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The stadia around Europe have fallen silent. The sods have settled. Yes, the Rugby World Cup saw a lot of mud flying around, as well as a lot of exciting play. But now it's been over for a couple of months, will Rugby Coach make your adrenaline pump and your ears swell up in quite the same way? D&H are well known for their strategy sports games. Well known, that is, because they all seem to be pretty similar and there seems to be a lack of action.

Rugby Coach gives you a squad of fifteen neckless men in a Third Division side, a bag of money to spend as you will, and a packed fixture list. The idea is to hone your team into one massive rugby-playing identity before which even grown men weep. You do this by flicking from icon to icon on the menu and training, selecting, transferring and motivating your men.

You can faff around with the team to your heart's content. Then, when you're ready, you can either let up to three other human players have a go, or you can advance the days until the next matches are due to be played.

As for effects, well, there aren't any really. A motionless picture of a scrum appears and the results of every match played in either rugby league or union flash up. You can page through these if you're not interested, but it does slow everything up. When your matches appear, you get a newspaper-like result page, showing the scores and who scored them. Then it's back to the main menu. Other historical data can be called up in the form of tables or graphs, but these aren't exactly going to set your pulses racing wildly.

Rugby Coach contains a lot of detail, is easy to use but sadly isn't exciting - or even especially interesting. It's basically an exercise in mouse clicking as you wind past the days. If you manage to play out a whole season you would have to be a rugby fan or really frightening intensity.

1. Can run on single sided disks.
2. Lack of action makes Rugby Coach look poor compared to World Class Rugby.
3. Player's names aren't accurate, so you can't follow the "big names".
4. Virtually identical to D&H's numerous other football management sims.