Author: Reg Roberts

Time to take yourself back to the end of October. The Wallabies were embarking on a five Test tour of the UK and Europe – ‘another Grand Slam on the offering’ were the weary words we heard again. There wasn’t a lot of hope. We’d played 10 Tests and only won three of them. The expected saviour, in new coach Ewen McKenzie, seemingly hadn’t fared much better than the much maligned Robbie Deans, only winning twice against the Pumas. But a record thrashing of Argentina and a somewhat positive performance against the All Blacks in Dunedin had provided the Aussie…

Late last week we announced our 2013 GAGR Wallaby Player of the British & Irish Lions Series. We now turn our attention to the Rugby Championship. Oh and the ‘taint’ of the rugby season being that third Test against the All Blacks. It taint the Rugby Championship and it taint the Spring Tour, but I am chucking it here on a decision based on geographic proximity if nothing else. Remembering these are the top three players as determined by accumulating all the votes our forum members give after every Wallaby Test. In this year’s Rugby Championship, new coach Ewen McKenzie took…

The Green and Gold Rugby Wallaby Player of the Year probably still doesn’t sit on the same level as the John Eales Medal nor the IRB Player of the Year, however it stands apart as a fan-driven award. Make no mistake. This isn’t one of those People’s Choice awards which is usually won by the player with the most social media followers, or is manipulated by the media department to be given to the player most in need of a profile push. The GAGR Wallaby Player of the Year Award is determined by votes accumulated in our Forum after every…

A patchy field and a patchy performance saw coach Ewen McKenzie’s Wallabies win their third test in a row for the first time under his control. The match was destined to be a ‘banana skin game’ given Scotland’s recent history against us, the unfavorable conditions and the hard-line stance Link too against some of his key players. In the end they team got away with the win, and weren’t ever really troubled, but how did they perform individually? Here’s how I saw it: [one_third last=”no”] James Slipper Was bloody busy all game. By some reports, topped the tackle count, which is…

There are more than 400,000 reasons why the Triple M Brisbane organised Classic Wallabies versus Classic All Blacks match was worth the effort. That’s the number of dollars raised by the event to go to the Christchurch Earthquake fund. And they haven’t stopped counting yet, so expect the figure to end up closer to half a million dollars. Continuing a trend we have seen across Australia of late, people and organisations were falling over themselves to support the cause, with the result being big bucks heading across the ditch to assist rebuilding one of the great rugby cities — and…

Round 3 of the 2011 Super Rugby season was a tough one for Australian Rugby fans. OK, fine, the Reds won. But it was at the expense of the Brumbies and the game was hardly one to showcase all that is great about rugby. Meanwhile… the Tahs? Smashed. Rebels? Smashed. Force? Smashed. It would seem that once our teams have ventured out of the Australian Conference comfort zone, we have suffered a heavy impact with reality. Regardless, let’s pick through the carcass and try to discover some highlights. Team of the Round: 15 Mark Gerrard – REBELS 14 Francis Fainifo – BRUMBIES…

After making team changes galore following their first game of the season, the Rebels have named the same run-on XV they used against the Brumbies last weekend. Coach Rod Macqueen has rewarded his players, deservedly, for their ability to stick to a game plan devised to provide the team’s first Super win. On the flip side, following back-to-back losses, the Chiefs have changed a third of their starting side.  Into the XV come Ben May, Brendan Leonard, Stephen Donald and Tana Umaga – all of whom were dropped after the first-round loss to the Brumbies. I guess their replacements were…

Round Two of Super Rugby, 2011-style, saw two more local derbies for the Aussie teams. The first was an emotional last-minute win by the Rebels over the Brumbies, while the second was a clinical takedown of the Reds by the increasingly impressive Waratahs. So, on to the whos, whats and whys of the round…. Team of the Round: 15 Mark Gerrard – REBELS 14 Drew Mitchell – WARATAHS 13 Rob Horne – WARATAHS 12 Julian Huxley – REBELS 11 Digby Ioane – REDS 10 Berrick Barnes – WARATAHS 9 Luke Burgess – WARATAHS 8 Ita Vaea – BRUMBIES 7 Phil Waugh – WARATAHS…

Obviously we all here at G&GR, and indeed the entire Rugby community would like to send our best wishes to anyone impacted by the recent earthquake in Christchurch. There has been some discussion about the implications of this on Super Rugby and we’ve received the attached press release from SANZAR with the Crusaders deciding, correctly, that family comes first. SANZAR CEO Greg Peters has announced that the Crusaders will withdraw from their Super Rugby match against the Hurricanes in Wellington on Saturday, following the devastating earthquake that struck Christchurch yesterday. SANZAR rugby nations New Zealand, South Africa and Australia stand…

When you sit down to try to come up with a list of positives for the Rebels to take forward to this week’s game, following the loss to the Waratahs on Friday night there’s really only one standout. They aint playing the Tahs again! So early in the season it is difficult to gauge whether the performance of the Rebels was just an ‘off night’, or a sign of more to come. Unfortunately for them, they came up against a team at their clinical best. In the end the difference between the two sides can be summed up in one…

Australian Rugby kicked off the new Super Rugby tournament with a clean sweep! Well, kind of. Actually not really. But the season’s begun and there was plenty to love about the first round. Firstly, those Waratahs. As I said in my post match report, they were pretty awesome. At the same time the Rebels were somewhat less so. Where the Tahs were clinical and efficient, the Rebels squandered possession and wasted opportunities. Still, it was a tremendous occasion for Victorian Rugby and a terrific crowd of more than 25,000 was due reward for the way in which the Rebels have…

The Melbourne Rabble, sorry Rebels, have started their season in the worst way possible – a 43-0 drubbing at the hands of the Waratahs. Before I get too carried away with the Rebels, let me first speak of the Tahs. Wow. What a holistically impressive performance. Last season the Tahs started slowly and were outplayed by the Reds but managed to squeak in a last minute try to take the match. This year they absorbed all sort of ‘pressure’ from the Rebels for the first quarter of the match without the Rebels ever looking like scoring. It was said during…

Super Rugby makes its much anticipated leap into the self-proclaimed ‘sporting capital of Australia’ this Friday night as the Melbourne Rebels take on the NSW Waratahs at AAMI Park. For the loyalists in Victoria, this is a debut five years overdue and should result in a packed house. For the rest of Australia it is a chance to see whether Rod MacQueen can weave his magic again fifteen years after he conjured up a first up Super 12 win for the Brumbies over Transvaal. The trouble for both teams has been the impact of injury on their respective outfits. Normally…

For those that didn’t quite get the joke of this and then this, sorry. There was no mystery Reds signing. It was just me, your intrepid ‘reporter’, getting the chance to train with the Queensland Reds. Some time ago Coach Ewen McKenzie invited me, as proxy for Matt Gagger, down to have a run with the team. Originally it was meant to be back on 11 January, but a little bit of rain got in our way that day. So it was rescheduled for today. Which meant my sleepless night was rescheduled to last night  as I was ‘playing the…

Twitter? Are you serious G&GR? It’s enough to have that bloody scrolling thing down the side of your front page, but now you’re doing stories about it? Yes, yes we are. With the Super Rugby season about to kick off, I thought it timely to do a recap of who’s doing what on twitter and who’s doing it well. For a more complete (and ever expanding) list, check out our Ruggapedia page. Let’s start with the new boys on the block, the Melbourne Rebels. Now the Rebels organisation is doing a bang up job on the internet so far, and…

Last week we had a caption competition for a picture of Robbie Deans chatting to Ben McCalman. We got puh-lenty of captions and we’ve reviewed the entries and our two winners are: “Sick of the jokes, Deans resorts to signing six in roman numerals rather than risk pronouncing it incorrectly again… when in Rome…” and “I know Drew won last years championship, I mean he goes on about it enough, he even had it tatooed on his ass, but I’m telling you son, if you want the title this year the way to beat him is with a scissor, dynamite…

So sang Billy Idol (well…kinda) and so sang the ARU as they announced that the Melbourne Rebels would be the newest addition to the Australian Rugby professional landscape. MORE teams means MORE games and MORE money. More, more, more indeed. While money in the coffers is the driving force behind the ARU’s push for additional teams, a more altruistic aspect of expansion is the opportunities it provides players. When the Brumbies entered the S12 in 1996, they provided opportunities for players that couldn’t get a consistent run elsewhere. Players like David Giffen, Brett Robinson and Pat Howard. Likewise when the…

The IRB World Rugby Yearbook is an attempt to replicate the wonders that is the little yellow bible of cricket – Wisden. Where it falls short is tradition (Wisden has been produced annually since 1864) and the fact that most rugby supporters aren’t the ‘train spotters’ that cricket supporters are.  Cricket is just made for the stats-craved loon (like myself) and Wisden is, as it is nicknamed, the bible for such supporters. This year’s version of the IRB World Rugby Yearbook is a fair attempt at replicating Wisden, whilst still falling significantly short. This is of no fault of the…

So this is Christmas. And what have you done. Another year over. And a new one just begun.  So sang John Lennon in the song “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” as he goaded us into asking ourselves, are we being all that we can be? Well, I am here to ask you the same question! Are you being all of who you can be…as a rugby fan? The 2011 Rugby season in Australia will be the biggest we have seen for almost a decade.  In terms of actual ‘product’ – that’s actual games for the traditionalists – we will be inundated like we…

We’ve done the Domestic Series where Quade dazzled us with his sleight of hand. We’ve covered the Tri-Nations where Bam Bam blew us away with his ‘combatitiveness’. We’ve finished the Spring Tour where it was Gilbert who impressed us with his elusiveness from the back.  But who would come through as the overall winner? Who did we, the readers of Green and Gold Rugby, think was the best Wallaby of the Year? This week I’ve tried my damnedest to try to build the tension. I’ve tried to capture the round-by-round accumulated scoring anxiety that comes from a Brownlow night. In…