Author: Matt Rowley

By Steve Thorn Who doesn’t love a story of Aussies bashing up Yanks and Poms, particularly at rugby? Well that’s exactly what happened just recently when the Sydney Convicts and Melbourne Chargers, Australia’s two gay-friendly rugby clubs, went over to compete in the Bingham Cup in Manchester, UK. This thinly disguised drinking trip is actually a commemoration of the 9/11 attacks in the USA. Mark Bingham, the cup’s namesake, was one of the passengers who charged the cockpit on United Airlines Flight 93 and forced it to crash. The springboard here is that Mark was gay and was always in…

As you may have noticed, G&GR has been upping our efforts with the coverage of #3rdTier rugby. Our forums are already a hotbed of discussion about grassroots rugby and we want to provide more focus for it on the front page as well. And thus opportunities are born for budding writers to get their views and talents shared on the unofficial home of Aussie rugby – Green and Gold Rugby. Illustrious careers have been launched in just such a manner. Specifically, we’re looking for Rugby interested writers to provide reports, previews, round ups and features about any of the first…

Did you dare to dream for a minute there? Take your mind of the disaster that was last night’s Test match with these highlights of the Australia Under 20s winning 67–12 over Scotland at the IRB Junior World Cup in South Africa. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj7iVMJyrJQ[/youtube] Match Details Australia 67 – 12 Scotland Event: 2012 IRB Junior World Championship – Pool C Kick-Off: 14:45 Stadium: University of Western Cape Stadium Date: 04 Jun Venue: Cape Town Attendance: Weather: Australia No Name 1 Silatolu Latu 2 Hugh Roach 3 Les Makin 4 Jed Holloway 5 Steven Cummins 6 Curtis Browning 7 Liam Gill (C)…

According to more than 50% of our polled readers, the most controversial omission from the Wallabies train on squad announced this week was Brumbies captain Ben Mowen. So the question is – who would he replace? We thought we’d see what the stats said. Ben’s played a mixture of 6 and 8 so far this season, but as it happens so have those who I believe would be most directly in comparison to him: Dave Dennis, Ben McCalman and Scott Higginbotham. The first stat I thought we should lead out with is work rate – for the back row this has to…

Sam Ikin steps in the chair (it’s as if he does it for a living…) to guide me and Baabaa for a chat with Adam “The Hass” Freier. We talk the new Wallabies squad, what’s changed at the Rebels recently and a whole lot more…. Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save)

They say defence wins world cups, or test matches, or tournaments, or something like that. Anyway – defence is important. So how are the Super teams doing? Well, the tackle completion stats don’t really tell us too much with 13 teams being within 3% of each other – except that is for the Stormers, who really are that boring solid. So it would seem we need to delve a little deeper. Obviously one of the key next questions will be where do they miss those tackles? Take the Crusaders for example, who surprisingly are sitting second last on the completion…

How good was Michael Hooper’s game against the Hurricanes last Friday? As a reminder we’ve put a little video together. In this post last week, we talked about the stats behind the different games that the three top performing Aussie opensides are playing this year. The stats told us that Michael Hooper had the strongest running game of out them and his match on Friday perfectly illustrated it. He made 8 runs for 62 metres, being outrun only by hotshot winger Joe Tomane with 82 metres. He had a cracker of a game; let’s hope his tackle on Victor Vito…

There’s been a lot of buzz around the open side flanker position this week, with good cause – Australia seems to have at least 3 sevens looking the goods – the “oldest” of which is still just 24. It’s being billed as the battle of the fetchers – Pocock v. Hooper v. Gill – but is it? What do the stats tells us? In my opinion, they show us three subtly different styles of play. First – the Wallaby incumbent and Western Force Captain, David Pocock. If there’s any one thing that stands out about Poey, it’s his work rate.…

Does crime pay? Looking at the chart to the right, you might well think it does when it comes to Super Rugby this year, as the top two and bottom two positions on the log correlate perfectly. The top two most penalised teams are winning the comp, the least penalised teams are losing it. Simple. Of course, the rest don’t correlate – so this one factor is not a key determinant of success or failure overall. What’s interesting is when you delve a little deeper to see how it works for some team and not others, and to do that…

International season looms and as such it’s time to start having a look at the contenders for the Green and Gold jerseys. First up – halfback. Now offhand you might question this as a choice. Australia and the Western Force Reds have maybe the world’s best number 9’s in the form of Will Genia, and his erstwhile rival for halfback is now listening to his Tracy Chapman mixed tapes while sipping Rose in Toulouse. But that would be to deny the stunning season Nic White of the Brumbies has been having. He’s been looking the goods, but what do the numbers…

Myself, Timmsy and Sam Ikin get together to interview Wallaby James O’Connor, and have a good old wang on. What position do you think James O’Connor should play? In this podcast we get his opinion on the subject and it’s pretty clearly not the wing! Look out Quade… Oh – and check out Moses’s musical tribute to JACO TAUTE at the end…. Podcast Powered By Podbean Download this episode (right click and save) PS – We had a few connection issues during James’ interview which in editing out may make it jump around a little.

He’s been making an impact on Australian rugby since joining the Brumbies, but on the weekend he left quite an impression on the Lions as well, as you can see below. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkLzgEkf8o0[/youtube] G&GR’s resident player encyclopaedia, Lee Grant, gave me this run down on the big man Fotu Auelua is the talk of the town in rugby circles in Canberra. He’s an unlikely candidate: he had trouble with authority as a youth and got into scrapes with the police; he bounced from one high school to another and one wondered what would become of him not only in a rugby…

If you had to wager your life on a kick, who would you want stroking it over? International kicking savant Morne Steyn, or Waratah wetback, Brendan McKibbin?   Well, by the stats this year it’s gotta be the kilted Tah, which may well be a good reason why Pretorius BIG is riding the pine. Other notables? How about Mikey Mike Harris, who’s dropped 25 points this season? “My sides, they’re splitting” James O’Connor by contrast isn’t doing so shabbily on 84%. Some notable big names without the runs on the board – what will this mean come Test time? …

It set Twitter alight just before the kick off between the Force and Stormers tonight, and it’s been confirmed that Wallaby and Queensland Reds half back Will Sanchez Genia has signed with the Western Force for 2013. It’s a pretty interesting move  — ‘the world’s best 9’ moving from the current Super Rugby champions to a lowly ranked team with no coach or recognised 10 confirmed publicly. However, G&GR understands the following alleged pieces of information: The Force have indeed had a coach candidate in place, ever since the Richard Graham news broke. He is Australian and currently overseas —…

Scrums are an endless source of debate in Rugby and even aficionados can watch the same scrum and come up with different judgements of which side got the better of it, and why. But at the end of the day, there’s one measure that really matters – who got pinged the most. Regardless of feed, ref, opposition. Who do refs perceive as having the dodgiest scrum – whether by mis-timed engagement, weak on hit or obviously boring is what ultimately matters. So, by this one measure, you might be a little surprised to see who is clearly the worst offender,…

The top placed Aussie teams – the Brumbies and Reds – face two fearsome opponents in the top placed South African teams – the Bulls and Stormers – this weekend. The form of our conference would say that they’re up against it – so how can they pull off two upsets? Can the stats from previous games lost give us a clue as to their Saffa opponents’ weaknesses? In this article, I’m going to look at the Reds vs Stormers, due to play Friday night. The key to this victory is clear in our memory, as the Stormers’ only loss…

Statistical analysis of tactical kicking from hand in Super rugby 2012 vs 2011

You gotta love differences in life. Middle of the road – blah. To shake things up you gotta be a little different and if you want a team that’s sticking out like a dog’s dick after just 5 rounds, have a look at the Stormers. The most obvious thing is that they’re top of the log. Played 4 won 4 with the points from a bye as well. On average they score the 3rd highest points in the comp (26). So far, so good. But, against the will of God (as Sam Ikin would say) they are 10th in the…

Would you like to know the findings of ARU report into what went wrong with the Wallabies’ world cup campaign and what’s being done to to fix it? I know I would, but we’ve been told not to expect any answers. In the absence of such rarified information, we’re left reading the runes. But of late, getting 2 and 2 to add to four has been tougher than getting the NBN numbers to compute. First off  – even before any such report was even commissioned we were told Robbie would be going nowhere, with a contract extension of two more years.…

A look at which statistics are beginning to describe the Aussie Super Rugby teams by round 4 2012