Endless Winter

Rugby Union has undergone an all-consuming revolution. It has changed more in the past five years than it did in the previous 120 years. The sport now has all the heady excitement and anxiety of riding a runaway train. In terms of spectator interest and media column inches, the game has practically doubled in size. The boom in interest has been fuelled by the advent of the rugby World Cup, by the arrival of league rugby in the clubs, and by the return to the fold of South Africa, a pillar of the sport's history. Players like Will Carling, Jeremy Guscott, Gavin Hastings and David Campese have become household names even amongst non-rugby fans. Yet the boom has brought danger in its wake. Teams are engaged in a ferocious fight to be the best. New scientific methods of preparation and the vast increase in high-octane rugby has brought intolerable pressure to bear on the leading players, and revealed the out-of-touch bungling of some of the game's rulers. The pressure on the integral principle of amateurism has reached breaking point.
This is the inside story of the New Rugby; the story of a packed season of glories and failures which began with the return of the Springboks and ended with the British Lion's tour of New Zealand.