John Mulvihill believes his Cardiff Blues team can make Rodney Parade a home from home as they began their tenancy with a victory over Connacht. The head coach saw the Blues make it two wins from two in the Guinness Pro14 with a 29-7 bonus point win at their temporary new home. With the Cardiff Arms Park surface in need of replacing after damage caused by its support use for the Principality Stadium’s Dragon’s Heart hospital next door, the Blues have re-located to a ground where the surface has often been criticised.

Josh Navidi and Owen Lane were among four Cardiff Blues players injured in an internal squad game last week in news which could yet have a big impact on Wales’ autumn preparations. Ahead of the start of the new Guinness PRO14 season, John Mulvihill’s side cranked up their preparations with a training match but it was one which came at a price. Wing Lane, 22 and who has two Test caps, injured his shoulder and is expected to be out for two months. It means he will miss all six of Wales’ upcoming games.

Cardiff RFC chairman Chris Norman believes his Blues counterpart Alun Jones has finally twigged the region’s strength lies in their historic appeal. The two limbs of the Arms Park beast have been moving in different directions for years, but the club side believe the region are now aware where their real appeal stems from. Jones talked about leveraging the Blues as a ‘global brand’ when he first took over from Peter Thomas two years ago, but his more recent comments shifted the emphasis to leveraging the tradition and history of rugby in the Welsh capital to try to bring back the glory days to the Arms Park.

Wales coaches Stephen Jones, Byron Hayward and Jonathan Humphreys were on hand to see the Cardiff Blues go through one of their final training sessions before heading to Italy for their Guinness PRO14 opener against Zebre. For Jones, in particular, the sight of Willis Halaholo looking fully fit will have been a boost ahead of […]

A new season of Guinness PRO14 rugby begins on Friday with a sense of the unknown hanging over the competition. The Covid-19 pandemic means the competition will begin behind closed doors with the tournament set to introduce further South African sides. Steffan Thomas looks at the strengths of the PRO14 and why it should be […]

It’s been through many guises – the Welsh-Scottish League, the Celtic League, the Pro12 and now the Pro14 – but the coming season is surely the most testing yet for the tournament which houses the four Welsh regions. For Alex Bywater, it’s a league that needs help and yet it doesn’t help itself. The 2020/21 Guinness Pro14 season will kick-off on Friday night when Cardiff Blues travel to Zebre. With a new campaign starting just 20 days after the previous one ended these are uncharted waters for the division, but the uncomfortable truth is it is struggling to find its place in today’s rugby world.

Robin McBryde was a vital cog in Warren Gatland’s Wales back-room team for 12 years. In that time Wales won four Six Nations titles and reached two World Cup semi-finals. Now, the former Scarlets hooker is in charge of Leinster’s forwards and chats to Steffan Thomas about his new life in the Irish capital. Welsh […]

John Mulvihill is demanding his Cardiff Blues team start the new rugby season in the same way they ended the current one.The Blues coach saw his region end a fractured, disrupted campaign by overcoming the Ospreys 29-20 at borrowed Rodney Parade in their final match of the Guinness Pro 14 on Sunday. The victory left the Blues with a record of seven wins and eight defeats from their 15 games, spread over the course of 11 months – not great, but nowhere near as poor as the Ospreys, for whom Sunday’s defeat was their 11th, with just a couple of victories and two draws.

Brock James was one of Europe’s most influential players during a monumental decade with Clermont Auvergne in France. Now, his former teammate Lee Byrne reckons James could prove just as influential at the Ospreys, as he tells Graham Thomas. Brock James has been pinpointed as the coach who can give the Ospreys back their wings. The seal of approval for the region’s new attack coach has come from their former Wales star Lee Byrne, who was a clubmate of James’s at Clermont Auvergne.

“He must have taken a knock to the head, mate,” was the blunt assessment made by John Mulvihill of the rugby writer who suggested Cardiff Blues were now the weakest of Wales’ four regions. That was 48 hours before the re-start of the Guinness Pro 14, but having conceded five tries in a one-sided defeat to a Scarlets team that rarely needed to get out of third gear, the Sunday morning headache probably belongs to the Blues’ head coach. The Scarlets are the strongest of Wales’ four teams and have been for some time, but if the Blues have not slipped behind the Dragons and the Ospreys they did little to disprove that theory in their first game back.

Sam Moore was once singled out as an England international of the future. Having made his name for England Under 20s and Sale Sharks, he was invited to train with the senior Red Rose squad by Eddie Jones. But times have changed with the Cardiff-born No. 8 now determined to force his way into Wayne […]

Welsh rugby finally returns next weekend when the four regions resume action in the Guinness Pro 14. The Scarlets face the Cardiff Blues and the Ospreys host the Dragons, with some familiar faces on show. But for Scarlets’ new scrum coach Ben Franks, this will be a new experience with fresh objectives, as the former All Blacks star tells Steffan Thomas. Former All Blacks World Cup winning prop Ben Franks plans to resurrect the career of Wales’ “once in a generation prop” Samson Lee. Scarlets prop Lee took over the Wales No.3 shirt from the legendary Adam Jones and quickly made a name for himself on the international stage.