"When you become the first team to hold the Crusaders tryless in Christchurch since 2000, it is difficult to understand why the statistic did not come with a memorable win. "...For me, the ratio of penalties needs to be around 70 per cent against the defence, as this means the referee is concentrating on negating spoiling tactics. If this is done, you see plenty of excitement and ball movement and fans walk away happy. "The closer the margin gets to 50 per cent, the more field position you get from kicking, as teams will - logically - not want to play in front of their goal posts. There has been a litany of games this season where teams have paid the price for playing too much football in their own half. It pains me to say that, but it is more a risk mitigation strategy than a coaching philosophy. It also means tight games are generally decided on goal-kicking."

"Mention of Jersey may bring to mind sandy beaches, Bergerac or grim tales of German occupation. Let us add to those an oval ball and sporting ambition as the Channel Island’s rugby club last week sealed their fifth promotion in eight years. They will play next season in the Championship, one level below the Premiership. "Until now the prominent Islanders in English rugby were Samoans, Tongans and Fijians. But among the Jersey squad who won 23 out of the last 24 matches to become National League One champions, around a third are locally born. The rest, among them player-coach and former Wales prop Ben Evans, are imported. The financial clout comes from the club chairman Bill Dempsey (pictured) and a group of around 160 sponsors. Almost 4,000 spectators packed their Rue des Landes ground next to the airport for the win over Fylde eight days ago, after which former England captain Bill Beaumont presented the league trophy."

"The parallels are freakish: England will travel to South Africa in June for a five-match tour during which they will attempt to lay solid foundations for an assault on the world title a little over three years hence – just as they did in 2000. And we all know what happened then. As every coach involved in that previous trip, from Sir Clive Woodward and Andy Robinson to Brian Ashton and Phil Larder, has subsequently asserted, it was the Springbok Experience that made everything else possible. "Just as Woodward did a dozen summers ago, Stuart Lancaster will travel with a 42-man party, give or take a spare hooker and an extra midfielder, and when he declares his hand this afternoon he is likely to draw virtually all his players from the two squads, senior Six Nations and second-string Saxons, that served him well enough in the 11 weeks after Christmas. This too has echoes of 2000: on that tour, the Test team had a familiar look to it while the midweek side showcased its share of ambitious wannabes."

"Toby Booth will be included in a revamped coaching team at Bath headed by South African Gary Gold, which the West Country club are expected to announce on Tuesday. While the appointment of Gold – who has just finished an interim stint in charge of Newcastle – as director of rugby at The Rec was reported last month by Sportsmail, the signing of Booth will complete a high-powered management team. The 42-year-old has been lured to Bath from London Irish, who recently brought Brian Smith back for a second term as their director of rugby. The departure of Booth from the Madejski Stadium continues a clear-out of Exiles coaches, as Mike Catt has been released to take on a short-term role with England and Neal Hatley is also moving to Bath."

"Scotland lock Jim Hamilton will find out on Thursday if he is free to tour with Scotland this summer after receiving a red card for punching in Gloucester’s final Aviva Premiership match with London Irish on Saturday. The 29-year-old returned to the Scotland side this season and for the first time in a 39-Test career started every one of the Six Nations Championship matches. However, captaining Gloucester on Saturday for the first time, he was yellow-carded for scrapping with London Irish’s David Paice. The hooker took Hamilton out off the ball, leading to a Gloucester penalty, and the players squared up. Both were shown yellow cards but as the duo were leaving the field, Paice re-started the spat by verbally abusing Hamilton and jabbing another punch at the Scot. Hamilton responded by punching Paice, sparking another all-in melee with both teams. Referee Dave Pearson called both back and showed them red cards."

"Ructions at Sale, a mass clear-out at London Irish, bloodshed at Bath, a sudden walkout at Gloucester, a sticking-plaster job at Newcastle, something close to a meltdown at Wasps... welcome to the sporting soap opera known as the Aviva Premiership, where a coach who remains in post longer than five minutes has an even-money chance of winning the "Ken Barlow Award for Long Service". Half the clubs have been in turmoil this season and of the other six, five have qualified for Heineken Cup rugby next term. Continuity counts for something, it seems. It is now three years since this newspaper highlighted statistics showing that, in job security terms, top-flight club rugby in England was more unstable than Premier League football. Nothing has changed. Even in a World Cup year, when clubs producing Test-class players will always be disrupted, owners and boards have shown themselves to be devoid of patience – and, in some cases, common sense."

"It was the collapse of a proposal to build a new stadium in High Wycombe last July that prompted owner Steve Hayes to put Wasps up for sale. This led to a financial crisis which almost saw the club go into administration. The takeover by Moss, which is expected to go through in about four weeks, will bring an injection of investment, securing Wasps’ medium-term future. Wasps’ current contract commitments mean that the club are likely to continue to play at Adams Park, which is owned by Hayes, next season. But the new owners appear determined to push through plans to build a new stadium just off the M40, understood to be a different site from the original application, which will be crucial to securing the club’s long-term future."

"Geniuses and freaks aside, often the only difference between a very good provincial – and even test player – and a very good club player is opportunity. In the past, one of Australia's biggest weaknesses has also been our greatest strength. We rarely had the depth of other nations, but what talent we enjoyed thrived in either the Waratahs or the Reds, and later the Brumbies, so they became weapons on the international stage. "Front-rowers Ewen McKenzie, Phil Kearns and Tony Daly played years together with the Waratahs and Wallabies, Tim Horan and Jason Little forged a memorable pairing in the centres for the Reds, as did George Gregan and Stephen Larkham for the Brumbies. "Once the top test team is established this season, it is possible there will be very few combinations that have regularly played together at provincial level. This means we must look to the positives of the current environment, while solving the problems it presents. "The goal must be to exploit the broader talent pool that has been given the gift of greater exposure."

"That quadrennial cycle is over, the angst of 24 years has been quelled, the agonies and anxiety of five failures in between have been satisfied. "Now we move on, or do we? There's been a whiff new coach Steve Hansen will stick with World Cuppers still peddling their prowess in the Super 15, that he will cut some serious slack for Ali Williams and Piri Weepu to make the group. "We'll get more of an idea when Hansen, Ian Foster and Brian McLean hold two training camps, the first in Auckland in a fortnight and the next a week later in Wellington before the 30-man squad is revealed on June 3. "Hansen has defended Williams' subdued productivity as a reflection of the Blues' work and believes the lock will measure up if he is chosen in the All Blacks. "To my mind, Williams should have been leading the Blues through their tough times and Weepu should have done likewise if he was fit. Instead, both have slipped into the midst of the mediocrity instead of steering the side out of the mire."

"New Zealand moved a step closer to an incredible tenth World Sevens Series crown with victory in the inaugural Emirates Airlines Glasgow Sevens, and Colin Gregor’s Scotland left Scotstoun with nothing last night. "So, little change there then. But this noisy and colourful tournament of 16 nations from Portugal to Kenya and the US to Russia, which ended with the Kiwis beating England to claim a 44th cup win, in a new all-enclosed 15,000-seat arena in the west end of Glasgow, was always going to be about far more than one sevens tournament. "The more far-reaching interest lies in whether this significant move by the SRU, in tandem with national and local government help, will awaken Scottish rugby’s true sleeping giant. "The Borders remains the home of sevens, and no matter how the clubs are battered about by continually changing league structures, they survive. Edinburgh’s independent schools remain at the core of rugby in the capital with clubs such as Currie and Boroughmuir also driving interest. In the Caledonia district, the work goes on in Stirling, Dundee and Aberdeen, as well as Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, Perth, Caithness and other clubs and towns to retain a good network. "But while we continue to witness a direct correlation between a lack of players and intensity in the development of Scotland’s best teenagers, relative to the world’s top ten nations, and the ensuing inability to execute skills under the most extreme pressure on the world stage, Scotland’s biggest population centre remains largely oblivious to the sport."

"I have always been a hopeless romantic, as witnessed by the fact that I once bought my first wife a cordless iron for Valentine’s Day, and yet I now find myself firmly in the pragmatists’ camp because I cannot indulge the disingenuousness of those who argue against any form of ring-fencing the Premiership. "At first glance you probably have to agree with the idea that in a perfect world each and every club in England should have the right to ascend to the summit of English club rugby, even if the prospects of this are minimal. This is surely equitable and principled. "It gets less so when it comes to making the final leap to rugby’s big time, that one sees the process is rigged in favour of the big boys, as demonstrated by the fact that Newcastle have to wait until we find out in a couple of weeks time which team will win the Championship play-offs and be eligible for promotion. "Then we will have to study whether they meet the said standards, even though they are not met by many of the clubs already in the Premiership."

"The more you hear about Rob Penney the more you like him. He has, apparently, come across as a very solid individual, and an ambitious, innovative and relatively experienced coach who shares Munster’s hunger for success and is willing to leave Canterbury and take up a two-year contract. "He will also bring a fresh voice and ideally, he won’t be the only fresh voice. "To begin with, Penney has to complete his management ticket, for apart from Anthony Foley remaining on as forwards’ coach, there could be quite a turnover. Word is that Shaun Payne will be moving on after his low-profile stint as manager and that the likely replacement will be Niall O’Donovan. "This would be a shrewd choice. "He brings a wealth of experience and an understanding of the Munster zeitgeist, as well as a winning culture from his days as a Shannon player and coach, and assistant coach for both Munster and Ireland. He’s a good man, well-liked, has had a long relationship with Foley, another former Shannon number eight, and has a network of rugby contacts throughout the province."

"During the week I finally got around to watching the movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. If you haven't seen it, the premise of the movie is that baseballers should not be judged on reputation, history or influence but formulating a statistical profile that will show via percentages and averages their true value on the park. Basically, they became statistics men. "I thought a little deeper about this scenario and wondered if you could adapt that Moneyball theory to rugby. I am not going to go as far as Jonah Hill's character did with regards to stats; my thinking is could you choose a Wallabies team without prejudice or influence playing a factor? Perhaps this could be a mid-term grade for the players on show at the moment in this year's Super Rugby competition."

"If you lose to Ireland or are even pushed very close, that is not a good start to your All Black coaching career - and Hansen has a contract for only two years. "There are a lot of players in form and doing well in Super Rugby and, really, that is our only guide to form and entry to the All Blacks. Take Nonu's position, for example. Sonny Bill Williams, Tim Bateman and Shaun Treeby are all playing better than Nonu, not to mention some bloke called Dan Carter at 12. "There is a possibility that they will select Nonu but not play him, resting him after playing non-stop for well over a year as he went to Japan straight after the World Cup. "Judged on his play for the Blues against the Hurricanes on Friday night, I'd say he is suffering from fatigue, as he did some dumb and ill-disciplined things (like his no arms shoulder charge)."

"It was not just Paterson who was saying goodbye to Edinburgh, with ten players in all moving on now that the season is over. Phil Godman’s 150th match for the club was his last, while Alan MacDonald is leaving after 99 appearances – you’d think they’d invite him back to make the ton. "A disappointingly low crowd turned out to say farewell to these three and Mike Blair, Andrew Kelly, Kyle Traynor, Jack Gilding, Simon Webster, Esteban Lozada and Jim Thompson. With all the travelling and expenditure recently, it was perhaps understandable that the Edinburgh fans didn’t turn out in greater numbers but they missed an absolute cracker of a match, full of running rugby from both sides. "Man of the match Paterson certainly played more than his part. With 109 Scottish caps, the record points total for his club and country, and the reputation as one of the sport’s good guys, he will stay in Scottish rugby in an as yet unannounced position. “I will find out more on Tuesday,” said Paterson, “but it was nice to go out on a high. I suppose it is the end of an era with all the other players and myself moving on, but that is professional rugby for you. You only ever borrow the jersey.” "Looking back on his career and its final match, Paterson said he had not been too emotional: “I am actually quite happy, as it is the right time to go. I am very proud of what I have achieved.”