IT'S STRICTLY SCRUM DANCING

HE spent a lifetime competing with Matt Dawson to be England scrumhalf. Now Kyran Bracken is challenging his rival's status as rugby's top dancer.
Bracken insists it is sheer coincidence, that he did not know Dawson had signed up for BBC's Strictly Come Dancing when he agreed to take part in ITV's Dancing on Ice.
"I signed to do it and then a few days later I read that Matt was doing Strictly," he said. "I thought: 'Oh God, people will think I'm still trying to compete with him, even after rugby'.
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"I don't know what Matt's intentions were. But I'm certainly not doing this to raise my profile or to get on TV. I just see it as a great laugh - and a real adrenalin rush."
However, after training Monday to Friday, two hours a day, for the past four months you can bet he is out to improve on Dawson's runners-up finish in the ballroom. "I hate losing and I always have," admitted Bracken as he prepared for his first performance with American skate partner Melanie Lambert a week today.
"Ask my brother John. I can't lose at chess or marbles or anything. Even if it's Saracens training and we're playing a game of touch, it riles me to finish on the losing side."
During their playing days Dawson and Bracken had a fierce rivalry, Dawson winning 71 caps, Bracken 51. Both were World Cup winners but only Dawson played in the final.
Bracken admitted in his autobiography that his rival became 'the barrier between me and my dream'. But that was more than three years ago. The other week he picked up the phone and voted for Dawson.
He knows the pressure is on him to match the achievements of his longtime rival, who also won Celebrity Masterchef, and England prop Matt Stevens, who was runner-up last summer in X Factor: Battle of the Stars. But Dawson yesterday warned: "Nothing will prepare Kyran for that five seconds before the live performance.
"You take a few deep breaths and hope the training pays off. Strictly Come Dancing was the most nerve-wracking thing I have ever done - though probably the most satisfying when completed."
Bracken had never skated before he signed up and began working with ice dance legends Torvill and Dean. "I think they think I'm a bit of a nutter on the ice because I consider it a contact sport," he said. "It gives me the same buzz I got when I was younger going rugby training.
"The difference is that I'm crap at skating. When a couple of my rugby mates came to watch me training the other day I fell three or four times - though, to be fair to me, I was attempting a three-turn jump, landing going backwards on one leg." Can this really be the same bloke who retired from playing rugby due largely to the fact his battered body, and in particular his back, was no longer fit for purpose?
"Funnily enough, this has been very good for my back," he said. "The core stability that is required to look elegant and stand straight and skate is huge.
"If you speak to rugby players with chronic injuries, when they stop playing, certainly initially, those chronic injuries become even worse. That's because at least rugby keeps your joints moving. So this has been good for me." If only English rugby's other problems could be solved by a trip to the ice rink.
Bracken's rivals for the ice crown are former soccer star Lee Sharpe, TV presenters Ulrika Jonsson and Kay Burley, disc jockey Neil Fox, former Boyzone star Stephen Gately, news reader Phil Gayle, ex-Blue singer Duncan James, former Steps band member Lisa Scott- Lee, and actresses Emily Symons and Clare Buckfield.