Fear the Flanker

Forty-eight test veteran, Jerry Collins, 27, has announced his retirement from New Zealand rugby. Collins said: “It’s difficult for me to talk about myself but I know I’ve always been committed to every minute of every game and that’s the way I want to go out.” Playing with the Barbarians in the UK, the Independent writes that few players, coaches or administrators north of the equator have ever been pleased to see Collins, a ferocious flanker who can stop a man dead with a sideways glance and cut him in two with a trademark big-hit tackle. Of his arrival on UK soil for the match against an Ireland XV, the article says there was no hiding the outpouring of relief at confirmation that Collins was “over here, rather than over there.”