Here are your rugby evening headlines for Sunday December 18
England to name new coach tomorrow
Steve Borthwick will be confirmed as England's new head coach on Monday, the PA news agency report.
Borthwick has been recruited from Leicester where he has acted as director of rugby since 2020, steering the club to last season's Gallagher Premiership title victory.
The deal that takes the 43-year-old to Twickenham was finalised on Sunday morning and he will be officially announced as Eddie Jones' successor 24 hours later. Jones was sacked almost two weeks ago after presiding over England's worst year of results since 2008, managing only five wins from 12 games.
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Warren Gatland, Ronan O'Gara and Scott Robertson were among the names touted to replace Jones. But Wales swooped to land Gatland and Borthwick is said to be the Rugby Football Union's overwhelming preference to take over.
Before transforming Leicester from a fallen giant of English club rugby into Premiership champions, the former Saracens captain spent eight years as an international assistant coach under Jones. Upon hanging up his boots, he launched his coaching career with Japan in 2012 and then joined his tracksuit mentor when he was appointed England boss in the aftermath of the disastrous 2015 World Cup.
He is being tasked with lifting England out of the doldrums. Only five competitive fixtures in the form of the Six Nations await before the World Cup in France next autumn, with four warm-up matches providing extra preparation time.
Russell's eye-watering move to England
Scotland fly-half Finn Russell is to become one of the highest paid players in the English Premiership with a move from Racing 92 to Bath, say reports.
It is said Russell's contract at the Rec will be worth £1million per year and that Bath are set to announce the signing in the coming days.
The Lions No.10 will be viewed as a marquee signing and due to his status in his squad his pay can sit outside of the salary cap.
Racing are on the hunt for a new No.10 and Wales' Gareth Anscombe has been mentioned as a target.
Tipuric - one of our greatest wins
Skipper Justin Tipuric described Ospreys' 21-10 Champions Cup win against French champions Montpellier in France as "among our best in Europe".
The visitors upset the odds to put themselves back in the mix for a place in the last 16. It was only their second win of the season and ended a run of 12 games without a victory in the Champions Cup - a draw and 11 successive defeats.
"That result has to be up there among our best in Europe given we went into the game having not won for such a long time," admitted Tipuric.
"To win is great, but the biggest thing for us is to carry on winning. We need to become more consistent. That's the standard we want to be playing at week in, week out. We know we can go up another few gears and we want to push on to be better.
"It's special to put one over on the French champions. You could see they were hurting at the end and they will come to us in the new year really fired up."
Coming on the back of a disappointing home defeat to English champions Leicester Tigers, this was a win that came out of nowhere. The bookies had the Ospreys at 25-1 to win in France.
"Everyone was bitterly disappointed after last week's performance. We took it personally and we talked a lot about it," said head coach Toby Booth. "We got the chance to go again and the sign of a good team is that you learn quickly. We learned a lot of lessons out of the Leicester defeat.
"But the best part of it was that after the elation on the final whistle, the players were genuinely disappointed that they hadn't taken more out of the game. It's nice to have some positivity and to have turned a corner."
Huge brawl erupts as Northampton on brink
Gavin Coombes scored two tries as Munster recorded a 17-6 away victory that left Northampton's European hopes hanging by a thread.
Following a 46-12 thrashing at La Rochelle last weekend, Northampton needed a response but despite a spirited performance they were taught a lesson in wet-weather rugby by the two-time European champions.
The defeat leaves the English side with no points from their opening two fixtures and with the reverse fixture in Limerick and a home game against reigning champions La Rochelle to come, their chances of qualifying for the knockout rounds look bleak.
In contrast, Munster look set to qualify with the four points picked up here supplementing the losing bonus point obtained in their opening day 18-13 defeat at the hands of Toulouse.
The game erupted in the 53rd minute with a huge brawl involving most of the players. After TMO reviews flankers Jack O'Donoghue and Lewis Ludlam were yellow-carded.
Sale crash in France
There was more Euro misery for an English sides as Sale went down to a one-sided 45-19 defeat to Toulouse.
Toulouse captain Antoine Dupont crossed for two tries as the five-time champions recorded a comfortable win and laid a marker down to all the teams in this season's tournament.
The French giants, with scrum-half Dupont and his half-back partner Romain Ntamack pulling the strings, were at their imperious best as they crossed for seven tries and put the Sharks to the sword.
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