Author: Matt Rowley

Here are the four try scoring opportunities fro Australia from the last Rugby Championship match between the Wallabies and Pumas at Skilled Park. In each section of play, what’s missing? (there’s a hint in the latest podcast) [youtube id=”Po7RXTfDyhg” width=”600″ height=”350″] [toggle title=”Reveal what’s missing…”] How many “re-set plays” did you see from Phipps at halfback? Answer – none! It may not have always been pretty – but it was fast, so it worked! [/toggle]

Me, Steve and Hugh get together to wang on about the latest Quade Cooper issue and even actually talk some Rugby. I then interview Aussie Rugby Troubador and now IRB CEO Brett Gosper. (And yes, the announcement that Beale would be playing 10 on the weekend came out just after the podcast!) Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save)

Over the weekend, New Zealand’s public enemy number 1 — Quade Cooper — let the genie out of the bottle with his open criticism of the whole Wallabies administration. Much of the media is painting this as a simple Giteau-esque player fallout between Deans and Cooper. Is it? Or is it actually the spearhead for a semi-coordinated putsch to bring to a head a coaching and leadership arrangement in the Wallabies that just no longer holds water? The brouhaha started with an AAP interview on Thursday in which Cooper asserted that the Wallabies were certainly not going to beat the All Blacks…

When you find yourself arguing with G&GR’s own Scott Allen, you should probably

How did you think the Wallabies did against Argentina last night? Have a vigorous rank on us! Wallabies vs Pumas at Skilled Park 2012

Here’s our score and live review of the Wallabies versus the Argentine Los Pumas. First Half  – Wallabies 3 – Pumas 6 If they’d played ‘Yakety Sax’ from The Benny Hill Show as a soundtrack to this half it would have made sense. Barnes has hit the post twice for penalties, Samo dropped the ball trying to ground it in the corner and Sharpie was held up over the line. The Wallabies have had 64% of the ball and 70% of the territory. The only threat from Argentina has come from intercepts and fly hacks. With just a bit of…

Read the tweet, re-watched the vid, teared up.

This hullaballoo over trolling raises a bagful of issues

Tim Davidson will lead Sydney University into the Shute Shield Grand Final

We’re joined by ex-Wallaby and Narbonne Head Coach Justin Harrison

If there was an ironic sight on Saturday, it was Berrick Barnes pulling up lame after what must have been his 40th kick of the night. In the end the Wallabies managed to out-kick South Africa by an astonishing 45 to 38 kicks in play.  To give you a perspective on just how many kicks that is, the average number of kicks per team per game in all of the June internationals (including bore machines England and South Africa) was less than 25. Yes, you got it, the Wallabies almost DOUBLED that on Saturday night. Kicking in itself isn’t bad…

How did you rank the Wallabies players in Perth? Rank Wallabies v. Boks Perth 2012

The only thing we’re more grateful for than the odd ‘well done’ we get on the website is when you buy a frikken T-shirt. But amongst the ‘onyas’ this one that came through this week stood out: Just a quick note to say what great job you guys do. GAGR is one of my top 6 sites I visit each day. I have been follwoing the blog and downloading the podcasts for a while and I really enjoy the candour and honesty of your collective (including some of your regular forum members) comments. But what I love the most is…

We like to paint a picture of the Boks as lumbering brutes up front and kick-bots out the back. Give them a coach who’s run the Blue Bulls since the turn of the century and the stereotype is complete. In the media lead-up to this weekend’s Test the actors have played their parts as well — it’s all been about how the Boks will do their best to contain our backline while the Wallabies have been talking about making it rain tries. But stripping away the preconceptions, what do the stats for these two teams in 2012 tell us about how…

Speculation has been rife tonight that embattled Wallabies coach Robbies Deans

I had my go on Saturday, now it’s your turn… Bledisloe 2 Wallaby Player Ratings

If possible, I thought that was worse than last week. I’ve gotta say though, it’s hard to know how much of the performance was the players, and how much is the bizarre decision-making, which you assume isn’t all down to the players. Nevertheless, that’s whom we rate. Usually I like to watch the game twice before rating, but that ain’t gonna happen this time. Also, the pack ratings concerning scrums are from the hip, as the current editor of the broadcasts prefers to show us a close up of a back walking around rather than a replay of a scrum,…

It isn’t pretty, is it? I don’t think any Wallabies supporter can pretend we go into this match in a position that even has a far-off, partly obscured, view of ‘ideal’. What’s more, to many of the readers and commenters on this site, the how-we-got-here has been a car crash unfurling in slow motion. But let’s put that to one side for a minute. Let’s just focus on what’s happening tomorrow, and what’s changed this week to accommodate it. A biggie is no doubt the loss of Captain Bam-Man, David Pocock — the best scavenger in the world and leader by…

If you got the feeling no one really wanted to do the player ratings for this one, then you were right. So here’s my shot from the hip: it was so much easier to find the negatives in this game. Really does make you wonder how we stayed so close. What did you have? G&GR Patented Player ratings scale 10 – A legendary performance to go down in the history books 9 – Outstanding performance: Man of the match shoo-in 8 – Excellent all-round game 7 – Good game with a few sparkles 6 – Solid performance 5 – Average…

We’ve added a couple of designs into our new Rugby T-Shirt shop that we think you’ll like! Just click on them to go through to the shop and get these unique beauties — either as tees, vees, girly-fit, long sleeve, baseball three-quarter length or hoodies! It’s all American Apparel clobber, so it’s quality. You can get the McCaw Offside design in a range of colours, but the Rebels one comes in only one, of course! More to come so keep your eyes peeled!