Clint Eastwood/Matt Damon rugby movie to premiere in December

You may remember the item that appeared about 18 months ago about Matt Damon playing the part of former South African rugby captain François Pienaar in a film to be directed by Clint Eastwood.

Well, the film - Invictus - has now been made. Also staring Morgan Freeman its basically about how Nelson Mandella used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to unite South Africa after the end of apartheid, and the first trailer has now been released (see below)

This will almost certainly be Hollywood's first attempt to base a mainstream film around rugby - its certainly the first time a major star like Damon has had to play the game.

When it was announced questions were raised about how Damon was going to put on the four stone of solid muscle, not to mention the five inches of height, required to play the part realistically - the employment of persons of Tom Cruise's stature to fill out the rest of the team, maybe? Well, basically in true Hollywood style they seem to have got around the problem by ignoring it...

Quite how realistic the rugby scenes will be we can only guess at, though there are some hints in the trailer. What will be even more interesting to see is whether such a high profile film will have an effect on the number of people playing the game, especially in the USA and other "non-traditional" rugby countries. It is difficult to believe that it will do the game any harm.

It seems that Invictus will be launched, presumably in the USA, in December - which means that it will probably appear over here in the Spring/Easter.