ENGLAND: Austin Healey has been ruled out of England's pre-World Cup tours to Australia and New Zealand and could miss the start of next season. The Leicester player suffered ligament damage in a crunching tackle from Munster's Rob Henderson in Saturday's Heineken European Cup quarter-final defeat.
And Leicester director of rugby Dean Richards has revealed that the 29-year-old faces a long battle to regain his fitness: "I think it's fair to say Austin's priority now is to try to get himself ready for the World Cup. Hopefully he'll be ready for our pre-season but that depends on what happens. He did have some cartilage damage which is being treated and also they found some ligament problems, but that's not thought to be too serious at this time."
England travel to Wellington and Melbourne in June as part of their preparations for the World Cup in October.
WORLD CUP: The Australian Rugby Union has successfully negotiated the removal of the cap on its profits from hosting this year's World Cup. The ARU renegotiated with the International Rugby Board (IRB) to lift the cap when it became clear that it was going to far exceed profit projections.
The ARU and IRB initially agreed the ARU's profit would be capped at AUS$45 million, but because of the huge response to ticket sales it was already approaching that.
With no incentive, the host union could have effectively downed tools and not attempted to increase overall profits from the October-November World Cup. The formula now is that they are able to keep the first $31 million of the tournament surplus and then everything above $31 million is split 70:30 (70 to the IRB).
Meanwhile, the IRB could face a revolt by players over its refusal to share some of the profits from this year's World Cup. International Rugby Players Association (IRPA) chairman Tony Dempsey said players wanted the IRB to follow the lead of other major sports, including the soccer and cricket World Cups, by sharing their massive windfalls with the competitors.
ALL BLACKS LOGO: A bid by New Zealand to register one of sport's best known names - the All Blacks - as a trademark has hit a hitch with the discovery somebody has been using the name a while longer. New Zealand's national rugby side has been known as the "All Blacks" for 98 years - but the Welsh club Neath has been known as the All Blacks for 123 years.
The New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) has applied for a trademark that would force Neath to court if it wanted to continue using its historic nickname on club merchandise.
