‘Exciting’ Noah Caluori could make England debut this autumn, says Borthwick
England could fast-track the Saracens teenager Noah Caluori into the Test spotlight as soon as next month following the wing’s dramatic start to his top-level club career.The 19-year-old celebrated his first Prem start with five tries against Sale Sharks on Saturday and the national head coach, Steve Borthwick, says he is already in contention for a senior England debut.It was impossible to miss Caluori’s aerial ability and eye for the try line at the weekend with the former Lions captain Sam Warburton describing the 6ft 5in player as “almost undefendable” and “an absolute diamond”.England have been aware of his potential for a while and it seems that some game time against Fiji a fortnight on Saturday is not impossible.Borthwick certainly did not pour cold water on the idea after calling up Caluori to a three-day training camp in Bagshot.
“I think he could certainly feature this autumn,” the England head coach said.“He has been on the radar for a considerable period of time.It was over a year ago that I started getting sent footage from [the RFU’s] Conor O’Shea, Mark Mapletoft and Jonathan Pendlebury.They were talking about him among a group of other players on the pathway.”It says everything about Caluori’s ability to soar above the herd that comparisons are being made with Israel Folau and Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, both remarkable athletes who gave Australia another aerial dimension.
Borthwick has also been encouraged by the newcomer’s modest response to his sudden rugby fame.“A number of people have mentioned to me the interview he did after the game and how his humility and desire to learn came across,” Borthwick said.“You don’t hear that from too many 19‑year‑olds.”Among other things it might also be a sign that England are more open to embracing X-factor players rather than taking a more conservative approach to blooding talented newcomers.“How brilliant is it that we’ve got exciting players like that around,” Borthwick said.
“You’ve got young kids talking about them and wanting to be them.I think that’s absolutely wonderful.Henry Pollock is another example.There’s incredible talent in the team.Noah’s been showing that ability throughout his pathway experience.
Like every player there are always bits to improve which I think is the really exciting part.”Conspicuous by his absence at Pennyhill Park, however, is Caluori’s clubmate Tom Willis who has opted to turn his back on representing England at the 2027 Rugby World Cup in favour of rejoining Bordeaux in the French Top 14.In theory he remains available to England for the rest of this season but Borthwick has made clear he will now look elsewhere.“Tom told me his decision late last week,” Borthwick said.“My job is to then focus on who is going to be playing for England to win the World Cup in two years’ time.
I think the situation is really clear and I’d be surprised if anyone thinks too differently to the way I am thinking.The time we have together is crucial.”Sign up to The BreakdownThe latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewedafter newsletter promotionThe complication is that Willis still has an enhanced elite player squad contract which cannot be torn up while he remains eligible to represent the national team.It means the RFU must continue shelling out a six‑figure sum for a player who will no longer be involved.Borthwick, however, has left the door ajar for Owen Farrell, who is not in England’s squad despite touring with the British & Irish Lions in the summer.
“Owen and I have spoken regularly throughout his time back in England and when he was in France,” Borthwick said.“I enjoy chatting to him and he’s got a great rugby brain.I think he’s been very clear that he wants to get back into the rhythm of playing for his club and enjoy his rugby again after an injury‑disrupted year.We’re only a handful of games in to this season so I don’t think it’s a conversation for right now.”
Amazon says Web Services are recovering after outage hits millions of users – business live
AWS has issued another update, saying that is continues to “observe recovery across all AWS services.”It added that it is succeeding across multiple “Availability Zones in the US-EAST-1 Regions.”AWS went on to say: “For Lambda, customers may face intermittent function errors for functions making network requests to other services or systems as we work to address residual network connectivity issues. To recover Lambda’s invocation errors, we slowed down the rate of SQS polling via Lambda Event Source Mappings. We are now increasing the rate of SQS polling as we experience more successful invocations and reduced function errors
Labour’s clean energy plan needs a revamp: get real on costs and ignore the artificial deadline | Nils Pratley
“I know my job is to get bills down by £300,” said Ed Miliband, the energy security secretary, in his BBC interview at the weekend, acknowledging that the government is on the hook for its pre-election promise to reduce energy bills by 2030.The problem, though, is that the bill-cutting task also seems to be falling by default to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. It is beginning to look as if the only sure way to make energy bills fall by £300 by 2030 is to shuffle a chunk of the expense into general taxation. Miliband hinted the 5% VAT charge on bills could be removed in next month’s budget, which would cost the government £2.5bn
Amazon Web Services outage shows internet users ‘at mercy’ of too few providers, experts say
Experts have warned of the perils of relying on a small number of companies for operating the global internet after a glitch at Amazon’s cloud computing service brought down apps and websites around the world.The affected platforms included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal and Duolingo as well as a host of Amazon-owned operations including its main retail site and the Ring doorbell company.More than 2,000 companies worldwide have been affected, according to Downdetector, a site that monitors internet outages, with 8.1m reports of problems from users including 1.9m reports in the US, 1m in the UK and 418,000 in Australia
‘Every kind of creative discipline is in danger’: Lincoln Lawyer author on the dangers of AI
He is one of the most prolific writers in publishing, averaging more than a novel a year. But even Michael Connelly, the author of the bestselling Lincoln Lawyer series, feared he might fall behind when writing about AI.Connelly’s eighth novel in the series, to be released on Tuesday, centres on a lawsuit against an AI company whose chatbot told a 16-year-old boy that it was OK for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for being unfaithful.But as he was writing, he witnessed the technology altering the way the world worked so rapidly that he feared his plot might become out of date.“You don’t have to lick your finger and hold it up to the wind to know that AI is a massive change that’s coming to science, culture, medicine, everything,” he said
Outsiders steal headlines at Ascot and the shocks are coming more often
Pandemic-era change to system for compiling starting prices looks to be costing those who bet on favouritesCalandagan’s impressive defeat of Ombudsman in the Champion Stakes at Ascot may well turn out to have been the best race anywhere on the planet this year when the final ratings are totted up in January, but it was not the reason why Champions Day made a brief but welcome appearance on the BBC’s main evening news bulletin on Saturday evening.Instead, it was the 200-1 success of Powerful Glory in the Champions Sprint earlier on the card which caught the sports editor’s eye, and understandably so. In the same way that, even now, Leicester’s Premier League title success in 2015-16 is rarely mentioned without reference to the 5,000-1 on offer at the start of the season, it was a case of a starting price being worth a thousand words.The 100-1 success of Cicero’s Gift in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes an hour later only added to the sense that we must all have been looking at the form book upside down. Two winners at a three-figure starting price on the same card? Preposterous
Red Bull fined £43,000 after team member tries to tamper with Lando Norris grid tape
Red Bull have been fined £43,000 after a member of the team broke regulations in an act of gamesmanship at the US Grand Prix, when attempting to remove a piece of tape from the pit wall placed there by McLaren to aid their driver Lando Norris in lining up correctly on the grid.The incident was an unusual example of low-level skulduggery between teams as Red Bull were caught out by CCTV cameras trackside and the race stewards issued the fine for events which took place just before the off.Norris was lined up in second place behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on the grid at Austin, where Verstappen went on to win. Some teams will use a piece of tape attached vertically to the trackside pit wall as a marking indicator for drivers of their grid box.With visibility from the car very limited, especially of the markings on the grid itself, it is a visual aid for the driver to ensure they are positioned correctly for the start
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