By Danny Coyle

My mum once bought me a multicoloured rugby 'fashion' shirt from some swanky shop. This wasn't recently, it was when I was still of an age where my mother would buy most of my wardrobe.

I refused to wear it. Even at a young age, I had some sense of whether or not I would look like a plonker in something I was being encouraged to put on. She took it back to the shop.

By Danny Coyle

Despite these uncertain economic times it has been well documented that professional rugby is continuing on an upward trend.

Salaries for the best players keep rising, sponsorship for the Guinness Premiership continues to roll in and TV coverage has increased this season with the launch of ITV's Sunday night highlights programme.

Craig Doyle might want to choose his summariser a little more wisely in future though. At the end of the show, he threw a curve ball of a question at his partner for the day, Lewis Moody, who clearly wasn't expecting it.

By Peter Bills

A new season but the same old problems, it would seem for English rugby.

If this was an indication of some of the leading talent available to England this winter, then Martin Johnson is going to have to wave a magic wand to find a real international team even resembling some quality and class.

Kingsholm saw a match of poor quality, of abysmal technique and gross elementary errors. Simple kicks at goal were missed, players were penalised the whole game for going off their feet and diving over the ball at the breakdown and the finishing was woeful, especially by the home side. As for vision, it was never seen.

By Peter Bills

Where best to place the Sharks’ duo, Francois Steyn and Ruan Pienaar?

The South Africans’ Tri-Nations season has come and gone, without anyone very much the wiser as to how best to utilise the rich skills of these two young rugby men.

By Peter Bills in Johannesburg

The Springboks have one last chance this weekend to salvage at least a modicum of pride from their disastrous season.

Only victory over the Australians at Coca Cola Park in Johannesburg will stave off, albeit perhaps only temporarily, the storm of criticism for Peter de Villiers and his team which broke over their heads with the defeat in Durban.

But where will the key battles be in South Africa’s final game of the 2008 Tri-Nations? Peter Bills analyses the vital areas that could provide the outcome of this game.

By Peter Bills

David Campese is a maverick but I’m proud to say he’s a mate of mine. He’s perceived as a loud mouth who shoots off his views ad nauseum and it’s true, he’d sometimes have been better off keeping his own counsel.

But the real Campese is a world away from the public perception. He was a genius of a rugby player and he knows a hell of a lot about the game he graced.

By Peter Bills in Durban

Another weekend, another crucial Test match for Peter de Villiers and his Springboks….the pressure mounts.

South Africa’s poor Tri-Nations record this year of three defeats in four games puts the focus heavily on them as they seek redemption in Durban. But where will the key battles be fought, who will play the decisive roles?

Independent group chief rugby writer Peter Bills analyses the vital player match-ups that could go a long way to deciding the outcome of Saturday's Test match.

By Peter Bills in Cape Town

A whole lot more is wrong with South African rugby than just a single Test match loss might suggest. Coach Peter de Villiers has allowed a dangerous drift to gather pace, in which players who are out of form seem to gain automatic selection. Springbok selection seems to have been made on the nod. If you're in, you're in and you stay there. Whether you're in form or not has become irrelevant.

This policy has wrecked the Springboks' Tri-Nations season. They have lost three of their four matches and haven't scored a single try in their last two games. Three tries in four games is a pitiful return for the new world champions. To have any chance of winning this year's title, the 'Boks have to score eight tries in their next two games against Australia, to pick up bonus points. Why would that suddenly happen when they've managed three in four Tests?

By Peter Bills in Cape Town

Peter de Villiers' Springboks looked to me like a team caught between a rock and a hard place in Cape Town on Saturday.

Asked by their coach to embrace a new philosophy based much more on the premise of attack, the South African players are still struggling to come to terms with the changes, enhanced still further by the new ELVs.

What we saw at Newlands was a group of players unfamiliar with this new way, a philosophy that is proving a very different mantra to that employed in the old Jake White era. Composure in attack is an essential element of this new game plan and in both Perth and Cape Town, the Springboks have demonstrated they lack that attribute at the critical moment.