Author: Mst

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Tuesday Top 5. This week we scour over the weekend that was in rugby to find some good, bad and ugly, wrap up the Rugby Championship and ask an interesting question, keep raving about the NRC and provide the usual highlights packages for your viewing pleasure. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Good – Another good win over a tough Pumas side. The Wallabies are finally starting to play the way the fans have expected them to all along. And in doing so we have moved up to 3rd in the World…

Yep, its Tuesday again. Comes around quickly, doesn’t it? This week we re-cap the good, bad and ugly from the weekend, look over the Rugby Championship stats, stand back and stare at the NRC in awe, have a quick lesson in animal handling and have highlights a plenty! The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Good – Well finally the Wallabies put two decent performances together in a row. A win last week, and while we didn’t get the win this week, a draw in Bloemfontein is still no easy task. Bad – Another Rugby Championship, another year without the trophy. It…

Another Tuesday, another Top 5! This week we do the usual thing with the good, bad and ugly, check out where we sit in the NRC, consider player welfare, get a bit mental and do a bit of globetrotting. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Good – How good is the NRC right now?? No results seem entirely predictable, the ladder is as tight as (see further down) and there really is some great rugby being played. Bad – For the first time in a long time I’m actually struggling to think of a bad. I’m sure there is something…

This week in the Top 5 we go through what was good, bad and ugly about the weekend in rugby, do our heads in with more stats, catch up with some NRC action, check in on our South African mates in the Pro 14 and have highlights a plenty! The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Good – the game against the Pumas was definitely the best yet (I’m just pretending the first half didn’t happen). When we got it together in the second half we really looked good. Bad – what the hell was that first half all about?…

This week in the Top 5 we look at the good, bad and ugly from the weekend in rugby, stare at a whole bunch of stats, take some time to consider development pathways in Australia and gawk at some great highlights from the NRC. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Good – This weekend the NRC once again served up some cracking games. Another nail biter from the Vikings and Spirit, and how awesome was it to see the Fijians running tries in all over the place (I told you they’d be a threat!). Bad – I know we…

In this week’s edition of the Top 5 we talk NRC, more NRC, a bit more NRC, check out some videos … from the NRC … and quickly hop on over to Europe for a check in on who’s where. Welcome Back NRC This weekend saw the opening round of the 2017 NRC, and what a round it was. We saw a nail biter in Canberra, an (alleged) ear biter in Brisbane and tries a plenty! Seriously … there were LOADS of tries! I really enjoyed the opening round of NRC, and don’t want to get negative about it, but…

Welcome back to the Top 5. A little late today, but hey, you know we’re worth the wait! This week we talk through the latest match from different perspectives, glance at the stats, get psyched for the NRC and end with a couple of feel good videos. Optimist/Pessimist Game two of this year’s Bledisloe is now in the history books and many people are talking about it from differing perspectives. So, what did you make of the Wallabies performance? Being that GAGR is all inclusive and welcomes all viewpoints we decided to firmly plant a foot in each side of the…

Yes, we had a week off. So sue us! But we’re back this week to look at the weekend that was in rugby, slightly hungover because after what we saw on Saturday night we decided the best course of action was to try and drink it from memory. It didn’t work. So we’ll take a look at the good, bad and ugly from the All Blacks come from behind win, check the bank accounts (sort of), do a double take at what was being said before, during and after the game, talk domestic rugby and check in on our old…

This week we look back at the season that was, and pick bits of it apart. There were some things to learn, some stats to be concerned about and some awesome tries. We also check back in with the little saga that is the ARU at the moment. Report Card There is no way can I go lower than an A+ for that display of rugby we witnessed in Johannesburg over the weekend. It had pretty much everything. Great tries, tough defence, brutal hits, controversy (well not really, it deserved a Red and I’m not going to go into the…

At midnight (AEST) the Super Rugby season 2017 hits its pinnacle with the top two teams playing off to be this year’s champion team.  With much talk about the unbalanced nature of the format, it’s hard to argue that these team are not deserved finalists based on their performances this year. With a combination of good weather, the Kiwi team not being the clear favourite and with two teams that play the full 80 minutes it has all the hallmarks of a game that should be entertaining and could have us on the edge of our seats until the very…

This weeks top 5 has a bit of an overseas flavour – what with the lack of Australian teams playing in the finals and all. We still give out some grades, look at how the finals played out, gawk at some very fancy Wallabies, address some problematic beliefs about Super Rugby and check in on our little gardening project. Report Card With no Aussie teams to grade, I thought I’d grade the semi-finals, ie the matches themselves, not the teams. Crusaders v Chiefs: B- This was a fairly tense affair, but I had the feeling throughout that the Crusaders had…

This week in the Top 5 we grade the Brumbies, look at the good, bad and ugly, watch what happens when rugby and soccer cross paths, lay out some new law variations and celebrate more success in women’s sevens. Oh, and we see how our beans are going. Report Card There is only one team to grade this week. The Brumbies were the sole hope of Australia in the finals, so how did they go? This one is a bit tough, so I’m going to split the grade. 1st Half B: They had the Canes on the ropes, scored a…

By Brent Craig and Scott Rae It’s Finals Footy time, with Conference winners the Lions, Crusaders, Stormers and Brumbies hosting wildcard qualifiers the Sharks, Highlanders, Chiefs and Hurricanes. These are the same eight teams that qualified last year. SANZAAR have tweaked the semi final draw so that the winners of the first and fourth, and second and third, Quarter finals will meet in the Semi finals with the higher-seeded teams hosting. This means, for example, that should the eighth-ranked Sharks cause a boil over they’ll have just two possible Semi final destinations rather than four under the previous, highest- versus…

Hi once again. Gee Tuesday rolls around fast, doesn’t it! But yes, it is Tuesday, and that means it’s Top 5 time!! This week we grade our teams and take a gander at the good, bad and ugly from the weekend, recap the season that was, look to the future and check in on our little GAGR garden. Report Card Reds D: While the margin was substantial, at least the Reds kept playing for the full 80. Unfortunately some soft lapses in defence cost them big time. They had possession for a large chunk of the game, but were unable…

By Brumby Runner The Chiefs hosted the Brumbies at Hamilton in their final regular season game. Both sides had secured their spots in the poorly constructed finals series, but they also had much to aim for in this match. The Chiefs were wanting to secure a bonus point win to have a better chance of finishing the year in 5th spot on the log which would mean a trip to Canberra for the quarter final match up again against the Brumbies. On the other hand, the Brumbies were talking all week about building momentum to take into the finals series.…

Well that wasn’t much of a break, was it? But after a week off, the Top 5 is back!! This week we make ourselves miserable with the report card, find some good amongst the bad and other, talk schoolboys rugby, farewell an epic Lions tour, dig into some gardening (? – yes, really!) and sit everyone down to have a general chat. Report Card Brumbies E: If that is how they play when they are trying to make a statement going towards the finals, then they are in real trouble. It seemed like every time they had possession they knocked…

This week in the Top 5 We hand out some grades for the June tests, look at the Good, Bad and Ugly from the weekend, go on a quick Kontiki tour to check up on some results, take some time to read up on what the Wallabies have been saying about stuff and check out Wallabies ticket prices. Report Card So at the end of the 3 test matches, I thought I’d grade the Wallabies (as a whole, not individual players – no way am I getting into that can of worms) on their performances. Wallabies v Fiji C+ A good result…

Well after a miserable weekend for Australian Rugby, we delve into what went wrong, peek at the Good, Bad and Ugly and take a look at some other tournaments taking place around the traps. Where did it all go wrong? Was it the selections? Was it the game plan? How about the skills of the players? What exactly was it that went so wrong on Saturday afternoon. On the whole people seemed pretty happy with the team before the match. We all knew the breakdown could be an issue with no real threat in there, the back 3 are all…

Just because the Super Rugby season is taking a break, that doesn’t mean we are! Here in this week’s top 5 we look at the Good, Bad and Ugly from the weekend, run the grill over our newest Wallabies, check in on the Lions tour and other International matches going on and keep ourselves happy with some highlights. The Good, the Bad and The Ugly The Good – The Wallabies winning is always a good thing, and even better they did it by scoring some good team tries. It’s great to have those flashes of individual brilliance (I’m looking at…

This week in the Top 5 we look at how the players in the Wallaby squad performed this weekend, say Adieu to the Top 14 and one of our favourite sons, check out our Aussie tries from round 15 as well as he usual Report Card and the good, bad and ugly from the weekend. Report Card Reds C+:  The Reds were very patchy. They showed some great play and some poor passages. They actually pushed the Blues a lot harder than some had thought they would, with the match in a winnable position with the clock ticking down. Early…