Game. PART TWO- THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF RUGBY FOOTBALL: Equipment, Training and Elementary Principles - What every Player Must Able to do - Forwards: Their Duties in the Tight and in the Loose - The Players Behind the Scrum and their Duties in Attack and Defence - Set Positions in Attack and Defence - The New Zealand and Dublin University Formations - Captaincy and Refereeing - The Modern Game and Future Tendencies - Comments on the Laws and the Game - Rugby Football Government - Playing and Coaching at Schools - Brief Histories of the Leading Clubsin England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. PART 3-RECORDS: Vital Facts in the History of Rugby Football - The Bye-Laws and Laws of Rugby Football - Record - Lists of International Players

This is the first book to introduce key themes in the study of women's rugby from multi-disciplinary perspectives, including history, sociology, gender studies, sport development and sport science. Featuring contributions from leading researchers and former international players from across Canada, England, France, New Zealand and the USA, the book opens with a global history of women's rugby, locating the game in the wider context of the development of women's sport and exploring important social issues such as race, gender and violence. The book then looks at training and performance analysis at pitch level, helping the reader get a sense of the game from the ground up, before focusing on women's rugby through the eyes of others (such as rugby coaches), women's experiences of rugby's culture and promotional culture. This is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in women's sport, rugby, sport and social issues, sport development, or sport history.

Ken Scotland was born on 29 August 1936 within sight of Heriot's Goldenacre ground, which he would go onto grace with great panache and skill several years later. A prodigious talent at fly-half while at school, he was converted into a full-back during the international trials of 1957 and was capped in that position against France at Colombes just a few weeks later, scoring all of his country's points as the Scots recorded their first win on French soil since 1949. Having joined the army after leaving school, Scotland then attended Cambridge University and it was from there that he was selected for the 1959 British & Irish Lions tour to Australia and New Zealand. During this epic four-month tour he won plaudits far and wide as one of the superstars of the Lions' team. Using entries from the dairy he kept during this tour, Scotland brings to life one of the great Lions expeditions, taking us right into the heart of the changing rooms, hotels, bars and in the heat of battle on the field. Scotland played in five Tests for the Lions and won a total of twenty-seven caps for his country before retiring in 1965 with a reputation as one of the finest players ever to play for Scotland well established. He would continue to play club rugby for several years afterwards while enjoying a successful business career. At eighty-three he has finally decided to tell his life story. Working with Allan Massie, the doyen of Scottish rugby journalism, he has created a rich and powerful testimony to his life and rugby career, throwing new light on his own achievements as well as providing fresh insight the great players of his era. It is as fascinating as it is evocative of a time and a game long past and a must-read for rugby fans of all generations.

This brilliant selection of photographs and stories describes what it means to stare down the most famous ritual in sport, from the perspective of those who have been there. Facing the Haka examines the significance that the All Blacks' haka has in the wider rugby world, as well as the deep respect opponents have for the team. This is about standing in front of the haka, meeting the All Blacks on those key occasions, and reliving the stories of the games that followed. Facing the Haka covers many crucial moments in rugby history with great storytelling, fresh insights and all the information a fan could ask for.

One of the most colourful and controversial characters in Welsh rugby history, Mike 'Spikey' Watkins remains the only player since 1882 to captain Wales on his debut, and win. Discarded by Cardiff RFC and banned by the WRU after the infamous 'Hookers Night Out' incident in November 1978, Spikey, who had regularly played for the Wales B team and was understudy to Bobby Windsor, thought his chance of a prized Welsh cap has disappeared. In this brutally frank and hard-hitting autobiography, 'Spikey' Watkins, the loveable rogue of Welsh rugby, lifts the lid on his roller-coaster playing career and explains how he fought back against the 'blazer-brigade' he despised, returned to captain a hugely successful Newport team and finally got the call from the WRU, due to public pressure from the supporters who adored him, to captain his country to victory against Ireland in 1984.

For 125 years the British & Irish Lions have stood out as a peerless emblem in world sport. This unique account of the best from the four Home Nations examines every tour in the Lions' history, including the victorious 2013 tour to Hong Kong and Australia, told in the players' words. Behind the Lions sees rugby writers from across the Home Nations delve to the heart of what it means to be a Lion, interviewing a vast array of former and current players to uncover the passion, pride and exhilaration experienced when wearing the famous red jersey. It is a tale of heartbreak and ecstasy, humour and poignancy that is at once inspirational, moving and utterly compelling. This is the story of the British & Irish Lions in their own words.

From the myth of William Webb Ellis to the glory of the 2003 World Cup win, this book explores the social history of rugby union in England.

Ever since Tom Brown s Schooldays the sport has seen itself as the guardian of traditional English middle-class values. In this fascinating new history, leading rugby historian Tony Collins demonstrates how these values have shaped the English game, from the public schools to mass spectator sport, from strict amateurism to global professionalism.

Based on unprecedented access to the official archives of the Rugby Football Union, and drawing on an impressive array of sources from club minutes to personal memoirs and contemporary literature, the book explores in vivid detail the key events, personalities and players that have made English rugby.

From an era of rapid growth at the end of the nineteenth century, through the terrible losses suffered during the First World War and the subsequent rush to rugby in the public and grammar schools, and into the periods of disorientation and commercialisation in the 1960s through to the present day, the story of English rugby union is also the story of the making of modern England.

Like all the very best writers on sport, Tony Collins uses sport as a prism through which to better understand both culture and society. A ground-breaking work of both social history and sport history, A Social History of English Rugby Union tells a fascinating story of sporting endeavour, masculine identity, imperial ideology, social consciousness and the nature of Englishness.