I agree completely with Akari’s comments. I understand when handing out “awards” there is a temptation to go to left field, but just like Cheika’s award last year was outrageous given his Wallabies lost to the ABs and his Waratahs were outplayed by the Highlanders – doubts borne out this year in the English whitewash – so too with the Lions being comprehensively beaten by the Hurricanes home and away. They were great in Sth Africa but not so good elsewhere. I don’t have the same problem with Ackerman. As well as masterminding a great season for the Lions he has possibly transformed SA rugby so that the Boks may be worth watching. But watch this space. Last year it was thought that Cheika was transforming Australian rugby.

The Aussies’ first try was very dubious but after the first few minutes there was never a question who was going to win. The Aussies created gaps then put players through them. The NZers battered away and got engulfed most times. The background of the Aussie team shows in sevens you don’t need a long background in rugby. Athleticism and a basic knowledge of the game will get you a long way, as with the US men’s team. I wondered in fact whether it would be worthwhile the Wallabies drafting in some of the women for the Rugby Championship. I haven’t seen such Aussie creativity and precision for a while!

It’s interesting to see so many of the top tennis players in Rio, and so few of the golfers. I wonder why the golfers see themselves as vulnerable to the zika virus, while the millionaires of the tennis circuit are prepared to take the same risk. Maybe golf just doesn’t want to be part of the Olympics.

For many the Soccer World Cup is sleep-inducing. For starters, you know the winner will come from Germany, Italy, Brazil or Argentina, with a nation like England or France having a show when they host it. And the World Cup heightens the tendency in soccer to play defensively, with 0/0 a likely result which is very rare in any other sport.

I watched the 4 NZ/Aus games, and the Highlanders in Argentina, and the impression was the same in each. Each NZ team was playing at pace, and when they went to the ground they first looked to offload straight away. Their opposition invariably looked to set up another phase which gave the NZers time to get their defences in order. The mistakes made by the NZers were high, but as the old adage goes if you’re not making mistakes you’re not making anything. Folau scored a brilliant try. Why didn’t the Waratahs work hard to give him more than one such opportunity? The Brumbies’ maul is having the same effect on their play that it has on the South Africans. It’s a really negative tactic and it stops them from being creative.

US sport seems to specialise in hyperbole, and to say that the number one draft pick in any of their four major sports has the most pressure of anyone in the sports world, is laughable. Does the writer have any idea what it is like to be an Indian cricketer in India, a German soccer player in Germany, or the English cricket captain most of the time? Why isn’t it enough to say that the first draft pick has huge pressure on him? That makes the point without being silly.

Brave call from the Irishman re having a chance against the ABs. Keeping in mind they have never won before.. The Irish in Sth Africa profited from the disarray amongst their hosts at present, but still they couldn’t force wins in the 2nd and 3rd Tests when they should have. They dominated possession in Port Elizabeth but didn’t have the skill or flair to create tries. They’ll have to do a hell of a lot better than that against the ABs.

Glad you all liked it, but again I want to acknowledge Harry’s effort in inspiring me to get off my bum and reminisce. There must be lots of stories out there of personal memories relating to iconic grounds, players, etc. Let’s hear them.

G’day Harry.

NZ was obsessed with that tour also, as the book explores. Not sure the balance of power was shifted with that AB victory – the Boks always retained a better for and against re NZ up until the re-emergence of the Boks from isolation. You talk about trains in 1956. My Dad regaled me on his train trip up to Auckland from Wellington for the 4th Test. Your literary epic has inspired me to reminisce about the Wellington Test against the Lions in 1959 – my first Test. Watch this space! If you can’t find a copy of “Old Heroes” I’ll mail you my copy.

Harry, I hope you get to read this. A fantastic read that was a mixture of sport, history, and human emotion. If you haven’t read it already, have a look at Warwick Roger’s “Old Heroes”. It’s a book based on the Boks’ 1956 tour of NZ and “the lives beyond”. More sociology than sport maybe but a priceless timepiece, as is your contribution.

Anyone can win except the USA. It would be obscene for them to get a hat-trick in a sport they hardly play!

I thought the 1st World War ended in 1918?

Sounds to me like a Sydney-sider whistling in the dark. The Storm are combining cutting edge attack with great defence (especially on the wings where they were often vulnerable). But no-one has commented on their huge pack, where they have been bullied in the past. When you’ve got big chaps like Bromwich and Solomona who are good on their feet you’re going to get openings, and Cronk is just the man to make the most of these.

The anticipation in playing Wales in the first Test of the season is a bit like playing the Boks and Wallabies at any time – you know the ABs should win but the opposition can always “do a Japan”. I’m particularly looking forward to Ardie Savea coming off the bench when the Welsh are getting a little tired. He can destroy defences when everybody is feeling fit and alert.

Elisha, you touched on a sore point when you spoke of the coach of the year for 2015. Cheika lost 2/1 to the ABs, and his Waratahs were out thought and thrashed by the Highlanders in Sydney. I’m not sure that he should get special credit for raising the Wallabies from the depths they had sunk to – that’s just a reflection of how bad they were rather than how good they became under Cheika. And remember the coach of the year should have been bundled out of the Cup by Scotland! As for Jones, his Japanese side did pull off the upset of all upsets against Sth Africa, and did well to win two more games, but they did lose horribly to Scotland (that team again)! Then there was another coach who had one loss in the year, who held onto the Bledisloe Cup and won the World Cup. I wonder if Cheika would get the coach of the year in 2019 if he achieved that trifecta?

David’s pick of the Waratahs in a tight one reminds me of his speculation before the World Cup Final of the firsts that would occur with a Wallaby victory. Now I’m left wondering what are the reasons why the Waratahs will win against the Crusaders. Is it that the wonderful team man (ask Di Patston) Beale is out – at least on the field he is capable of acting responsibly? Or is it that the respective positions on the table give the Waratahs the edge? Or that the Crusaders are flaky playing at home, as proved by the Waratahs’ record there? The beauty of David’s flights of fancy is that sometime he will be right, and then he can say “I told you so!” Until then he’s got a lot of egg on his face.

We’re all being tested, every minute of every day of our lives. People assess us on what we do, whether it’s helping an old woman across the street, or playing the first or last point in a tennis match. Tomic has failed on quite a few of these, and I think his credit rating has fallen way below his bank balance.

That Finnish wife carrying result of two years ago was huge (and there was a semi final play-off, so it wasn’t just a one-off), but compared to the Belizean frog-jumping championship of 1958 the Finnish event was small change. The trainer of the frog who jumped furthest in Belize in 1958 had been doing his thing in the 4th Division for 20 years, and only got the chance to play off against the best frog jump trainers in the world because his name was very similar to the champion Belizean trainer, and they made a typo mistake when they sent out the invitations. The champion of 1958 now has his statue in the centre of Belize City and his face adorns the Belizean currency.

What would Aussies do without hyperbole? A nation that often prides itself on having a multi cultural record second to none – and this is a country that treated Aborigines as non citizens till the 1960s, and maintained a White Australia policy to keep the Chinese out. Why does Leicester’s victory have to be the greatest ever? Do either of the writers, or anybody else, know of big upsets in Paraguayan soccer, or Latvian snowman making, or Finnish wife carrying? Surely we can just say that Leicester’s victory was a magnificent achievement, and leave it at that.

Great story, great man. And what did he die for? To prop up an empire that was on its last legs, and to stop Germany dominating Europe, which it is now doing. All war is futile, which tends to be overlooked on a day such as this, when we glorify the deeds of young men who went off to kill people they didn’t know for a cause they did not understand.

This whole thing of moaning about the quotas gets up my nose. It’s called karma. Under apartheid South Africa treated the coloureds as sub human and now they have to pay the price. Bite the bullet, get the blacks playing rugby, and soon the Boks will be relying on the flair and physicality they will bring to the game. Look at boxing, the Olympic 100 metres, US football. Look at the Springbok 7s now – they’ve got brilliant black players. If South Africa can fast track getting blacks into the game they will soon have the potent mix of races that the All Blacks have relied on for 100 years and the Wallabies are thriving on now.

What gets me is the prohibition that many different religions have on various things. With the Mormons you can’t play sport on Sundays, but I have never understood why god wants you to give up things to prove your faith. If you love sport why not play it on Sundays and offer up your joy to god. I’m sure (s)he would much prefer you to be happy than bored. Up till Vatican II Catholics couldn’t eat meat on Fridays, then with a flick of the Papal pen they could. God never said you couldn’t eat meat on Friday, and (s)he never said no rugby league on Sunday.

The article finishes with the observation that it is the ultimate courage to stand alone and not with the crowd. If Mormons truly believed this they would leave it to the individual to make this decision based on their convictions, rather than impose it from the group.

Funny how an article on the Chiefs morphs into a discussion on the Blues!

I loved how the Chiefs overran the Brumbies, but I’m careful about looking too far into the future re their prospects. They are a young side and played out of their skins in Canberra, but remember the 1995 ABs in the RWC. It just needs a hard-nosed opponent to upset the applecart. The ABs had brilliant young players and Jonah Lomu, and all the Boks had was Nelson Mandela – but on the day he was enough. Brilliant young things can turn into flaky novices when the pressure goes on.

In all the discussion for neutral or non-aligned refs, I have never heard the justification why we must have “neutrals” for internationals but we don’t need them for the next level down. I am certain that no referee goes on to the field determined to favour his own country, but even if all referees passed the impartial test 100% of the time, there is so much pressure exerted from the crowd and the fact that the referee has been brought up in the system that has produced one of the teams that, in a split second decision, they will unconsciously be influenced by these factors. Andrew Lees has had some poor games this season, but his treatment of the Blues scrum was outrageous. Even when the Blues got their act together and pushed the Reds back he penalised them. I would be happy if Lees reffed games not involving an Australian side because then we would see how much is incompetence and how much partiality.

Spiro, you were around when Billy Wallace was lacing up his boots. You know that two games into a season it’s a bit dangerous to be predicting season outcomes. Now if you were expressing concerns about some referees I’d have a bit more sympathy. Andrew Lees reminds me a lot of Wayne Ericksen. They look like they’re on top of the game, but it’s a mirage. Like George Ayoub before he was pensioned off to the TMO box, they make mistake after mistake, and unfortunately NZ sides have to suffer the consequences. I’m half expecting Lees to be appointed to NZ derbies, and the only consolation there would be that one team would benefit from the incompetence.

And what about the Chiefs’ defence against the Lions? To describe it as wafer-thin would be to compliment it. Cruden wasn’t the only one making clangers.