Halliday’s Podcast

11 novembre: Emmanuel Macron remonte les Champs-Élysées à bord du véhicule présidentiel

TEAM: Just three changes for France, but they're three big ones. #FranceRugby | #NationsChampionship | #Springboks rugbypass.com/news/france-fo…

England’s Statement Against The Wallabies 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Go and listen to The Full Episode NOW on Spotify 🎧 #rugbypod

Why the Nations Championship Is Failing. If you watched the Nations Championship this past weekend, as I did, every single minute of every game, you saw everything that is wrong with global rugby right now. On paper, this tournament is supposed to be the pinnacle of our sport. In reality, it felt like a patchwork compromise, a cash grab as some have said. Before a ball was even kicked, many of the games star players were sitting on the sidelines, broken by weeks of grueling domestic club rugby. For nations without the bottomless player depth of a South Africa or a New Zealand, losing two or three world class players doesn’t just hurt, it guts their entire campaign. It's even worse, look at the preparation. Because clubs hold onto their players until the absolute last second, teams like Italy and Argentina are expected to fly in, shake hands, and play top tier Test rugby after just a few days of training together. It is a broken system. And if rugby wants to survive and grow, we need to stop putting band aids on a fractured calendar and completely rethink how our sport operates. Look at How Real Global Sports Work. Turn on the TV to watch Formula 1 or tennis, and you see the best athletes in the world competing against each other consistently all year long. You don’t see Jannik Sinner flying back to play a random local club match in between Grand Slams. You don’t see Max Verstappen hopping into a junior car on a Tuesday night just to fulfill a domestic contract. In rugby, we cling to a disconnected, hemisphere split calendar that forces our best athletes to serve two masters. The answer is staring us right in the face, separate elite Test rugby from the club game, and build a true global calendar. Imagine an annual, unified 10 team Nations Championship. Every top nation plays each other throughout the season on a clear points system, culminating in real, high stakes quarterfinals, semifinals, and a final every single year. No hemisphere silos. No artificial conferences. Just the best teams on the planet playing for the ultimate prize, with national coaches finally getting full time access to their squads. What About the Workload? Whenever I bring this up, the immediate pushback is physicality. Critics say rugby is too brutal for a year round global circuit. I don’t buy it. Look at an F1 driver enduring extreme G forces and mental exhaustion across 20 plus race weekends, practices, and qualifying sessions and races. Look at top tennis pros grinding through five set marathons in brutal heat all year at the Grand Slam Tournaments. Elite athletes are built for heavy workloads, when their schedules are managed properly. Right now, rugby players aren't breaking down because of Test rugby. They are breaking down because they are playing 30 plus combined club and international matches with zero proper off season. Make top internationals full time Test athletes, and you actually protect their bodies while elevating the quality of the product on the pitch, which all fans want to see. Debunking the Club Money Myth. The other excuse you always hear is money. "If you take the Test stars out of the clubs, domestic rugby will die." Let’s look at the actual reality on the ground. Most English clubs in the Premiership are balance sheet insolvent today, with the stars on their payrolls. Chasing test level wage bills has driven historic clubs out of business, not saved them. Meanwhile, look at the URC, stadiums in South Africa are more than half empty when northern teams travel down, because those clubs are forced to rest their top internationals anyway. Fans are already being shortchanged. Clubs shouldn't be holding onto Test stars just to play them a handful of times a season. Domestic clubs ought to be the breeding ground for the next generation. Right now, hungry young players are rotting on the bench, blocked from senior minutes every time an A lister parachutes back into the lineup. Look at New Zealand’s NPC. It does well without All Blacks, the South African domestic scene is booming with the Currie Cup and Schoolboy rugby. Young players get week in, week out senior rugby, they become stars in their own right, and national selectors can actually see who has what it takes under pressure. Aka Riley Norton, Markus Muller etc. Time for a Shake Up. Rugby can be so much more. We can keep pretending that a disjointed hemisphere calendar and late player releases are good enough, while our best players limp into major tournaments and our clubs bleed cash. Or we can be bold. Let the clubs develop the stars of tomorrow, let the best players on earth represent their countries full time, and give rugby fans the global championship we actually deserve. Thats how I feel after watching this weekend of the Nations Championship. #Rugby #NationsChampionship2026

Tonight, British Columbians chose a new direction. We’re doing this for our sons and daughters. For the future they deserve and the province we owe them. Thank you, British Columbia, I won’t let you down.

Ambiance festive à l’arrivée du cortège place Guichard avant une AG. Aucun débordement n’a été à signaler ce matin à Lyon

Si la France était la démocratie qu’elle prétend être, les contre-pouvoirs exigeraient de savoir qui paie les frais d’avocats exorbitants aux États-Unis et conditionneraient le désir d’Emmanuel Macron de se soumettre à une juridiction étrangère à sa démission.

Next up, Fiji. 😤