Author: Butz

It was all action in soggy Hobart on Saturday for grand finals day at Rugby Park. Inclement weather, and the cost of my diesel-guzzling ute, prevented an appearance from yours truly but the good people from TAS Rugby have been quick to post reports of the games and a few piccies. Thanks guys.Men’s Premiership Final – Launceston 1 47 defeated Taroona 33Launceston 1 have stormed to a third straight TRU Premiership after seeing off a resurgent Taroona in Hobart. The Tigers roared early with captain TJ Pieters scoring inside the first three minutes and looked home and hosed with a…

From your Tasmanian correspondent and resident Soap Dodger.Good morrow, fellow G&GRians. Unfortunately, RAWF is tied up on urgent matters for the next few Tuesdays so it’s been left to others to fill his new boots, and I drew the one and only straw for today’s piece.The weekend has come and gone and we’ve seen Auckland Blues crowned as worthy Super Rugby champions. National teams are flying south for the winter and the Soap Dodgers kicked off their southern campaign with a warm up against Eddie Jones Brave Blossoms in a hot and humid Tokyo over the weekend. The team has…

I must admit that I was in two minds about posting this article as it’s a bit of a rant about the goings on in English rugby and particularly the impasse between the Premiership clubs and the RFU on a number of issues which maybe of little or no interest to readers. However, I’ve decided to don my body armour and tin hat, damn the torpedoes and go full steam ahead as it cuts across a couple of issues that have been galling me for ages namely the benefits of overseas players and player development/pathways. The latter has been a…

This is the very first article I’ve written without the assistance of my esteemed G&GR colleagues. Whether you like it or not here’s an opinion piece on our game and how I see certain aspects of it, based on a very brief comment I made a while back. But first some ancient and I do mean ancient history. I played in the 70s and 80s back in Soap Dodger land. We were a famous old club blessed with a succession of great coaches. Officially trained twice a week but if you wanted to progress to the top level you were…

We sometimes forget that there is more to our beloved game than test matches, super rugby and dare I say it, the Shute Shield. It’s played across the country by all ages, all genders and all abilities. I picked up my first rugby ball aged 11. It was thick, hard leather weighed a ton when it was wet and went out of shape so easily that it soon became almost shaped like a soccer ball. My first game of senior rugby was as a callow 17 yr old in the 5th XV of a famous club in SE London (the…

 ‘In the beginning’ Where did it all begin? As usual, you can blame the Poms and that bloke William Webb Ellis, who in a game of ‘football’ at Rugby School, allegedly picked up the ball and ran with it. He probably got clobbered by 20 or more of the opposition for being ‘unsporting’ which seems fair to me. Writing this article it caused me to think that if Bill could step into a time machine and leap forward to the present day and see how our game has been taken over he would have gone back and said ‘fuck footy…