As the new Guinness Pro14 season kicks off, many rugby fans be will looking forward to great tries, flowing moves and wondrous skills. Others, well, their tastes are more . . . fundamental. They love big hits, snarling confrontations and perhaps a bit of sneaky retribution (within the laws, of course). Author Luke Upton loves a hard […]

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.

Jonathan Davies admits it will take some time for him to return to his world class best after he made his long-awaited comeback. The Wales centre returned to action for the first time in nearly a year as his Scarlets side were beaten 25-15 by the Ospreys in Llanelli. Both regions were warming up for the start of the new Guinness PRO14 season with a pre-season friendly and Davies was the headline act.

Exclusive By Steffan Thomas The Ospreys have blocked rugby fans from watching today’s Welsh derby against the Scarlets. The rugby -starved Welsh public could have seen the two bitter rivals go head to head live on S4C, just a week before the start of the new Guinness Pro 14 season. But the decision to broadcast […]

Stephen Myler is a new face to many Ospreys fans as he prepares to begin his first full season with the region. But anyone familiar with rugby – union and league – over the border in England will know the Myler back story goes back a long, long way as Peter Jackson reports. As from next month, Stephen Myler will have outlasted every single one of his fly-half contemporaries in Europe and beyond – the veterans’ veteran. At 36, the unsung Merseysider will soon find himself out on his own in the ultimate endurance race, a feat so difficult to overestimate that it’s akin to a long-distance club runner superseding the holiest of Olympian trinities, Emil Zatopek, Abebe Bikila and Haile Gebrsalassie, in one fell swoop.

During a hugely prosperous playing career with Clermont Auvergne in the Top 14 Brock James learnt all there is to know about the intricacies of back play. Known as a master tactician James was the brains behind a decade of success for the French rugby giants. Now he has undertaken the unenviable task of getting […]

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.

George North has apologised to his Ospreys teammates after the red card that undermined the region’s chance of victory in their first match for five months. The Wales wing held up his hands after being dismissed just 14 minutes into Sunday’s Guinness Pro 14 clash at home to the Dragons, which ended in a 20-20 draw. It was the first red card of North’s 10-year professional career and it came after the 29-year-old, playing in his 254th professional game for club and country, sent opposite number Ashton Hewitt into a tail-spin as he clattered into him at a kick-off at the Liberty Stadium.

Dean Ryan expects the Ospreys to be pumped up and firing as they step on to the field on Sunday for their first game under new head coach Toby Booth. The Dragons boss has banished any thoughts in his camp about the game being a meaningless exercise for the home side. There may not be Guinness Pro 14 play-off places at stake, but it is a Welsh derby. “I saw first-hand the passion that comes with a Welsh derby game last season and I don’t expect to get an easy ride from the Ospreys in what will be Toby’s first game in charge,” said Ryan.