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Joined June 2015
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It is clear that New Zealand need to take stock and study Australian rugby - it is obvious this season that their performance has…
I went and watched the Kalamunda Bulls play the other week. I am going to watch the Force V Hong Kong tomorrow so all good and I am getting to see rugby. I am a bit worried though about what will happen to RA if the IPRC start floating big bucks in front of the Wallaby stars to leave their SR franchises and go to the IPRC. How will RA deal with that if Western Australia pull out the big gun cheque book. Surely RA have a strategy in place in case the West goes rogue but I wouldn’t know what it would be and how they would counter it.
Has cutting the Force been worth it?
Where was Thorn when Cooper roughed up McCaw? Where was Thorn when the NZ public and the All Blacks really took a strong dislike to Cooper? Where was Thorn when Cooper beat the Crusaders in 2011 to win the tournament? Do we not think that Thorn would not have an internal and automatic bias against Cooper?
Was Brad Thorn right to dump Quade Cooper and Karmichael Hunt?
Yeah no-one wants to watch Singapore V Hong Kong except if they have the Barret Brothers, David Pocock and Siya Kolisi playing for them. But that will disqualify them from playing for their national teams? Yeah right – just ask the Chappell brothers, Dennis Lillee and Thommo about that.
Fiji’s NRC entry provides Twiggy’s Indo-Pacific template
Nah the next move for Twiggy should be to go around the ARU to SANZAAR and offer them $50 large. I know they wouldn’t be knocking it back!
Andrew Forrest should drop his court action and rebuild rugby in WA
That’s correct. It is all mountains. No Lake Eyre for them.
All Blacks copping all the pressure in third Test
Is he the one that schooled by the Argentineans a few years back on that fateful night in Durban??
The bunny chow wrap
I thought Cheika was quite restrained at the post match press conference. I didn’t think it was very controversial at all. I also must admit that after the Auckland blow up I have not missed a you tube screening of the post match conference. It seems that it was compulsory viewing for a while there to see what Cheika would say but now they are getting boring again. Unless Cheika can stir it up after the England test I for one will not be tuning in a again.
Cheika gets graceless over Garces with Grand Slam gone
Harry – I have had the fortune of living in Botswana and being able to visit RSA regularly. It is a truly unique place. Your two recent articles have reminded me of my last trip over the border to see the Wallaby V Boks test match at Loftus last month. We visited the south coast prior to flying up to Gauteng for the test. We went to dinner in a great little restaurant in Hermanus and as we took our seats our waitress for the evening approached us.
“Hi, I am your waitress for this evening and I am Hopeless”
“What do you mean you are hopeless? I am sure you are not that hopeless”
“No I am Hopeless. That is what my mother named me and that is who I am. I am Hopeless”
“Ok, but by the way, are your brother and sister called Lonely and Desperate?”
“No don’t be silly, they are called Lost Cause and Ridiculous”
“Does your mother know much English?”
“No she only speaks Xhosa and some Afrikaans”
This girl was far from hopeless and she was no Susie. She was an excellent waitress and a very special human being doing everything she could to survive in an economy where life can be tough.
Later in the week when my wife and I got to Loftus we went to our seats about an hour before kick-off. We were dressed in gold and in front of us was a guy and his wife in Springbok green. The banter started immediately.
“Oh no do I have to sit here with two Aussies right behind me all match:”
“Well mate for every Wallaby try you buy me Biltong. That way I will be chewing all game and you won’t hear a thing from me”
“Tell you what Aussie how about right now we go downstairs to the bar and I show you some real South African hospitality and buy you some beer”
And that is what we did. We spent the next 45 minutes in a bar drinking and talking rugby and becoming mates. It was just brilliant. It absolutely was the highlight of the day for us – especially since we lost the test.
This is my second time at a test match in RSA. The first time being Newlands in 2014. My father flew over and we went to the match a bit concerned about being some of the very few Aussies in the stadium. And we do stick out in our gold jerseys believe me. At the bar before the match all the Saffas were wanting photographs with us and were wishing us luck. They were all excellent. They were amazingly polite, well mannered, respectful and in good humour. I notice that after the match, even when they win the Saffas prefer a technical and balanced discussion about what went right and what went wrong. This is different from the New Zealanders who want to rub your face in it. My 72 year old Auntie walking from Eden Park in her wallaby jersey and scarf after the loss to Ireland in the 2011 RWC pool match tells a story of being abused and insulted by New Zealand yobbos continuously but that is another story.
Your country is amazing and unique. I love it. I know I don’t have to live in Zuma’s nutty, upside down, round the wrong way economy and society so my perspective will be slightly different but the sheer mind boggling complexity means that for me it provides endless fascination and interest. Watching the panel on SuperSport when the Boks lose is like watching someone slap themselves in the face with a gumboot because they stepped in dog sh@t. Do you know how incredibly entertaining that is to the sadist and voyeur that lives inside all of us? It is compulsory viewing and I cannot stop watching it and it just adds to the whole tapestry of South Africa that is just so fascinating and brilliant. Although like I say perhaps that is because I don’t live there – I just watch and marvel/gawk/pity/fear for and admire from the outside, sometimes all at once.
The terrible Test tenure of Allister Coetzee: The aura of acceptable loss and player-blame
It didn’t look very neutral to me!!
Highlights: 111 years in the making, Ireland finally beat All Blacks
1% would be 32 million people. Sounds like. A big market to me!
Highlights: 111 years in the making, Ireland finally beat All Blacks
We are getting all the games sin Botswana as well.
Want to watch the Wallabies on the Spring Tour? You may be out of luck
They will focus on Cheika because he is more entertaining than all the other PC coaches put together.
This Wallabies side will not win Australia's second grand slam ever
Lay off the Whinibies rubbish mate. It is uncalled for. Cheika is providing you with untold entertainment. He is an idiot but he is an entertaining idiot and I don’t think it is fair for you to reflect his behaviour onto the team name. We don’t go around making up derogatory names about the Pumas.
A tale of two rugby nations
Mate it was broadcast live on Supersport in Botswana. We all watched it and it was great rugby. Not much kicking, no penalty goals, tough as nails tackling. It was an interesting contrast in terms of the crowd but when the Currie Cup final came on next and the stadium was jam packed!!! Would be nice to have an atmosphere like that in the NRC.
Perth NRC title gives Australian rugby the punch in the face it needs
Corney was our coach in the mid 80’s in Toowoomba in the Darling Downs competition. He made us run up Mt Lofty – sprint from one telegraph pole to the next and then jog to the next and then sprint again. All the way to the top!!! He was was older than most of us but he would often came flying past us on the way up. He was driven! He always told us that fitness was the key prerequisite.
The history of selecting balanced back rows
I think they have a good chance at Loftus after seeing the boks struggle this year. I have my tickets ready to go. Love the Rand. Cheapest test match tickets I have bought in a long time. Usually in Perth at a Force match if I buy a beer for me and a wine for the wife I am getting change back from a $20 note.
Sack Michael Cheika? No way, he's the best man for the job
Spiro,
I go the the match every week when the Force are playing in Perth with my wife and some mates. Why are you so hell bent on taking that away from us? It is a great evening out. Good people, few beers, some munchies. We would like to win more but we don’t but some day we will. It doesn’t mean we still don’t love it. Leave us alone please.
You would be better off pushing some productive solutions like a fairer redistribution of players around the country, a raiding of the Sprinkgbok U20’s and Schoolboys or the continued growth of Perth born and bred players into Super Rugby.
Memo to ARU: Stop the rot at the Force and move them to western Sydney
A departure from your usual articulate eloquent writing style.
Will Eddie's England defeat the Wallabies?
Of course your Dad would say that. He is Irish. Glad we have his support all the same.
Will Eddie's England defeat the Wallabies?
Perhaps the AB’s are just to well schooled come the RWC pointy end. To well drilled, to programmed, over analysed and non-emotional. Rugby is still a game where the heart muscle can win over everything else including the brain. Having said that I think NZ will really give the French a touch up this weekend. They will be wanting to send a message to the rest.
LAIDLAW: From here, mental strength will deliver the Webb Ellis
I am with you Cathal. I am still scarred by the pool game in 2011 where the Irish outwitted us by holding the tackled player up and turning the tackle into a maul and then hurting us in the ensuing scrum. That loss in the pool destroyed our chances of getting to the final as we were immediately put onto the same side of the draw as NZ and RSA and winning both those games to get to the final was always going to be hard ask for a very young wallaby team. The Irish can be dangerous.
SPIRO: Are the All Blacks and Ireland hiding their best stuff?
Mate I don’t reckon the Welsh will be doing to much opposed training this week!!
SPIRO: Wallabies and England dive into pool of death mind games
Sounds like John Elders at Downlands College in Toowoomba. I played under him at first XV level and we suddenly found ourselves doing things we never thought were possible. Those matches against Toowoomba Grammar were unforgettable.
Rugby in Australia will die in isolation. The only cure is to break out of the circle of insularity, not reinforce it