UFO Info Week-End

For this recognition the companies who still have to set up their marquees off-site have paid the RFU a licence

For this recognition, the companies, who still have to set up their marquees off-site, have paid the RFU a licence fee of £200,000.”I know it sounds bizarre what with poachers turned gamekeepers, but we see this as a solution which will enable us to generate funds,” Paul Vaughan, the commercial director of the RFU, said. Thus the Mike Burton Group have become one of three licensed operators to sell packages at Twickenham for the next five years. Try as they might, the RFU failed to tackle the burgeoning black market, which cost them dear in lost revenue.Now they have a radical solution – the black sheep is welcomed into the fold. Through his contacts with clubs he obtained a ready supply of tickets to international matches and resold them as part of a package. At the England-Ireland match, Burton’s sports management company operated for the first time as an official provider of corporate hospitality.
For 25 years Burton, the former Gloucester, England and Lions prop, was an outsider as far as Twickenham were concerned. Mike Burton, for so long the b? noire of the establishment, yesterday revelled in his role as a new-found “partner” of the RFU. Laporte’s plan, and the test of whether he is right to stand by his man, continues in Cardiff this afternoon..

If you can’t beat him, join him. But France’s two tries scored on the left wing went to the back- rower Imanol Harinordoquy. As Connolly sees it, France under Laporte play with two big centres and a fair amount of kicking, so a wing needs to go looking for work.”Christophe is a good broken-field runner,” said Connolly, “but probably not the most instinctive winger, in terms of working off his wing.” Dominici regularly popped up in midfield against the Italians, when he should have added to his 16 tries in 37 Tests, and never coughed up possession, other than the obvious occasion. Christophe is a world-class player when he gets going, but I’m not sure if he’s ever quite got back to what he was.”The word in France is that Laporte, who as Stade Fran?s coach in 1997 brought Dominici to Paris from Toulon, is allowing a personal bond of friendship, also involving Stade’s wealthy owner, Max Guazzini, to cloud his judgement. I’ve seen all of France’s games this year, and I’ve seen a bit of Stade Fran?s. “I found him great to coach,” said Connolly, “he’d do whatever you’d want him to, with great skills. He may only weight 80 kilos, but he’d run into you as if he was 110.

Prior to his breakdown, we were playing Wasps at home, and he scored two tries from full-back [in a 40-10 win] He was just phenomenal. He did play, but he walked off and from that point went into hospital for about three months.”Dominici fought off his demons to reclaim his place for club and country, but Connolly’s salient point is that he has not been the same player since – certainly not the sparkling threat who ripped apart the All Blacks in the World Cup a year before his collapse. We were playing Wasps in London [at the end of October 2000], and he was particularly low and really struggling to sleep. The manager had to go to him the night before the game, and he was basically an absolute mess. “Christophe was struggling for two or three weeks, up and down, breaking down, crying and not being able to sleep. Even so, when Laporte named his team for Cardiff – and despite the coach having called Toulouse’s in-form wing C?ic Heymans into his 22 – Dominici remained.It could all be water off a duck’s back to Dominici.