Tensions growing by the day at the Manor

After spending last weekend in the centre of Guildford, training at the state-of-the-art Surrey Sports Park, this week the bubble appears to be closing in on them.

Certainly, their public dealings have been far more irritable than at any point so far at the tournament, with forwards coach Simon Easterby in tetchy form yesterday as he bristled at innocuous questions and sarcastically joked about concussion - perhaps an ill-advised move given the focus on the issue due to Monday's brilliant 'Hidden Impact' documentary on RTé.

There has been the added factor of the huge French media presence, but Simon Zebo refused to speak French on Tuesday when asked to by a visiting journalist. In contrast, the French are putting up an English-speaking player on a daily basis to accommodate the Irish hacks who got 20 minutes with Uini Atonio yesterday.

With reports that the training pitch at Newport High School is heavier than what they're used to due to the rain earlier in the week and the players trekking across the huge campus to get from their rooms to meetings, it seems the quicker they can get out of the Manor, the better. RO'C

England in bizarre headphones row

It seems as though the fallout from England's disastrous World Cup campaign is just getting started.

The latest is a bizarre row that saw the players banned from wearing their own headphones to games but rather ones that were made by their sponsors, Samsung.

"It may seem like a small thing but some of the guys owned 'Beats by Dr Dre' headphones but they were told they could not wear them when they got off the bus and walked to the changing rooms as part of their pre-match routine," a source said.

"The RFU were that sensitive to Samsung at that micro level but it was an issue with some of the players. A lot of them had their own headphones but couldn't use them."

The RFU have also confirmed that Danny Cipriani and coach Mike Catt were involved in a training ground bust-up but they denied that it had anything to do with the Sale player's omission from the 31-man World Cup squad. CT

Quote of the day

"He's not big-headed, he's a very down-to-earth guy so we don't recognise that at all."

- Devin Toner on reports that an unnamed Racing Metro player claimed that Johnny Sexton was the 'Zlatan Ibrahimovic of rugby'.

Number of the day

100 Number of caps that New Zealand centre Ma'a Nonu is set to reach when he plays Tonga tomorrow