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Spying still a reality in rugby union

England huddle up at Pennyhill Park, where security is limits access to the training pitch

Eddie Jones has admitted spying on the opposition still happens in rugby union and will be taking measures to ensure the opposition do not watch his training sessions during the Six Nations or Rugby World Cup in Japan.

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Jones believes the increasing coverage of rugby worldwide has negated the need to send spies to try and watch the opposition train but is aware of the continuing danger and said: “I am sure it does go on now and then. You have to make sure you take precautions to minimise the risk of that happening and we will certainly do that. “

Sir Clive Woodward went to extraordinary lengths to keep his training ground runs secret during the successful 2003 World Cup campaign and while he was in charge of the 2005 British and Irish Lions.

The subject of sports team spying on each other has hit the headlines thanks to Leeds United head coach Marcelo Bielsa. The EFL has launched a formal investigation after Bielsa admitted before Friday night’s 2-0 win over Derby that he was responsible for sending a member of club staff to watch them training on Thursday. Derbyshire Police were forced to intervene and move the individual on but he was not arrested.

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England have security posted around their Pennyhill Park training pitch and only part of their training session is open to media viewing to limit the amount of footage being taken of the players.

Jones told Sky: “Around 20 years ago it(spying) was quite common when there wasn’t much vision around so you used to send coaches out to have a look at the opposition and put them with hats on and all sorts of things. That used to go on but I haven’t seen much of it of late because there is such an abundance of vision you can get on teams you don’t really need to do that.”

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J
JW 4 hours ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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