When we analyse the improvement of rugby teams, there are plenty of incontrovertible statistics to explain and underline performances - basics, like tries scored and scrums won; percentages, of possession and tackles made and missed; tallies, of errors, offloads and line-breaks.

Most of the time they come together to form an equation that clearly explains victories and defeats. Most of the time, but not always.

Team sports can't always be reduced to mathematics or columns on a…

Twickenham

After the flair, the fight.

If the thrashing of Italy a fortnight ago was a party full of Ash Splash and dash, England's tight, tense win over France was something very different - a brutal, relentless shift on the shop floor.

Hard graft replaced soft hands. Swallow dives were superseded by donkey-work. If anything, the effect was more…

Sometimes life imitates comedy. Earlier this week I was at a showing of the new BBC sitcom "Twenty Twelve" - the first episode of which is about the unveiling of a London 2012 icon.

Then last night I was at St Pancras Station where London's first giant Olympic rings were being unveiled by Boris Johnson and Seb Coe.

One of the gags in the sitcom is about the launch of 2012's countdown clock; and, sure enough, we can expect the real countdown clock to make an appearance…

When UK Sport conducted its annual review of sports it funds last December, only one summer Olympic sport received a cut in funding: badminton.

The departure of the team's head coach in acrimonious circumstances followed a summer dogged by in-fighting between top British players. At the Commonwealth Games, with many…