Welcome fellow GAGRs to the last of the Wednesday news for this year. If anyone has anything desperate to get out and can’t work out how to do it by all means send it to me at jcmasher@hotmail.com and in a break from the drinking and relaxing I’ll try and put it up.
Sorry things are late today. I was out last night helping a mate whose wife had an accident and when I got back I just wasn’t up to it. However, let’s hope the anticipation grew and now the sense of relief that it’s here will overcome any disappointment you couldn’t read it with your morning coffee.
Been a bit of a year where right now I’m at the “Glad it’s over stage” and that comes down to the rugby as well. The Wallabies seemed to regress as the year went on and to be fair so did my ABs. Maybe there is something in the theory that Super rugby with the way the laws are applied makes for a better spectacle, but doesn’t prepare the teams for the international season. Anyway I hope you all have a good break, get to spend some great time with friends and families and 2026 is “your teams” year. Well as long as your teams are the Hurricanes and All Blacks I hope it is anyway.
Referee Corner
Well wasn’t last week a bundle of cards. Both Red and Yellow cards being thrown out there like they were meant to be part of the game rather than something that is used sparingly to change behaviour. Then of course we get the perennial sooks like “he who must not be named” blaming the referees for “ruining the game” and telling everyone that it’s the referees fault. I’m not sure why there isn’t more blame put on the players and coaches who seem too stupid to adapt to the new reality and change their technique. If you are heading into contact without the ball to bring someone down, then you need to get lower. If the ball carrier lowers his/her height into the contact, then you need to either get lower or adapt your tackle so you don’t contact the head of the ball carrier. If you can’t do that or can’t teach players to do that, then maybe you need to look for another sport. The chances are that if you continually blame the referees and officials for your stuff ups then you’re probably too stupid for rugby anyway. Funnily enough when you look at the people making the most complaints about the officials that last comment probably holds water.
Funnily enough I do agree with him about the TMO. Rugby is never going to be a perfect game and bringing in the TMO to try and make it perfect hasn’t been successful in any sense of the word. We are still getting poor calls and all the TMO is really doing is breaking the flow of the game and turning people off. I would personally still like the TMO to be restricted to try/no try and clear deliberate foul play only. Anything else is either picked up by the on filed officials or missed. I’m happy for the on field to ask for TMO assistance if they see something and want it clarified, but having the TMO come in to point out something that occurred 30 meters up field and was missed by the officials is just BS.
The only call in the weekend that seems to have been contentious – well down this end of the world anyway – was the penalty against JAS for the contact in the air with most people complaining that he was contesting the ball and shouldn’t have been penalised. The law in question is Law 9.17: “A player must not tackle, charge, pull, push or grasp an opponent whose feet are off the ground.” The way this is adjudicated is that if both players are clearly going for the ball, and they both have an equal chance of getting it, then anything that occurs is just fair contest and move on. The issue JAS ran into was that he was a lot lower in the air and so the referee judged that he didn’t have an equal chance of getting the ball and so it wasn’t a fair contest. If it’s not a fair contest then the player who doesn’t have a chance for the ball has the responsibility of not contacting the player who does. For some reason, since that first game against England JAS is not trying to catch the ball, he’s trying to knock it back to someone on the ground to catch. To do this doesn’t require him to get as high and in this case it bit him.
France aim to abolish age-old ‘shady’ scrum tactics
In a move that will gladden the heart of some of the more mature supporters here such as Butz and Nutta (and me to be fair), reported here in Planet Rugby, French officials are aiming to stamp out a pet hate amongst rugby fans this season by targeting ‘shady’ scrum tactics during the Top 14 and PRO D2. Included in the new tweaks is the introduction of an orange card, which will be in place instead of a 20-minute red card and will be used for acts that don’t quite meet a full sending-off threshold, but the act exceeds a yellow card.
The new guidelines are centred around more vigilance and clarification of the laws rather than trials and changes with the focus on scrum feeds. World Rugby Law 19.15 (f) reads: “When both sides are square, stable and stationary, the scrum-half throws in the ball: Straight. The scrum-half may align their shoulder on the middle line of the scrum, thereby standing a shoulder-width closer to their side of the scrum.” Additionally, Law 19.22 during the scrum states: “The hooker from the team which threw in the ball must strike for the ball.” The long-neglected laws will be a priority for the officials, with scrum feeds needing to be straight, and hookers must attempt to heel the ball backwards on their own feeds as the top two divisions in France strive for a more contested scrum. “Everyone agrees that there was a shift in the way scrum feeds were being handled. Even the staff acknowledges it,” Raynal said in an interview “We were letting shady feeds go through, and it lacked fairness.”
I must admit I am 100% behind this one. All of the teams do it, some more than others of course, but the ball is routinely put under the locks feet and there is no actual contest. The biggest problem they will need to manage will be the endless complaints from stupid ex-player commentators bemoaning the referee ruining the game because of the numerous penalties from players and coaches too stupid to change.
Wallabies awards: Ikitau, Jorgensen & Hooper stand out in up-then-down year
Reported here in RugbyPass (seeing as the Roar still haven’t got their crap together) by Brett McKay has gone through his ratings and report card for the Wallabies. It’s a bit of a long read but here are the highlights.
There’s an irony in the way the November Internationals finished, in that after a month of less than convincing performances, the Wallabies actually looked the best they have all tour – yet still conceded the most tries and highest score of their five Test Matches. The 48-33 loss in lightly falling snow in Paris included a first half comprising welcome shape and width in attack, and a much improved breakdown, but then a second half that let much of that good work down, as the silly mistakes, poor decisions, skill errors and ill-discipline crept back in.
Player of the Year: Len Ikitau
The best measure of Ikitau’s quality for Australia this year is best measured by his absence. aving held the midfield together through the Lions Series and The Rugby Championship, In his absence, the Wallabies lost a lot of the midfield shape they had previously, and the connection across the backline kind of disappeared, too. That is not to apportion blame for all of this on his replacement, Hunter Paisami, but just to illustrate how it wasn’t so obvious what Ikitau brought to the team until he wasn’t in it. The generally accepted summary of Ikitau v.2025 is that ‘he makes everyone around him better’. His vision and communication on and off the ball is superb, and his close-range ball-carrying has become invaluable. He’s very clearly been the best Wallaby this season, and this is probably the easiest award to hand out in 2025, even with a nod to the super impressive Fraser McReight, who along with Ikitau would be one of few Australian players to finish the year with their standing enhanced.
Most Improved Player: Tom Hooper
After an outstanding Super Rugby Pacific season, in which he finished fourth overall in the Player of the Year standings and was the leading Australian player, Hooper simply took off Brumbies navy blue, put on Wallabies gold and carried on playing the same way. His ball-carrying has been top notch all season, his work rate is high and he is regularly among the top tacklers in games, becoming one of the most reliable Wallabies forwards in the current squad.
Hooper has also become quite adaptable and versatile in 2025, playing both lock and back-row through the Test year and alternately covering both units when coming off the bench. He played a couple of Super Rugby games at No.8 this season, and has notably worn No.7 at both levels, as well. Carlo Tizzano gets a shout-out in this category, and much of the reasoning for Hooper similarly applies to the Western Australian.
Try of the Year: Max Jorgensen.
You can narrow it down to whichever try you thought was best. Working backwards, you can have the 70-metre runaway grubber-kick beauty last weekend in Paris, which came from an incredible Josh Nasser offload that I fear is being criminally under-appreciated.
Or there was the 60-metre beauty at Ellis Park, which started from a pretty speculative James O’Connor long pass over the Springboks defenders and ended with a clean run-in.
Then there was the incredible scoop pick-up on the run beauty against the Lions in Sydney, after a massive Suaalii hit in midfield, forcing the ball loose. That one was only from halfway, if distance is a deciding factor for you.
There was also the freakish regather from a Jake Gordon box-kick in the first Lions Test in Brisbane, where the wonderkid didn’t really win the aerial contest, yet somehow came down with the ball and looked up to see nobody and nothing but goalposts in front of him. That one was only from halfway, too.
Any of those four are worthy contenders.
High water-mark of the year?
If it wasn’t Jorgensen’s try in the 66th minute at Ellis Park for the Wallabies to go nine points clear, it has to be when Wright sealed the most incredible Wallabies win in generations in the 76th minute.
Coming just two weeks after Australia beat the Lions comfortably in the Third Test in Sydney, which in turn was only a week after the Wallabies were a fraction of a second at one crucial breakdown contest away from winning the Second Test in Melbourne, this was the time when Australian rugby fans were really starting to believe that Joe Schmidt had turned the team around and that the unspeakable pain of 2023 was all worth it.
The low point?
I still haven’t worked out if the in-game decline against Italy in Udine was worse than the very flat 80 minutes against England at Twickenham, but whichever loss was worse, that week was clearly the low point in the Wallabies season. There was a real change of mood in social media and online commentary that week, especially toward Schmidt, to the point that if the Kiwi head coach does choose to walk away after this season, there won’t be a lot of resistance to such a move.
Well team that’s me for the year. Thank you to all who have contributed here and for all the comments, banter and fun that has been shared on this site and made it so enjoyable. Have a great Christmas break and I look forward to catching up with all of you in the New Year.
