Matt Williams

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

Two weeks before the return of European rugby, the favourites to reach the final, Toulouse and Leinster, were narrowly defeated in their domestic competitions. An unrecognisable Toulouse team that contained none of their internationals, as well as two 19-year-old rookies, fought with surprising cohesion to threaten Bordeaux. In contrast, their closest rivals in the Top 14 selected their big guns, including Maxime Lucu, Damian Penaud and Louis Bielle-Biarrey.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

After a long and seemingly endless trail of trains, planes, automobiles and hotel rooms covering the Six Nations Championship, I arrived back home last Sunday and it was like stepping into a warm bath sprinkled with Epsom salts. So on St Patrick’s Day, I put the phone on silent, placed it at the back of my socks and underpants drawer, and declared that any conversations regarding politics and religion were fine, but there would be no rugby talk. I needed to refresh my mind, body and soul.

2 months ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

In a seismic development for rugby, last Saturday at the Aviva France evolved what South Africa had started. What we witnessed finally ended the 200-year-long concept of rugby having only two separate units, one of forwards and one of backs. The French exploited the loophole in rugby’s safety laws that permits seven forwards and only one back on the bench to create three distinct and separate playing units.

2 months ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

When you drive on to a roundabout in France, you are entering into an experiment in Darwinian evolution. Adapt or die. To survive this challenge there are a few essential principles to which you must hold fast. Firstly, every driver is to be considered hostile. They should be viewed as holding an unconscious, yet malicious intent to deceive you at every opportunity.

2 months ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

Arthur Schopenhauer was a 19th-century Germain philosopher born in 1788, 35 years before a naughty boy named Billy Ellis picked up the ball during a game of soccer and sprinted away into rugby mythology. While Schopenhauer was obsessed with topics such as metaphysics, morality and eternal justice – how to create an overlap on the blindside of a ruck was not high on his topics of interest. So when he wrote, “Talent hits a target no one else can hit.