News

Head coach Sean Lynn has named nine uncapped players in a new-look Wales squad for the 2026 Women’s Six Nations.

Lynn has selected 38 players based on form and the amount of game-time players have had in the Premiership Women’s Rugby (PRW) and Celtic Challenge.

Kate Williams will take on the sole captaincy after Alex Callender was ruled out of the tournament with an ankle injury.

Lynn will also be without the injured Nel Metcalfe, one of a few shining lights in a winless 2025 World Cup, while Kerin Lake and Robyn Wilkins have retired.

Familiar foes await in Wales’ opener at the Principality Stadium on Saturday, 11 April, with Scotland up first having also been the opening opponents in last year’s Six Nations and World Cup.

The new faces for 2026 include a host of players who featured in the Celtic Challenge, with Brython Thunder and Gwalia Lightning both reaching last weekend’s semi-finals before bowing out.

There is also a place in the squad for Alisha Joyce (nee Butchers) who missed last year’s Six Nations and World Cup with her pregnancy.

She made her comeback off the bench for Thunder last weekend, 123 days after giving birth to her and wife Jasmine Joyce’s son Ralphie.

Natalia John also returns after missing out on selection in 2025, having impressed for Thunder this season, but there is no place for fellow lock Abbie Fleming, who had been a key player under the previous regime but has struggled for game-time with Harlequins this campaign.

“This is a new-look Wales squad, and we made it clear at the start of the season we would select players who were playing regular club rugby in the PWR and the Celtic Challenge,” said Lynn.

“We have named 25 players who have Celtic Challenge rugby under their belts, and we have really been impressed by the young Welsh talent now coming through our pathway and playing regularly.”

Lynn added: “This is the start of a new four-year World Cup cycle, it is a fresh start, and we need to look to the future and that means giving players an opportunity to taste Test match rugby.

“We have a good blend of experienced internationals and new faces, and selection was driven by those who have demonstrated an appetite to learn and a desire to work hard.

Forwards: Gwenllian Pyrs, Maisie Davies, Katherine Baverstock, Stella Orrin, Sisilia Tuipulotu, Donna Rose, Elan Jones, Jenni Scoble, Kelsey Jones, Molly Reardon, Carys Phillips, Kendall Waudby, Gwen Crabb, Tilly Vucaj, Alaw Pyrs, Natalia John, Kate Williams, Bethan Lewis, Bryonie King, Jorja Aiono, Branwen Metcalfe, Georgia Evans, Alisha Joyce

Fernando Alonso is to miss media day at the Japanese Grand Prix on Thursday because he is travelling to the race late following the birth of his first child.

Aston Martin said on Wednesday that the two-time world champion was “arriving slightly later this weekend for personal family reasons”.

The team declined to give any further details but BBC Sport has confirmed that it is because Alonso’s partner Melissa Jimenez has had their first baby.

Alonso, 44, prefers to keep his personal life private and no further information has been made public.

Alonso, who is in the final year of his contract with Aston Martin and has not said whether he wants to stay in F1 beyond 2026, is not due to take part in Friday’s first practice session.

The team’s reserve driver Jak Crawford will be driving the car in one of the team’s mandated rookie sessions this year.

Alonso has insisted he has faith in Honda’s ability to put things right but acknowledged that he does not know how long that will take. It is the second time he has been on the receiving end of Honda being unprepared in a new relationship in F1, after a difficult three years with McLaren in 2015-17.

Aston Martin have had a troubled start to the season as a result of major reliability and performance issues with their Honda engine, while the car is also behind on development after its design was started late.

They are last in the world championship after two races, the worst possible start to their new factory partnership with Honda, which won four drivers’ titles and two constructors’ titles with Red Bull from 2021-24.

Alonso has retired from both events in Australia and China and team-mate Lance Stroll retired in China and finished last, 15 laps behind the winner, in Melbourne.

Honda’s first-order issue is a severe vibration from the engine that has been leading to failures in the battery.

Its engineers have been working to isolate the battery, a critical part of the hybrid system, from the vibrations but these have still been causing problems for the rest of the car – Alonso retired in China because holding the steering wheel was proving too painful.

That came after team principal Adrian Newey said at the first race of the season that the vibrations were so bad they were risking permanent nerve damage for the drivers within 25 laps of running.

The Japanese Grand Prix is not only the home race for Honda, but it is held on their own Suzuka track, built on the orders of the company’s founder Soichiro Honda in the 1960s.

Shintaro Orihara, Honda’s trackside general manager and chief engineer, said: “In China, we made some progress in terms of battery reliability thanks to a reduction in the vibration affecting the systems, but we must find more solutions to establish the cause of the vibrations affecting the drivers.

“We have also focused our efforts in the gap between China and Japan to continue to improve our reliability, but still our performance is not where we want it to be, especially regarding energy management.

“Suzuka Circuit is a tough track for this, so we have been using the learnings from Australia and China to prepare better for the Japanese Grand Prix.

“We are not at the level where we wanted to be going into this weekend, but we will keep working hard to maximise our package. We are looking forward to seeing the home crowd and the Honda fans. I want them to see that we have made some progress since Bahrain [testing].”

Beyond the vibrations, Honda’s power-unit is down on power from both the internal combustion engine and electrical system, which can neither recover nor deploy energy at the full permitted 350kW rate.

Manchester City were all over Arsenal early in the second half on Sunday when Rodri spread his arms calling for the ball on the edge of the area.

Rayan Cherki instantly spotted him and picked him out.

Rodri controlled it and fired it right away.

The low shot looked destined for the bottom-right corner of Kepa’s goal, but Martin Zubimendi got in the way and blocked his fellow Spaniard’s effort.

Ultimately, Rodri came out on top as City won 2-0 at Wembley to lift the Carabao Cup.

But the battle of the two midfielders is far from over. It resumed on Monday when both of them reported to the Spanish national team camp in Madrid before the friendlies against Serbia and Egypt.

Not only are they still fighting for the Premier League title, but also for a starting place with the European champions.

That’s one of the main debates in Spain before this summer’s World Cup.

Can Rodri and Zubimendi play together?

Spain head coach Luis de la Fuente has had to address this question so often during the past few months that he’s now reached a point where he’s simply anticipating it in interviews.

“After all the setbacks he went through, Rodrigo is back at a high level. I’ve said before that he is the best in the world, but also on those same occasions that we are very fortunate,” De La Fuente told TVE..

“After all, in that position, the number 6 role, we have the two best players in the world: Rodrigo and Martin [Zubimendi].

“So I will get ahead of a question you are probably going to ask: can they play together? Of course they can play together.”

The 64-year-old boss has yet to truly put that into practice, however.

He’s done it once, but that was quite circumstantial. It took place in the 2024 Euro semi-finals against France, when Zubimendi came off the bench in the 93rd minute.

For most of their time at Las Rozas headquarters in Madrid, it’s been either one or the other.

Rodri had long been undroppable and even had a say within the dressing room in how the team played, but his last start was in September 2024 against Switzerland.

In his absence, Zubimendi has made such an impact that what once felt unquestionable no longer does: there’s life without the 2024 Ballon d’Or winner.

There has been no Spain without Rodri or Zubimendi in midfield.

Of De la Fuente’s 3,300 minutes since taking over in March 2023, only 268 were played without at least one of them on the pitch – 67 against Andorra in June 2024; 21 against Denmark in November 2024; 90 against Switzerland in November 2024; and 90 against Turkey in November 2025.

The duo’s dominance has been such that, when Rodri suffered a knee ligament injury in September 2024, he dropped a message to Zubimendi.

“I’m leaving you the keys of the team,” he wrote to his compatriot at Arsenal.

The City maestro now finds himself in a situation where he’s not sure whether he will have them back. He’s no stranger to that kind of competition, though.

“That sounds familiar. It was not so long ago that it was [Sergio] Busquets and me. It’s a joy to have players of such a high level in every position,” he said.

In the 2022 World Cup, however, the solution the coach at the time, Luis Enrique, came up with to accommodate both of them was playing Rodri as a centre-back. It’s unlikely that De la Fuente will go down the same road this summer.

In that case, he will either have to field an unprecedented double pivot – despite his public preference for a 6, an 8 and a 10 in his line of three in midfield – or leave one of them on the bench. That is not ruled out.

“Yes, we can play that way [with a double pivot] perfectly well,” De la Fuente said in an interview with Despejados podcast.

“In my idea of football, they [Rodri and Zubimendi] may occupy a similar role, but they are different players with different characteristics. In fact, Martin is getting into the box more now and scoring goals, but he also has the qualities of a positional player, with balance and outstanding tactical awareness. Rodri has those same qualities too, so having them there gives us security, that kind of structure.”

This whole dilemma is not particularly new for Spain.

The last time the country won the World Cup in 2010, it faced the same debate prior to the tournament.

After lifting the Euros trophy two years earlier with Marcos Senna as the sole number 6, it then had Xabi Alonso lined up as his successor, but the rapid rise of Busquets disrupted plans, and manager Vicente del Bosque had to make room for the emerging Barcelona star in the team.

That meant playing Alonso and Busquets alongside each other in South Africa. The initial reaction to the idea was mixed.

“In Madrid, people were saying Alonso had to play instead of Busquets, and in Catalonia they were saying the opposite,” recalled Del Bosque. “Even within the squad, some felt we should only play one of them. But we believed that our core was essential.”

It worked out and now, 16 years later, Spain find themselves in a similar situation with Rodri and Zubimendi.

Jannik Sinner extended his record for the most consecutive sets won at ATP Masters 1,000 events to 28 as he reached the quarter-finals of the Miami Open.

The Italian world number two, who broke Novak Djokovic’s 10-year record of 24 on Monday, beat American Alex Michelsen 7-5 7-6 (7-4).

Four-time Grand Slam winner Sinner came from 5-2 down in the second set to secure a meeting with American 19th seed Frances Tiafoe.

Sinner, who won the Miami Open in 2024, is the only former champion still in the tournament.

He is set to reduce the gap to world number one Carlos Alcaraz in the rankings following the Spaniard’s third-round defeat by Sebastian Korda.

Sinner could face world number three Alexander Zverev in the semi-finals.

German Zverev defeated Frenchman Quentin Halys 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (7-1) to set up a quarter-final meeting with Argentine Francisco Cerundolo.