A rugby miscellany compiled by  JOHNNY WATTERSON

School ties: At World Cup

IRELAND BACK Luke Fitzgerald will recognise at least one familiar face when the World Cup gets under way later this year in New Zealand as Russia’s World Cup preparations stayed on track.

Russia, who will make their World Cup debut in 2011, beat Taranaki 33-24 in the first of a two-game tour of New Zealand on Saturday.

In the RWC Pool C, which also features Australia, Ireland, Italy and the United States, Fitzgerald, assuming form and injury allow him to be selected by Declan Kidney, could come up against one of his old Blackrock College SCT team-mates Vasily Artemiev.

The flying winger scored one of Russia’s tries in the three 30-minutes match at Clifton Rugby Ground and is a likely member of the Russian squad that will travel Down Under in September.

Medical miracle: McKinley recounts freakish accident

IAN McKINLEY:IN A 2010 All-Ireland League match Ian McKinley described just how lucky or unlucky a player can be when playing rugby. McKinley spoke to Leinster Rugby for their programme on Saturday and explained just how fortunate he was after a freakish accident last season.

“I took the ball in contact. I ended up on the ground. One of my own players accidentally stood on my eyeball,” said McKinley.

“If the damage was done two millimetres further to the left, I would have definitely lost my eye. I was told on two subsequent occasions in hospital that I would have definitely lost the sight in it.

“It was really a difficult time. Luckily I was taken to the Eye and Ear hospital, where I had emergency surgery there that night. A complication set in. I had a nervous three- to four-day wait. The eyes act as twins so I had to wait and see how the surgery would affect both of them. When I went back five months later the surgeon said it was a “medical miracle.” Thankfully for that.

GOING COMMANDO:THERE WAS some trepidation at Ravenhill among family members when they heard that Biarritz was going to arrive in Belfast "commando" style.

Hooker Benoit August said before the match that the Basque club would face Ulster with a “commando” attitude.

What the French understand as going “commando” and what the English connotation of the expression means is likely to be entirely separate things.

Britney Spears has “gone commando” on a few of her social occasions and so has the tasteful Paris Hilton and given the French penchant for appearing in tastefully shot nude calendars, nobody was taking any chances.

However, all of the Biarritz players seemed suitably and modestly attired beneath their snug-fitting shorts and thankfully there were no outbreaks of what we understand as going “commando”.

Strictly for Gavin: Henson may well have to get used to hostile receptions

GAVIN HENSON:LEINSTER FANS showed just how much they enjoyed the arrival of Saracens substitute Gavin Henson when he entered the Heineken Cup match against Leinster at the RDS on Saturday.

The Welsh centre came into the game just before half-time to a chorus of wolf whistles from the crowd.

Back playing bit parts for Saracens since his stint on the television show Strictly Come Dancing, Henson has expressed a wish to also get his international career back on the rails.

But almost every touch of the ball by the tanned one was greeted the same way, something you might expect will follow him all the way to a red shirt, if Warren Gatland feels he deserves it.

YOU CAN only admire the persuasive talents of the Fijian military regime who convinced the entire Fijian rugby board to step down en mass this week.

The government, who seized power in a coup in 2006, had threatened to withhold three million Fiji dollars (€1.2 million) in grants for this year’s World Cup unless the board quit following an official probe that found they had mismanaged money.

Sports minister Filip Bole convinced them to step down at a meeting last Thursday.

The row centred on a lottery the FRU drew in late December, which was found to have been improperly run.

It was revealed that more than 155,000 of the 350,000 Fiji dollars raised in the lottery was missing and other funds were used for improper purposes, including sending an FRU official to the Hong Kong Sevens last year.

A report has recommended criminal prosecutions against those responsible for misusing the money.