Where's the grudge match in rugby?

There is absolutely no truth in your statement. It is made completely as an I don't like rugby statement. There is plently of skill, rivalry, depth and passion. You show me any team today that has loyalty from players in an open professional market era. That loyalty only applies to national teams, except for when it comes to league. They swap countries whenever it suits.

The Reds, Brumbies and Waratahs have very healthy rivalries with each other. The Force and Rebels need to get stronger and build more history before similar rivalries develop. More results like the Force's upset of the Waratahs this year in Sydney will help a rivalry flourish - certainly when the Waratahs went across for the return match in Perth there was a bit of extra feeling to the match. Australian rugby has rivalries in place for the teams that have been around a long time - the Reds and Waratahs in particular love to hate each other.

Mania, You say the bulk of the crusaders players come from the cantb catchment area. Not so sure about that. The Whitelocks are all from Fielding, Guildford and Dagg are from the Hawkesbay, Fruen from Wellington, McCaw and Donnely both from Otago, Even Sean Maitland is from the Waikato. While I understand that these guys all play for Canterbury in the NPC they still have come from outside the Canterbury Union. Emric, They attract the best players because they play the best rugby. The systems they have down there are far better than anywhere else in NZ. No wonder the likes of the Whitelocks, Dagg, Guildford and fruen play their rugby there rather than the Hurricanes franchise where they were originally from.

Yes we have Rugby rivalries (against every other team in existence), we hate to lose any game full stop. Just not Grudges and not Grudge matches. That's reserved for lower life forms. But I get your point.

Come to Canberra this weekend.

Not according to crowds and tv figures ;)

That's why I hate the conference system. Nobody wants to watch Aussie derbies espcially Kiwis and south africans who are used to passionate derbies between fierce traditional rivals. The conference system has no appeal whatsoever has detracted from SR this season.

Bring in Queensland Country and NSW Country to form our own NPC, there would be real feeling in the respective derbies. Regional v Metroplitan grudges can carry huge weight - I would love to see some of the country Reds such as Simmons, Holmes and Davies giving it to the Brisbane boys.

sixo_clock. The grudges that I speak of, and I'm sure others speak of, are not bad blood grudges. They are traditional rivalries. Players will smash each other senseless on the field, and then help each other up. Any bad blood is normally left on the field and the bars are a place to compare war stories. I've never known players to loath each other because at some point they may be team mates, so the rivalries are a brother vs. brother smash up - similar to State of Origin / mate vs. mate. On Wednesday night players are almost decapitating each other, the next Friday or Saturday they are playing alongside each other. No one really holds a personal grudge, as far as I've seen.

I think that we can all agree that Meyer is a much better coach than PdV. There have been some issues that if you have a coach from a particular province, he may favour players from his province, but this hasn't really been the case. Yes, Meyer may select players from The Bulls, but look at the performance of the Bulls. They are a strong team, but Meyer will also look to other provinces for the best players. Coaches of his calibre are more professional than that. They have built a team around themselves so that they can bounce ideas off his chosen command to get the best result. He has Rassie Erasmus as his technical/performance advisor, who is a Western Province boy, he is looking at captains from Western Province, Cheetahs and Sharks as his leadership group and he is looking at the Currie Cup teams for specialised players. He my have hired skills coaches from The Bulls, but that is due to the fact that he knows these guys and they are on the same page as he is, instead of trying to hire an unknown and working out the kinks before game time. Meyer may be the answer to South African rugby and may take the team to the top once again, but it's not a surety. He did forge The Bulls into a championship franchise and may do the same at the international level, but a great Super Rugby coach doesn't always translate into a great international coach, most recently Robbie Deans. Springbok Rugby also have the proud tradition of using local coaches and don't always hire head coaches from other countries, so most of the time, the coaching ideas are localised and reflect a Super Rugby teams' game plan or something similar, which may be interpreted as favourtism towards a particular team.

Red, I'd find that easier to believe if all the proceeds were donated to Legacy...

Yep - if you grow up playing rugby in Canberra you are instilled with a (good-natured) hatred for the 'tahs from a young age. This game means more to Brumbies supporters than any other in the regular season.

You may want to check with the players on that mania, and the fans. I think you are way off the mark.

I was about to mention that game Brett. It was traditionally a good Friday game in Canberra, and it was always huge. There is definitely still a rivalry between the brums and tahs, I dont look forward to any game more then this one. If we beat the Tahs its my shout to anyone and everyone, however if we do the unthinkable and lose I might not speak to anyone for days. I dont know if its the same in Sydney, but growing up as a Brumbies supporter you go for two teams, the Brumbies and whoever is playing the Tahs.

Go the Brumbies. (This weekend at least)

The Roosters aren't even one of the biggest Sydney teams in the NRL and they're aren't even known for brilliant attendances. Without starting a code war, I would suggest that whilst the Waratahs have fans, the number of fans willing to go to an actual game is less than what a typical Sydney NRL can get for an 'event' match. The advantage the NRL obviously has after that is that they then have 9 Sydney teams for the derby matchups. Super Rugby has 1. Before we start thinking about how to create grudges, perhaps we should first figure out how to lift attendances for other matches against SA & NZ. That's how you build core support.

Yes I respect that and freely admit, the commemorations of ANzac Day are very well done and great effort is made to be respectful. I'm not knocking what happens - what I am observing is that its not Collingwood and Essendon's Anzac Day, or St George or the Roosters Anzac Day. I'm just uncomfortable as to how these clubs "own" Anzac Day, as I am about Victoria Bitter's promotions and campaigns, no matter how sensitively done. I get where your coming from however, and its a purely personal view, I'd like to see the Anzac Day fixture rotated between the AFL and NRL clubs.

Do Rugby players, clubs, provinces, nations hold grudges? Aren't they a waste of time? Don't they have an odour of peasant level hatred for wrongs committed in a previous century by and to grudgees with a completely different set of attitudes. We play the game and then socialise into the early hours afterwards. You can't hate someone who has spewed on your best suit. Last weekend there were a number of matches that could have been decided on the bell. Of the Oz teams only the Brumbies at the moment play an exciting attack oriented game with skill and speed, make sure you catch them for the buzz.

Ewen, funnily enough, this sort of thing was starting to happen between the Brumbies and Waratahs. For the first seven or eight years of Super 12 and then 14, the Brumbies-Waratahs derby was nearly always on or around the Easter weekend, and in Canberra especially, it was a regular ground-filler. Obviously, over time both teams' fortunes have varied, and also with the advent of the conference system where the local derbies are played as a full home & away series at all time of the year, this fledgling tradition has been lost unfortunately. But it resumes this Saturday night, and again in Canberra at least, it's the most anticipated game of the season...

Super rugby is a flawed concept for so many reasons, and this lack or rivalry is one of them. I hope long term , the rugby administrators find a better business model than super rugby that will make a profit. I am hopeful long term of a ASIA-pacific league concept, will mean local league/champions league like soccer in europe. Time will tell, but super rugby for me has run it's time i just can't relate to the south african teams, they do nothing for me.