Winter Colours - nouveau livre

Rugby is a sport that means different things to different people around the world. So when award-winning writer Donald McRae set off to take the pulse of the sport soon after the dawn of the professional era, he began to build a portrait of the game that highlighted the contrasts between nations, who may have been united in their love for rugby, but who saw it in very different ways. Featuring in-depth interviews with a range of great players from around the world, including Sean Fitzpatrick, Francois Pienaar and Lawrence Dallaglio among others, Winter Colours is a compelling account of the culture of rugby as seen by its biggest stars - men who also hold dear the sport's very traditions that make it so special. This is a remarkable piece of writing and is sure to be of interest to all who follow the sport at any level., Donald McRae visits the training camp of the New Zealand All Blacks near the beginning of this engrossing journey through the personalities, cultures and politics of world rugby. Before he has even introduced us to his legendary hosts, McRae makes sure we understand their violence and power: A new scrum machine glistened in the sunlight. The huge contraption, so silently monstrous only thirty minutes earlier, had been reduced to a quivering chorus of squeaks and hisses. It had been subjected to a terrible grinding. Feather slivers of foam floated above it, separated from their casing by the battering. You could not miss the deep and wide indentations the three-headed front row had formed in the sighing leather cushions. Winter Colours is a bravura performance. McRae travels beyond his passion for his native South African Springboks and away from his adopted London home. He appears equally assured in the living rooms of some of the sport's great personalities--Lawrence Dallaglio, Jonah Lomu and James Small, among a long list--or exploring the machinations of its exasperating politicians. He takes us from the sometimes-shocking violence of front-row forwards ("Fitzpatrick took out his mouthguard, spat out three teeth and the slipped the suddenly crimson shield back") to the electric, beautiful running of backs such as Christian Cullen. --Chris Bunting