Wales skipper Sam Warburton made an appearance on the new season of The Clare Balding Show, and amongst other things, spoke about how he doesn’t find the All Blacks Haka scary. Just as he starts to get a bit ahead of himself, he makes sure to point out that his team haven’t beaten them in 50-odd years.
It’s a funny, candid clip, and shows the self-confidence he has that has led him to lead not only Wales, but the British & Irish Lions too. He also spoke about George North and concussion, the Rugby World Cup, and a few other interesting topics.
See the full chat tonight (Thurs 21st) on BT Sport 1 at 8pm & on BBC 2 at 10pm
On George North and concussion:
“I think the press have done a fantastic job on the concussion. I remember in the World Cup when I got red carded for the tip tackle, for two years all the talk was about tip tackles and how dangerous it was and now the media is focused on concussion, but concussion’s been going on for quite a long time.
“Well it’s always been happening in rugby so I think it’s been blown out of proportion a bit, what’s been going on with George, and Mike Brown from England as well has suffered.
“They have obviously had bad concussions but I think the first thing you’ve got to do is put the safety of the player first but I’m sure George will be back playing rugby, he’s a world-class player and will be back at the top in no time. It’s just making sure he manages this time, this acute phase after the injury, well but he’ll be back playing and be fine.
“I think the concussion protocols now are a lot stricter than they used to be. When I was first playing, only five, six, seven years ago, players would have a concussion and they’d be straight back playing the next game but now if you have a concussion it’s minimum two weeks, there’s loads of medical procedures you have to do before you can return to play.
“I think in George’s case he has just been extremely unlucky that he’s got… some of them don’t even look like a big collision, he’s been involved in much bigger collisions but if you get caught on the button in the right place, then you are knocked out so I think it’s a combination of bad luck as well.”
On the Rugby World Cup:
“Oh it will be awesome. We are in the pool of death as people call it, we’ve got Australia, England, Fiji and Uruguay so it is an unbelievably tough pool so it is very hard to look much further than the group stage, that’s going to take as much effort to get out of the group as win a World Cup probably, we’ll come up against two top quality sides so yes, it’s going to be amazing, I’m really, really excited for it.”
See the full chat tonight on BT Sport 1 at 8pm & on BBC 2 at 10pm. It will also be repeated on BT Sport 1 Fri at 10:30am, Sat 12pm, Sun 22:30pm, & BT Sport 2 on Fri at 19:30pm
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