“But while I am there, I may as well play for a club in the area.”Pontypridd are refusing to give their players permission to switch codes and play rugby league during the summer. Rugby Union

Matthew Lewis, the Bridgend stand-off, yesterday became the second Welsh player to sign for Courage League One club Wasps. The 25-year-old, who made his Wales A debut against Scotland A last month, follows in the footsteps of Glyn Llewellyn, the Wales and Neath lock .
“The only reason I’m going is for the job outside rugby,” said Lewis, who has been offered a job in London. There would be a chief coach, working closely with the captain in team matters, but also other coaches.”People keep mentioning Ian Botham, and I can see an important role for him in the dressing-room and in a general coaching and motivational capacity He inspires, he gets on well with the players. I want a much larger management team, and more back-up.”Lara faces rap, page 23. “I see the chairman of selectors role as an overseeing one, taking an overview and making sure the structure is operating properly.”I want to achieve continuity, in selection and administration, so I would want someone to act as a team manager at home and doubling as a tour manager abroad. He is understood to have been approached by some counties who saw him as a challenger to Illingworth for the post of chairman of selectors, but he declined to stand.”I would not be doing the same job as Illy – I think that’s the most important point to make,” Graveney said.

The former Sussex captain, who won good reviews as the assistant to Illingworth on tour this winter, had a first- hand view of England’s depressing slump in South Africa and at the World Cup. Cricket

John Barclay yesterday emerged as a possible beneficiary of David Graveney’s campaign manifesto as the battle to unseat Ray Illingworth hotted up.
Barclay, England’s winter tour manager, could be offered a new role as team administrator should the 43-year-old Graveney be elected chairman of selectors on Tuesday.Graveney has made it clear that there would also be room for other younger, progressive men in his new-look England set-up – with the likes of Ian Botham, Mike Gatting and David Lloyd becoming candidates for the official coaching staff.Graveney outlined his vision of how the England team should be run after the Test and County Board confirmed yesterday that he had been nominated to challenge Illingworth, whose two-year contract expires on 31 March.The 42-year-old Barclay is in line to play an important role in helping to regenerate the national side. That would be neatly symmetrical for Anglo-Welsh purposes with the Heineken League First Division and would unavoidably entail the previous taboo of compulsory midweek rugby.Rosslyn Park Sevens, page 23. The one thing that was agreed was a joint statement which said next to nothing: “A constructive and frank meeting took place today between the Rugby Football Union and its top clubs. Even so, the First and Second Division club representatives who met RFU officials including the new executive chairman, Cliff Brittle, at the East India Club have been proceeding on the basis that once this season ends they will have to get on with paying their players.Yesterday’s post-prandial meeting went on for the best part of six hours without getting anywhere. They have agreed to meet again next week.”In diplomatic circles “frank” is usually taken to mean something rather more discordant so, for the time being at least, it looks as if Brittle’s publicly stated ambition of forging unity throughout the RFU is nowhere near being fulfilled.There is, for instance, serious disagreement between clubs and union over television rights from next season’s European Cup when England enters for the first time, as well as over which professional contract – country or club – should have precedence.In addition, the Courage Championship First Division voted 9-1 to abandon relegation for this season, which with the addition of the two promoted clubs would create a 12-club division. On the other, the broad mass of the union’s 2,000-plus membership, many as hostile to professionalism as they would be to a disease, will have another chance to air their diametrically different grievances at Sunday’s second special general meeting in Birmingham.Indeed it is only then, by leave of the broad mass, that the RFU will have formally abandoned amateurism.

Mrs Atkinson, whose husband was away on Wednesday night working as a summariser for ITV, was said yesterday to be “extremely distressed” after being handcuffed to a bannister and having jewellery and cash stolen.. Rugby Union

English rugby’s club-v-country stand-off – between the increasingly militant leading clubs and the Rugby Football Union over which has primacy in the newly professionalised game – was no closer to solution last night after the mutually antagonistic parties had held a critical meeting in London.
As it had been billed by the clubs as the most important of the many that have been held this season, it is fair to say that the inability to reach any sort of agreement beyond meeting yet again next week amounts to a crisis. On the one hand it is being pulled one way by the major clubs who want a free hand to manage their own professional affairs. The last resort for the clubs would be to break away from the body which has governed English rugby for 125 years.The trouble now is that in trying to administer the new dispensation to everyone’s satisfaction, the RFU is in fact satisfying no one. But she’s already decided we’re going home, and nothing’s going to change that.”Romania’s coach, Anghel Iordanescu, has withdrawn his resignation and will lead his country into the European Championship finals after being promised an investigation into his allegations of match-rigging.Bulgaria have chosen a virtually full-strength squad for next Wednesday’s Wembley friendly against England.