Matt Williams

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

Last weekend proved that 80 minutes of rugby can be a very long time in the professional game. After Leinster’s stunning performance at Croke Park, they have gladly passed the chokers’ T-shirt to the Bulls, who have now lost three United Rugby Championship finals in four years. At Twickenham, the Premiership final was as enjoyable as getting a tooth pulled, with the highlight being a legendary Michael Cheika sideline blow-up.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

In the decades since Joel Stransky’s drop goal sailed over the Ellis Park crossbar to win the 1995 RWC Final, South African rugby teams have refined that famous day’s game plan into an owner’s manual for winning finals. Across the decades, in repeated winning finals performances, South African teams have implemented that original 1995 winning plan with little deviation from its basics.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

As a 17-year-old, fresh out of school, I told my dad I needed a car to be able to drive so I could find a job. Without looking up from his newspaper, he told me I had it all back the front. What I needed was a job to earn the money to buy a car, because borrowing his much loved automobile was not going to be an option for his teenage son. Not for the first or last time in his life, he was trying to teach me that I was focusing on the outcome and not on the process.

4 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

It is no crash that if we charted the rise of the Irish national team alongside the introduction of our indigenous provincial club competition, the two lines would almost overlap. In the amateur era, the AIL club competition was dominant in Ireland, with the provincial teams playing only a handful of representative games. This structure placed Irish rugby and the national team in an extraordinarily weak position during Ireland’s transition to professionalism in the late 1990s.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Matt Williams

For many years, politics within the IRFU kept Ireland from participating in the global Sevens programme. In 2009, the excitement surrounding Sevens reached fever pitch when the game was accepted into the Olympics. Yet Ireland remained steadfast in refusing to participate until 2014. During that period, the IRFU’s stance astounded me and many others in Irish rugby.