Unions agree on rugby aid team

THE International Rugby Board has reached agreement with the northern hemisphere unions over the formation of the North team to take part in the IRB rugby aid match, ‘Rebuilding After the Tsunami’.

Scotland has confirmed that Gordon Bulloch, Chris Cusiter and Simon Taylor will be available to play against the South in the eagerly-anticipated contest at Twickenham on March 5.

Agreement has been reached with England’s Zurich Premiership clubs to release eight players for the game. Among those invited are Lawrence Dallaglio, Jason Robinson and Steve Thompson.

Those invited from Ireland and Wales include Paul O’Connell, Brian O’Driscoll and Gavin Henson. The French and Italian captains, Fabien Pelous and Marco Bortolami, have also been asked to play.

The four players nominated to represent South Africa are John Smit, Victor Matfield, Jaque Fourie and Schalk Burger. Australia trio George Gregan, Phil Waugh and Chris Latham, plus All Blacks Tana Umaga, Carl Heoft, Andrew Mehrtens and Jerome Kaino, are expected to feature in a world-class south team.

Morne du Plessis, manager of the southern hemisphere side, said: “We accept that this is a significant sacrifice made by their Super 12 and club teams, and the players themselves, but such is the very nature of this event.”

The full squads are expected to be announced next week.

In the meantime, Andy Farrell, Wigan and Great Britain’s record-breaking captain, is poised to claim a place in history by becoming the first high-profile rugby league forward to make the switch to union.

The 29-year-old, a rugby league icon who has been ever-present with Great Britain for the last 12 years, is in talks with the Rugby Football Union.

Farrell, who has two years left to run on his Wigan contract, is said to have been offered in excess of £200,000 a year to join his former team-mate Jason Robinson in the England set-up in time for the 2007 World Cup.

Although a number of high-profile players - most notably Robinson, Henry Paul and Iestyn Harris - have made the switch to the 15-man code since the game went professional in 1995, all of them have been backs.

The prospects of rugby league forwards changing codes has always appeared remote because of the complexities of the ruck and maul and the greater emphasis placed on the set-piece scrum and line-out.

Apart from Wigan’s 1996 cross-code challenge with Bath and the Middlesex Sevens of the same year, Farrell has never played union and he will be 32 by the time of the next World Cup.

Even so, he is said to be tempted by the challenge and England see him as the man to fill the void following the retirement of Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio.