Sunday Social: Emotional tributes and Tom May praise

Colin Newboult

It is time for Planet Rugby’s Sunday Social, your quirky recap of the serious and not so serious talking points from the past week’s action.

We begin with some sad news as on Saturday it was confirmed that former Scarlets, Gloucester, Dragons and Wales centre Matthew J Watkins passed away after a long battle with cancer. There’s been many emotional messages from former team-mates, friends and clubs and we’ve picked out just a couple below. Rest in peace, Matthew.

Former Wales international fly-half Jonathan Davies was one of several to give his own heartfelt tribute to Watkins on Twitter.

In the Six Nations, coronavirus was the talk of the build-up this week as Italy’s game against England was postponed. That means Sergio Parisse will once again miss out on an international swansong. Cue to the tweets.

There was more…

In the Premiership, Sale continued their excellent form on Friday and this was good to see as centre Sam James ran touch at his former side Manchester Rugby Club, not 24 hours after a two-try showing for the Sharks.

In Super Rugby, this was a lovely tweet from former Wallaby Tim Horan with his son Alex, who’s now playing for the Sunwolves.

Continuing the Super Rugby theme and Shaun Stevenson was outstanding for the Chiefs in their big win. Check out this offload.

There were quite a few belters this weekend and this effort from the Reds in their narrow loss to the Crusaders was outstanding.

Time for a song and how about this from Gareth Thomas as he joined the Wenglish choir and Laura Wright for the Welsh anthem.

Some more feel-good news from the social scene here as former England and Newcastle Falcons back Tom May ran six marathons in just six days to help raise money to find a cure for cancer and motor neurone disease.

Here he is at the finish. Great work, Tom!

 

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