Chris Hewett - News, Views and Opinion - The Rugby Paper

Chris Hewett: Andy Farrell not alone with his ‘home’ Lions selections

Chris Hewett — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 02:59:29 +0000

“There's an epidemic sweeping through the England team, but it isn’t catching.” Attributed to John Arlott (who else?), the exquisite one-liner sprang to mind as a flurry of butterfingered spillages helped India build their winning second innings total at The Oval last weekend. On the other side of the world, meanwhile, there was something highly […]

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Chris Hewett: Wallabies make the obvious choice with Giteau Law change

Chris Hewett — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 02:59:28 +0000

Inevitable. Had to happen. Written in the stars. Quite why the Australian rugby hierarchy spent so long umming and aaahhing about picking Wallaby-class players from overseas is a mystery that passeth all understanding, for the very good reason that without them, there were never enough Wallaby-class players to fill a team. As of now, the […]

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Chris Hewett: Tough calls needed to take the initiative

Chris Hewett — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 02:59:28 +0000

The Lions may have reaffirmed their rugby sovereignty over the Wallabies during 80 mesmerising minutes in Melbourne, but they were well and truly subordinated by the footballing Lionesses before the weekend was out. It’s the name of the game these days. You can’t expect an open-top bus tour and a bottomless brunch in Downing Street […]

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Chris Hewett: It’s a long, hard road for – Bank of Dad, or not

Chris Hewett — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 02:59:30 +0000

Ten thousand hours seems a suspiciously convenient round number, but there are plenty of big brains who see it as the key to the universe. Looking for mastery in your chosen field, from playing the saxophone to playing scrum-half? All you need is a strict regime of hard yakka: nine to five, seven days a […]

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Chris Hewett: France v the British and Irish Lions would be a stretch

Chris Hewett — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 02:59:17 +0000

Suddenly, rugby’s 24-hour news cycle is full of chatter about a French seat at the British and Irish Lions table. Abdel Benazzi, perhaps the finest Les Bleus forward of the professional era and certainly one of the heavier hitters currently to be found among the sport’s governing classes, is pressing for a one-off match ahead […]

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Chris Hewett: One kick to win it… so who do you want?

Chris Hewett — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 02:59:20 +0000

Whoever it was, it couldn’t have been Carwyn James. For one thing, the most celebrated coach of all was a Welshman who revelled in victories over New Zealand every bit as much as he enjoyed plotting the downfall of any English opposition he might encounter; for another, the silver-ferners hardly needed the services of a […]

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Chris Hewett: Elite will have no time for Los Pumas

Chris Hewett — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 02:59:30 +0000

Phil Kearns never played a game of Test rugby against the British and Irish Lions: a stranger-than-fiction fact that bears repeating. So here goes. One of the half-dozen finest hookers of the modern era – many would put the Sydneysider second only to the all-time-great New Zealand front rower Sean Fitzpatrick, with whom he endured […]

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Chris Hewett: Whatever the voice, messages are mixed

Chris Hewett — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 02:59:34 +0000

If David Campese and Michael Lynagh were singing from the same hymn sheet as the Wallabies dominated the last decade of the amateur era, their volume settings could not have been more different. There was no escaping the racket generated by Campese as he roared his green-and-gold hosannas at a decibel level more commonly associated […]

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Chris Hewett: Let’s hope Wallace Sititi can return to his best

Chris Hewett — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 02:59:33 +0000

So he’s crocked again, which is sad to the point of depressing. Like every other attention-craving spectator sport engaged in the battle for eyeballs, rugby needs its box-office talents on the field, not in the operating theatre. We speak of Wallace Sititi, in case you’re wondering, and we can only trust to luck that we […]

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Chris Hewett: Can Bath outdo the team that Jack Rowell built?

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 02:59:38 +0000

The dear departed Jack Rowell rather fancied himself as a master of the caustic punchline and remained particularly proud of one – “That may be good enough for England, but it isn’t good enough for Bath” – even after he had left Bath for England. A year on from his passing, the club he created […]

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Chris Hewett: Jonny Wilkinson just shouldn’t be the lone star

Chris Hewett — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 02:59:37 +0000

You have to laugh. Otherwise, you’d cry yourself a river. According to a public vote organised by the folk who run (for want of a better word) Europe’s major club tournaments, only one Englishman deserves a place in the crème-dela-crème team chosen to mark three decades of cross-border action. And yes, that Englishman was playing […]

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Chris Hewett: Questions at No.3 are key for Andy Farrell’s British and Irish Lions

Chris Hewett — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 02:59:37 +0000

Prop forwards of the tighthead variety were not put on this earth to be like everyone else, and by and large – extremely large in the case of the French front rower Uini Atonio, who makes the same impact on population density as he does at the scrum – they continue to do things differently. […]

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Chris Hewett: Perhaps Paris isn’t the best of places

Chris Hewett — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 02:59:36 +0000

Can there be a rugby aficionado in the world who wouldn’t move heaven and earth to experience a weekend’s worth of thud and blunder in Paris? Come to think of it, a single weekend is never enough: not if you’re touring the union-flavoured eateries and watering holes enthusiastically recommended by the late Jean Cormier, the […]

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Chris Hewett: Without jeopardy, the game is nothing

Chris Hewett — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 02:59:31 +0000

The journey time between the sublime and the ridiculous can be speed-of-sound short: Clement Poitrenaud, the quintessence of French rugby cool who even on a rough day measured 9.5 on the Serge Blanco scale of elegant running full-backs, covered the distance in three seconds flat during the 2004 Heineken Cup final between Toulouse and Wasps […]

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Chris Hewett: Roll up for the next circus in town, the R360 League

Chris Hewett — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 02:59:30 +0000

Here's an idea: let’s launch a new rugby tournament to run alongside…er…forgotten its name already. Ah, that’s right. R360. The one being pushed by Mike Tindall and Stuart Hooper and a suited-and-booted clique of lawyers, agents, marketing executives, blue sky thinkers and professional disrupters who claim to know a gap in the market when they […]

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Damian Penaud and Louis Bielle-Biarrey: A pair of aces who fill our hearts with joy

Chris Hewett — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 02:59:27 +0000

If the level of mastery is unusually high, the depth of mystery is unfathomable.

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Chris Hewett: Time to speak with one voice

Chris Hewett — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 02:59:26 +0000

Back in the age when men were men and Willie John McBride was wearing the red shirt of the British and Irish Lions, the phrase “get your retaliation in first” – five words of survival advice, whispered in the private confines of the dressing room – was elevated into a public declaration of policy. Full […]

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Chris Hewett: Danny Care still shines in list of the finest 9s

Chris Hewett — Sun, 25 May 2025 02:59:38 +0000

On the face of it, the easiest way to get noticed in big-time rugby is to bag a contract with Harlequins, which gives you automatic access to a shirt that resembles a bad chemical trip at a Grateful Dead concert and might have left Van Gogh fearing that his sunflower paintings were insufficiently vivid. There […]

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Chris Hewett: Dangers of pushing the profit margins

Chris Hewett — Sun, 25 May 2025 02:59:37 +0000

According to George Orwell, who knew a thing or two about a thing or two, the “greatest cruelty one can inflict on a child is to send it to a school among children richer than itself”. By this measure, Twickenham (as some of us continue to call it) can consider itself the Eton of rugby […]

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England’s World Cup fast-track begins in Argentina

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 18 May 2025 02:59:27 +0000

Your starter for 10: what might Jason Leonard, Richard Cockerill, Danny Grewcock and Martin Corry have in common, apart from a deep commitment to the England cause and a sinister mastery of rugby’s darker arts? The correct answer: they made their international debuts on Argentine soil, the last three of them at moments when established […]

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Chris Hewett: Leinster need to spread the love

Chris Hewett — Sun, 11 May 2025 02:59:36 +0000

"Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” The American author Gore Vidal was an acknowledged master of the “ouch” line and this one was ouchier than most, thanks to its uncomfortable proximity to the God’s-honest truth. But would he have written it differently had he been a devout follower of the 15-man game? […]

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Chris Hewett: If there is any justice, George Ford will be a British and Irish Lion

Chris Hewett — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 02:59:33 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed The difference between time and eternity? It’s all relative – get it? – but in pure rugby terms, we can explain it this way: time is the thing a thirtysomething player doesn’t have when he’s desperately attempting to overturn selection injustices of the past, while eternity is the measure […]

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Chris Hewett: Geoff Parling is thriving as the quiet ‘Australian’

Chris Hewett — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 02:59:29 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Whatever lights might be hidden under rugby’s bushel, precious few of them belong to Australian coaches. Alan Jones, who shaped the seminal Wallaby grand slammers of the 1984, loved nothing more than the sound of his own voice; Bob Dwyer, who secured a first world title for his brashly […]

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Chris Hewett: Dan Biggar’s lessons in staying strong

Chris Hewett — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 02:59:30 +0000

The last time Wales won a game of rugby against someone other than the Barbarians – those struggling to recall that landmark event can be forgiven on the grounds that the average elephant doesn’t remember it either – the world was a very different place.

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Owners should be careful what they wish for

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 02:59:35 +0000

By Chris Hewett The ambition among some Premiership owners to turn the league into rugby’s version of cricket’s T20 is a long way behind the times. Rugby Union already has its own version of high-scoring try-fest entertainment in sevens, and having covered the Hong Kong Sevens heyday from the late 1980s through the 1990s, I […]

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British and Irish Lions: Come on, Andy Farrell, put a bolter on your list

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 02:59:32 +0000

Thinking Allowed by Chris Hewett Henry Pollock is the most headline-grabbing talent to emerge in English rugby since Maro Itoje, who was the most talked-about since Jonny…er… whatsisname…you know…the drop-goal bloke, who succeeded a half-decent centre from the West Country by the name of Jeremy Guscott. This is exciting news, especially in a British and […]

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Explosion of tries is turning into a circus

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 02:59:27 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Some of us remember “Mr Creosote”, the Monty Python character who, after a light dinner of pate, shellfish, frogs’ legs, caviar, jugged hare with a cream and Grand Marnier sauce, a superabundance of egg dishes, another helping of pate, half a dozen bottles of claret, a Methuselah of bubbly, […]

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Two point tries for rolling mauls? The giants who are spoiling it for all of us

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 03:59:25 +0000

Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Poor old Italy came up with plenty of solutions to the problems posed by Ireland in last weekend’s Super Saturday bunfight, but Dan Sheehan turned out to be a question without an answer. The three tries bagged by the Lions’ Test hooker-in-waiting were scored so effortlessly, they may have constituted […]

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Oscar Jegou shows the All Blacks how it’s done

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 03:59:26 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed All the talk down New Zealand way is of “Succession”. No, they haven’t made a unilateral declaration of insubordination by calling for a change of monarch; and no, this is not about the profanity-laden television series starring Brian Cox as a Murdochian media magnate with a troublesome tribe of […]

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Howzat! Azzurri are left stumped

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 03:59:35 +0000

CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Box office: England’s Elliot Daly scores against Italy in last year’s Six Nations match PICTURE: Alamy AS the BBC’s top brass have grown accustomed to getting it in the neck every which way – morning, noon and night, from all points of the compass and a few more besides – they […]

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Lytchett Minster 2s? Now they were decent…

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 03:59:34 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Anyone seeking to capture the essence of rugby’s transformation over recent decades need not wrestle with the demise of the ruck, the invasion of rugby league defence coaches, the dire effect of tactical substitutions, the alarming absence of body fat on tighthead props, the hunting to extinction of the […]

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A win’s a win for England? Up to a point, my lord…

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 03:59:31 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed If England intend to make a habit of winning games on their backsides, they should make a block booking at the nearest gluteal augmentation clinic. It won’t come cheap – cosmetic surgeons rarely offer “Brazilian butt lifts” at anything less than the market rate and the entire squad will […]

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The time’s ripe for a summit of the egos

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 03:59:28 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Summits are all the rage right now, “rage” being the operative word, and as the union game has finished turning itself into a classic Monty Python sketch – “Would you like a five-year argument or the full half-century?” – why not get everyone round a table and thrash things […]

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Scrums in danger of falling off the stage

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 03:59:27 +0000

By Chris Hewett We do not yet know whether the Sabercats or the Seawolves will emerge the stronger, or whether the Sharks will eat the Hounds alive – the Major League campaign on the far side of the pond is only two rounds in – but this much is clear and obvious: scrums in the […]

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Goggleboxers must not lose sight of reality

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 03:59:33 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed There was an overpowering whiff of something significant in the air as the 1984 John Player Cup final – a West Country “A4 derby”, no less – headed towards its white-knuckled climax, which explains why the Bath coach, Jack Rowell, left his seat in the Twickenham stand and headed […]

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Let us permit No.8s freedom of expression

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 03:59:23 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed The great and good of World Rugby are clearly intent on turning scrum-halves into the union equivalent of goalkeepers, but if they’re serious about maximising “entertainment” by trading the glorious mess and mayhem of the game for something neater and tidier, why stop with an exclusion zone around the […]

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The best Six Nations? Here are my top three

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 03:59:11 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed The turn of the century was as notable for the things that failed to happen as it was for those that did: there was no Armageddon, no “Millennium Bug”, no resurrection of Elvis Presley live on prime-time television. But something significant definitely occurred in rugby and it went by […]

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Six of the best who deserved a chance during the Six Nations

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 03:59:41 +0000

Thinking Allowed by Chris Hewett A great rugby coach is rarer than radium, as England have discovered in recent decades. Precious few people are blessed with the emotional intelligence to make simultaneous sense of Jonny Wilkinson and Dylan Hartley, let alone plot a course through the political jungle of Twickenham while coming up with fresh […]

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Captains don’t have to play the full 80

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 03:59:22 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed It seems your columnist’s hotline to the England head coach Steve Borthwick has turned positively polar. “Don’t take the captaincy away from Jamie George,” ran the argument in this corner of the paper a week ago. And what happened? Let’s put it this way: the skipper for the upcoming […]

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We need to watch rugby in the raw

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 03:59:10 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed According to Inkoo Kang, a leading critic at The New Yorker magazine and, almost by definition, a writer whose words are barely distinguishable from music, it was “like a box of bonbons gifted around the holidays: pleasing, elegant, forgotten as soon as it’s consumed…driven by intricate plotting rather than by […]

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A star-studded XV that would lead by example

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 03:59:27 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Like “business ethics” and “military intelligence”, the phrase “rugby leadership” is not an oxymoron. Almost, but not quite. Even in the union game, it is just about possible to find an enlightened soul blessed with the ability to shepherd the flock away from the cliff edge rather than over […]

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Let’s hope Brizball can stay in fashion

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 03:59:25 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed This is not obviously the time to be talking balls – the Twickenham elite have cornered that particular market – but the question demands to be asked: is Brizball the union game’s version of Bazball? And if the answer is “yes”, will the bewilderingly bold attacking mindset currently in […]

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No Franco Mostert? That’s got to be a mistake

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 03:59:32 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed Here's a funny thing: one of the more prominent rugby sites on the worldwide web super information highway thingy has just published its list of the 100 best players in the sport. And no, the Springbok lock Franco Mostert isn’t in it. Really? Honestly? Let’s leave out Abraham Lincoln […]

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No Mostert? That’s got to be a mistake

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 03:59:32 +0000

CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Class act: Franco Mostert scoring for South Africa PICTURE: Getty Images HERE’S a funny thing: one of the more prominent rugby sites on the worldwide web super information highway thingy has just published its list of the 100 best players in the sport. And no, the Springbok lock Franco Mostert isn’t […]

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No Mostert? That’s got to be a mistake

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 03:59:32 +0000

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The global travellers who light up game

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 03:59:27 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed There is nothing especially funny about short-term memory loss, but it may just have an upside when it comes to rugby. Anything that stops us fuming over the stomach-churning excesses of the so-called governing class, or mourning the sorry decline of the game in Wales, or wrestling with the […]

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Oh, for a one-stop TV shop for the lot

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 03:59:27 +0000

CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED Gogglebox: Bath taking on La Rochelle on Friday night PICTURE: Getty Images HERE’S a brain teaser: if you happen to be an average Joe or Joanna struggling to make your sums add up in the blood-andguts real world, as opposed to the gold-plated one inhabited by tech gazillionaires and Saudi princes […]

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Scotland deserve fair share of British & Irish Lions

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 03:59:29 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed We may be exaggerating here, but not by much: since the wonderful Tom Smith made the last of his half-dozen consecutive international appearances in the red jersey of his dreams, as opposed to the blue one, it has been easier to spot a Twickenham chief executive in a food […]

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Kolbe’s majesty is a delight to behold

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 03:59:36 +0000

CHRIS HEWETT THINKING ALLOWED CHESLIN Kolbe won the “man of the match” award for his two-try contribution to South Africa’s victory over England, thereby proving that for all their sins of omission and commission, members of the union game’s decision-making class still have the capacity to recognise the bleeding obvious when they see it. Kolbe […]

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We will all suffer in the land of the giants

The Rugby Paper Team — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 03:59:31 +0000

By Chris Hewett - Thinking Allowed It was the rugby version of Easy Street, the 1917 silent movie in which Charlie Chaplin, playing a policeman, smashes a giant bully over the head with a truncheon, but fails to make him blink. Poor little Tomos Williams, a scrum-half constructed on the same scale as Chaplin, made […]

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