Author: LeftArmSpinner

The HSBC NSW Waratahs are on the rise. I say this after watching and enjoying the final trial match against supposed Super Rugby favourites, the Canterbury Crusaders, at Allianz Stadium last Thursday night. Sceptics will say that this headline is nothing new for February every year. Others will say that they plumbed such depths last year, the only way is up. But I say three things appear to have changed for the Tahs in 2013; culture, playing style and depth. Culture There is clearly a different and better culture in this team and organisation. I regularly watch them interact at…

Michael Cheika, a Randwick District Rugby Union Football Club boy through and through and now the coach of the HSBC Waratahs, has inherited a squad dominated by Sydney University Football Club players. Sydney University, in its sesquicentenary year, has 11 players in the 36-man 2013 squad, assuming Israel Folau doesn’t hit the books in 2013!  There are at least another 11 Sydney Uni players at other Super rugby clubs (I count six at the Rebels, one at the Brumbies, three at the Force and one at the Reds). Randwick, a mere 131 years old, has won 32 first grade premierships…

This game was the latest nadir of two once proud, rugby nations

The Wallabies played good rugby last night against England

The Wallabies’ performance in Paris this morning was poor and unacceptable in both

The current Wallabies tour of Europe presents massive challenges on and off the field

There is now a clear pattern emerging that this generation of young Wallabies is made of the sternest stuff.  This gives them the best chance of challenging the All Blacks in England in 2015 for the RWC. As if forged and then precision cut by laser, this squad emerged and discovered itself in Rosario. I will call them the Rosario 22. The same thing happened to the Australian cricket team in the late 1980s when they won the 1987 World Cup and then defeated England at home in 1989, both against the odds and under extremely unflattering epithets from the…

Quade Cooper has already made several very poor decisions in his short career