Author: Bob Dwyer

Contrary to the popular view, I believe that Australia’s World Cup squad for this year’s championship is looking decidedly healthy. After five rounds of Super Rugby, the Crusaders, the Stormers and the Blues look the teams to beat, with all the Aussie teams dragging the chain somewhat, but I’m sure that Robbie Deans will not be seeing doom and gloom at all. The Queensland Reds started slowly, but are beginning to find form of late. The Waratahs have produced some fine patches – although not many against the Cheetahs, one week ago. The Brumbies and the Force have had their…

My dreams of late (or were they nightmares?) have been filled with visions of an England Grand Slam leading into a World Cup. “Not again”, I thought. I need not have worried. I should have asked my old friends Allan Gaffney and Les Kiss. They could have set my mind at rest. As members of Ireland’s coaching team, I’m sure they had it completely under control all of the time. That’s certainly the way it looked at Lansdowne Road yesterday, as Ireland made a mockery of England’s favourites’ tag to convincingly win the match 24–8. Indeed, the Ireland team were…

Last Friday night, in Melbourne, I made my return to the coach’s  bench with the Sydney team against a Rebels Rising team, selected from the Melbourne Rebels plus their academy. The Sydney team has not played since the birth of professional rugby in 1996, but has a formidable pedigree with victories over all major rugby nations save the Springboks, whom we have never played. The team is selected from the twelve Sydney Premiership clubs, minus their contracted Super Rugby players and academy squads (that’s a lot of players – I’m guessing at least 80!). I haven’t coached at this level…

A few months back, during the autumn internationals in the northern hemisphere, the ex-England hooker and current rugby pundit, Brian Moore, wrote in the Telegraph lamenting the performance of top-level referees. He asserted that “more than ever, the lottery of sanctions for offences influences games materially”.  He continued that he dreaded a World Cup final being decided on the “whim of a referee”. Last week, the respected Sydney rugby journalist, Greg Growden, decried the lack of accountability of our same referees. “If SANZAR is serious about having a merit system for its whistle blowers”, he said, “then it’s time to…

Three days & nights of Super Rugby, in the middle of a southern hemisphere summer! That’s hard work, but that’s what we’ve just seen. The standard varied from match to match; sometimes from half to half. Generally though, all games were marked by huge commitment and physicality. I had thought, throughout the Heineken Cup rounds and the current Six-Nations Championship, that the north had caught up in this vital quality of physicality, but I’ve had to revise my thinking. Remembering the brutality of the winning Springbok performance over England a few months back, I was most interested to see if…

France remain on track for a repeat Grand Slam with their hard-fought, close victory over Ireland at a packed Lansdowne Road ground yesterday. Despite Ireland’s three tries to just one by France, one always felt that the visitors had the upper hand and their pressure told as Ireland consistently infringed at the tackle contest. Excellent goal-kicking by Morgan Parra gave France their winning margin. The telling contest of the Championship awaits on 26th of the month, when England ‘welcome’ France at Twickenham. This was a great rugby match! All of the passion and pride which is contained in the Six…

The opening weekend of the 2011 Six-Nations Championship went according to plan, despite ample opportunity for the ‘customary’ upsets. England, with a number of injury-enforced changes, could easily have come unstuck in Cardiff, but prevailed. Ireland, riddled with injuries, made awfully hard work of it, but sneaked a win in the final minutes over Italy. France ‘decided’ on the quality performance for this week – it would be a nightmare to coach them – and were too good for a committed Scotland in Paris. England travelled to the Millennium Stadium without their captain, Lewis Moody, and their key lineout men,…

On Saturday night, my wife and I went to the movies. I mention it, not only because it was a momentous and rare occasion, but because it reminded me again of the importance and success which the Australian character brings to many endeavours. The movie was ‘The Kings Speech’. The storyline recounts the successful treatment, by an Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, played by the outstanding Australian actor, Geoffrey Rush, of the terrible stammer which restricted the speech of the Duke of York. During the treatment the Duke of York became King George VI, following the abdication of his older…

This seems like an appropriate time to have a discussion about the components of my appreciation of the game of rugby – as a spectator. These are the key factors of my assessment of quality performance. Set plays. I won’t talk much about the detail of set plays. Suffice to say that, for quality performance, teams must be at least competitive in scrum, lineout and restarts. It is not necessary, although it will always be useful, to be dominant in any of these areas. Indeed, it has been my experience that, when an attack is effective, say in mid-field, it…

The Heineken Cup is a great competition. It has great atmosphere, courtesy no doubt of the ‘international’ nature of the matches and the tribal support for the clubs, which is the nature of European rugby. It is exciting to play, or coach, or indeed support these teams in this, the prestige competition of northern hemisphere rugby. It is an ideal proving ground for players in search of international caps. The games are tough and intense – no quarter given and none sought. The set-plays are of international standard – as we have come to expect from Europe. The defence is…

A little over twelve months ago, Italy hosted New Zealand for an international in Milan. The referee was the experienced Australian, Stuart Dickenson. Italy did very well in the scrums in this match, with the ref frequently penalising the New Zealand pack. Although there were differing views at the time, the consensus seemed to be that the tall NZ loose-head, Wyatt Crockett, was moving to his left after contact in order to establish an angled drive into the chest of his tighthead opponent, Martin Castrogiovanni. The difficulty for Crockett was two-fold: (i), he is quite tall and therefore could not…

Rugby world-wide is on a high. Huge stadiums are full for international matches and, indeed, for major club and provincial matches. Television audiences – and income from TV rights – are massive and rising. The quality of the play and the entertainment value is consistently right out of the top drawer. The game continues to grow all around the world – the IRB last month accepted its 118th national union, Iran, after they satisfied the comprehensive Membership Criteria programme. Most of us would be extremely hard pressed to name 118 nations of the world! The IRB can take a bow,…

The Wallabies completed their northern hemisphere tour yesterday in Paris with a humiliation of the current Six-Nations champions, to the tune of seven tries to a penalty try and a final score of 59–16. In the process the visitors scored a mammoth 46 unanswered points in the final 35 minutes of a scintillating performance. After watching last week’s France v. Argentina match in Montpellier, I was concerned for the Wallabies. I feared that we would need a miracle to win in Paris. The French scrum, their power and physicality in the loose and the cleverness in the continuity of their…

It’s been a very busy day for me, but throughout the day my mind has wandered to the Italy v. Wallabies match, last night in Florence. “What, in Heaven’s name, am I going to write about the match,” I wondered. Well, here goes. It was an okay match. There was pace and intent. There was some genuine physicality, particularly at the tackle contest. The Wallabies were average, with some improvement over the last week’s efforts. We had more enthusiasm, more speed off the mark, in both attack and defence. We made numerous half-chances — or, perhaps more accurately, quarter-chances —…

Yesterday at Twickenham, England produced an inspired performance to dominate the visiting Wallabies to the tune of 35 points to 18 and take their first home victory against a Tri Nations team for four years. Each team scored two tries, with the winning margin coming from a faultless kicking display from fly-half Toby Flood – with two conversions and seven penalties. These statistics, however, flatter Australia to some extent, because, for most of the match, England dominated at the tackle contest, both with and without the ball, won the gain line decisively and generally “out-Wallabied” the Wallabies. In recent weeks,…

Cardiff in recent years has not always been kind to the Wallabies. They have a success rate of only 50%, and for the #2 team versus the #9 team, in IRB world rankings, that’s not good enough. So it was the win that they wanted on Saturday and it was the win that they got. In the words of their impressive captain, Rocky Elsom, they were “pleased to get the win”. Damned by faint praise! Certainly, they were disrupted immediately before the game, when Stephen Moore suffered a back spasm in the warm-up and was forced to withdraw. After their…

The Wallabies finally broke their All Black hoodoo, which had lasted some ten straight matches, with last night’s victory over the world’s leading team, by 26 points to 24. In a high quality, thrilling match, it was the Wallabies who this time scored the last minute, get-out-of-jail try and the nail-biting conversion from out wide. It was a justified result, for the Australian team, after long periods of dominance, had been denied a significant lead by poor goal-kicking. They were positive, aggressive and enterprising throughout and their final and fourth try sealed the game in the same manner that had…

The Heineken Cup in recess for a few weeks and the autumn internationals are looming, so it was back to the various premierships this week-end. With the Magners League for the Celts and Italians, the Top14 for the French and the Aviva Premiership for the English, the northern hemisphere teams are now able to put the finishing touches to their squad selections – and the players are well aware that these are invaluable opportunities. One match which appealed greatly to me, as an ex-Tigers coach, was that between the great traditional rivals, Bath and Leicester. In the years immediately prior…

Club rugby is invariably tribal and nowhere is this more marked than in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The baying from ‘the shed’ in Gloucester, the enthusiastic parochialism from the full-house at the Tigers’ Welford Road, the singing from the Irish and the Welsh teams or the full-blooded cry from the resurgent Scots, all produce wonderful rugby occasions – full of passionate support and a keen understanding of the game. Join them all together and add some European flavour with the French and the Italians, and you have a real, full-on international competition. A bit like a mini-World Cup –…

Over the last few months we have seen the cream of the world’s international teams fight it out for the coveted TriNations Championship – nine international matches, virtually one every week, between the three top teams in world rugby. It’s been intriguing, exciting and informative. New Zealand finished well on top, took advantage of the ’new interpretations’ and displayed, yet again, rare qualities in ambition and execution. Now, with the kick-off for this season’s Heineken Cup, it’s the turn of the northern Hemisphere to begin to show their abilities. The New Year will see the Six Nations Championship add further…