Lancaster redemption

CREDIT to former England head coach Stuart Lancaster, who was rightly sacked by the rFU for failing to get out of the group stage at a World Cup on home soil. He has re-invented himself at Leinster, the club that has provided the bulk of the Six Nations-winning Irish side. Ireland and Leinster talisman Johnny Sexton is said to be glowing in his praise for Lancaster’s coaching know-how.

IF THE RFU want to start growing the game and getting more youngsters into Twickenham, they should start by cutting down on the over-the-top perks given to the councillors and partners. As well as the ‘win or lose, we’re on the booze’ licence to drink all day at the RFU’s expense on Twickenham match days — before, during, between and after their lunch and dinner meals — they also have the right to buy eight tickets.

THE Battle for Stalingrad, where the russians suffered horrendous losses in repelling the German invasion, is regarded as the turning point of the Second World War. And with England’s first World Cup match against Tunisia being staged in Volgograd, as the city was renamed, the FA were planning to mark the game in an appropriate way being ‘aware of the history’. Whether this will happen now following the suspicions of Kremlin involvement in the nerve agent assassination attempt in Salisbury remains to be seen.

NOTTS COUNTY chairman Alan Hardy will have dismayed a lot of his club’s fans yesterday by re-tweeting a social media post from odious far-right hate preacher Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League. Hardy claimed unconvincingly he thought Robinson was a Sunday newspaper journalist before deleting his re-tweet.