Here are the latest rugby headlines on Thursday, July 21.
Club World Cup moves forward
The blueprint for a new rugby "Club World Cup" has been agreed in a move that will shake up the elite game and see "the best club team in the world" crowned once every four years.
The Telegraph report the new tournament is scheduled to start in 2025, pitting the top 16 sides in the northern and southern hemispheres against each other. Eight teams from the northern hemisphere will be included, with these set to be the ones which qualify for the European Champions Cup quarter-finals.
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Seven sides from the southern hemisphere's Super Rugby competition, plus one from Japan, will join them, with those sides being placed in four pools and playing two matches against teams from the other hemisphere. The winner of each pool will then progress to the semi-finals.
The competition is proposed to take place instead of the knockout rounds of the Champions Cup and will happen once every four years ahead of a British and Irish Lions tour.
The Telegraph say the format has been endorsed by key stakeholders, including Premiership Rugby and representatives for players.
“This is going to be massive for the club game and should generate huge interest from supporters, sponsors and broadcasters in both hemispheres,” one source told the newspaper. “For the first time we are going to be able to declare which side is the best in the world."
Qualification will be purely on merit, with no national representation guaranteed, and the South African sides, who now play in the United Rugby Championship, classed as northern hemisphere teams.
Owens says Ireland star should have gone
Nigel Owens believes Wayne Barnes and the World Rugby independent disciplinary panel which cleared Ireland's Andrew Porter got it wrong.
Barnes sparked controversy last Saturday by only issuing a yellow card to Porter for an upright tackle that broke the cheekbone of Brodie Rettalick. The English ref decided against a sending off because Porter "absorbed" the tackle. The Irishman was later cited for the incident but the charge was subsequently dismissed, leading to even more confusion among fans.
It came a week after New Zealand's Angus Ta'avo was red carded for a similar incident
Owens was pretty clear on what he thought should have happened, saying: "If you remember last week with the All Blacks red card, Ringrose steps inside and Angus Ta'avo reacts in less than half a second to try to adjust his tackle height. He failed to do so and under the current guidelines was correctly sent off by Jaco Peyper.
"Now what we have this week with Porter is different. Porter is upright and he has all the time in the world to adjust his body angle and get his tackle height low but he chooses not to. When you get it wrong, when you make that head contact as he did, it should be a red card. Players really need to adjust when they have time and get that tackle height down for the safety of the game, their opponents and themselves."
A World Rugby statement read: "Having considered all the evidence, the independent committee applied World Rugby's head contact process and agreed with the match officials' on-field decision that the player's act of foul play did not meet the red card threshold due to the absorbing nature of the tackle. On that basis, the independent committee deemed the act of foul play did not merit further sanction, and the citing complaint was dismissed."
'High expectations' no problem for England's new superstar
London Irish head coach Les Kiss says that "high expectations" should be encouraged around players like Henry Arundell following his memorable debut Test series with England.
Arundell announced himself on the world stage by scoring a try and making another during just seven explosive minutes off the bench in England's first-Test defeat against Australia. The 19-year-old made further appearances as England turned the series around with victories in Brisbane and Sydney, continuing his blistering form for Irish last term.
Arundell's club colleague Will Joseph also broke through on England's tour Down Under, while other home-grown products at Irish, such as Ollie Hassell-Collins, Tom Parton and Ben Loader, have previously featured on England boss Eddie Jones' radar.
"Henry is a well-balanced lad, and a real positive and upside to his success it that he respects the opportunity," Kiss said. "These guys don't take it for granted. They have got a lot of humility.
"They know it is on the back of hard work, so they manage it themselves, their peers will manage it and then it is up to us as coaches to make sure that we help them understand what these new challenges will be.
"I think you have got to put heavy expectation on yourself. That is how you challenge yourself, but it is also being able to understand that from A to B is not a straight line, if that makes sense. You have just got to be able to work with the ups and downs in the most productive way.
Read next:
Rugby's real World XV right now amid seismic shift in the great north-south divide
Wales' new pecking order as stars put their hands up for World Cup spots
Red cards, yellow cards, citings and confusion - rugby on a precipice after summer controversies
How Rugby World Cup is expected to finish as two of world's top four can't make semi-finals
Wales' best team going forward and the forgotten man who could blow World Cup selection apart
