Author: Nutta

Hiya Cobbers Top of the morning to the lot of you and I hope you’re not too sad and sorry from the weekend’s results. If you are, then not to worry as the Donkeys won at least, ending the season for the Hurricanes on a typically balmy June evening in Canberra. But not everything was smooth sailing either on and off the field in the Brumbies victory. We made it hard for ourselves. As a usually unashamed fan of the Donkeys, not the least because we tend to make life uncomfortable for those who generally consider themselves as otherwise ‘born…

Gudday Cobbers, I hope today finds you happy, fat and champing at the bit to rip, tear and snort into another day as a fun-luvin’, idiot-fan of the greatest game on earth. Amid all the goings on over the week gone, we saw the game forced to reflect yet again on the spectacle of the scrum. And this was no better exemplified when, in and among an otherwise breath-taking 1pt win to the Rebel Scum over the Highlanders, we saw mindless time lost yet again to scrum resets and general scrum buggerising-about. Now here’s the thing; readers of this erstwhile…

And good evening to you cobbers all. Well what strange times we live in. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, the weekend just gone saw us stage our 47th festivus of the democracy sausage and periodic federal election since our first one on 29 March 1901. And a number of notable things happened; firstly, what we saw was neither major party really win. What we saw was BOTH major parties go backwards in their primary vote, only that Liberal went backwards worse than Labor. So in short terms, because Labor was despised less, they held more and…

Hello Cobbers, So haven’t I had a bugger of a weekend for results? Bloody Hell, I couldn’t’ve hit water if I threw the ball from a boat over the weekend! All our franchises lost, my regular club footy got rained out, my first grade club-battlers lost the Tarts curtain raiser on TV and I even managed to lose my bush scratch-match! Christ on His Stick, I should buy a lottery ticket because I have to break this run of losses soon! To summarise, the Tarts and the Rebels should have won their games. Really they should have. And the Donkeys…

Hello Cobbers. I hope we are all well, fed, watered and perhaps even a little hungover. What’s happening in our lives today? We have our stronger Super fanchises generally holding their own in the land of the long white Speight’s (and in doing so yet again putting our perennial strugglers from the south and the west in the spotlight), we have club rugby now well back underway around the countryside with all sorts of folk battered, bashed and black-eyed on Monday morning teams/Zzom calls, we have a long-coming interest rate hike finally arrived and all that just in-time for an…

Hello Cobbers. And a happy Chewsday to all my fellow Cobbers, Diggers, Freaks and Mouth Breathers out there today. I hope your coffee is warm, your socks & sandals are cool and you Angel cakes are moist. Welcome to Episode 7 of the Chewsday Chew. The purpose herein is not to write something overly sagacious, complicated or mesmerising, but rather to pose a simple observation, question or proposition and let the good readers of this esteemed site share their opinions thereafter. Call it the lazy man’s attempt to fill a void by poking our collective bear of rugby knowledge to…

Gudday Cobbers, First things first, while this is written for Chewsday, it is written on Monday. And given this Monday is 25th April, I’ll share the same prayer here that I offer every year over my fire-pit. A beer for those who serve. A rum for those who fought. A whisky for those who paid the price. And a port for those who bear the scars. Welcome to Episode 6 of the Chewsday Chew. The purpose herein is not to write something overly sagacious, complicated or mesmerising, but rather to pose a simple observation, question or proposition and let the…

Hello Cobbers. Happy Easter all. I hope you all remembered the Aeroguard and ‘adagoodweekend’. Welcome to Episode 5 of the Chewsday Chew. The purpose herein is not to write something overly sagacious, complicated or mesmerising, but rather to pose a simple observation, question or proposition and let the good readers of this esteemed site share their opinions thereafter. Call it the lazy man’s attempt to fill a void by poking our collective bear of rugby knowledge to share their reflections and lift the average beyond the humdrum. This week, I reflected on the things I see everyday. I live in…

Hello Cobbers and Diggers All, And a top of the morning to everyone on this pre-Easter Tuesday. I hope the world you inhabit is Pizza Pockets for you all, and that you have the choccy eggs hidden, the tent packed and the beers stowed before the festivus of Easter-ANZAC swings-in. What is it – 11days off for the cost of 4 days leave? I can smell the campfires and fire-pits already. Outstanding. Welcome to Episode 4 of the Chewsday Chew. The purpose herein is not to write something overly complicated, but rather to pose a simple observation, question or proposition…

Hello Cobbers So what’s happening around your world this week? Close to home, as of writing (Monday midday), undoubtedly we have an electioneering Scotty from Marketing trumpeting fuel excise relief and a few one-off payments to the lower/middle in order to buy an election via a budget. But none of those short-term initiatives were denied or rebuffed by Albo & Co. So there is nothing differentiating about it. And while we had the Mean Girls tagline belting our left-sided friends for a week or so, we then had Concetta Fierravanti-Wells pull the pin on her grenade for Scotty’s Mob on…

Hey Cobbers & Diggers All. I hope you’ve all had a Pizza Pockets start to your week, filled with the warm, comforting, gooey goodness of melted ham and cheese. That said, while some of us on the east coast of Oz are finally getting a wee break from this bloody incessant rain, others are having to paddle about in floodwaters again, which is not good. What I do know is that, dealing with the big issues in life, pre-season training everywhere has been fairly decimated by this wet and, even as the son of a western NSW sheep farmer, even…

Hey Cobbers All. I hope you’ve all had a cracker early start to the week and whatever god you bend a knee or bang a head towards is serving you a continuous stream of good weather, German pork knuckles, bottomless beers and good health. Welcome to The Chewsday Chew. The purpose herein is not to write something overly complicated, no Pythagorean concoction of indecipherable hyperbole, but rather to pose a simple observation, question or proposition and let the good readers of this esteemed site share their opinions thereafter. Call it the lazy man’s attempt to fill a void by poking…

Hello Cobbers, Well we have arrived at the penultimate point in this mendacious meandering about the rugby field and the folk we may meet on it. And in this instance, penultimate is a well-suited word. Most folk think penultimate means peak, or the pinnacle, or something similar to reaching the top. They are to be a bit disappointed. Penultimate actually means second to ultimate, or next to greatness, or not quite there, and so a bit of a disappointment. And that describes our final position to consider wonderfully well, No15, the Fullback, a bit of a disappointment really. A Fullback’s…

Hello Cobbers, For a few weeks now I’ve been updating my concoction of caboodled connotation and curlicue, tack welded together from my 5 odd decades of lies, deceit and lucky escapes playing the wonderful game in some odd spots around the world. And, oddly enough, through that time & space I’ve listened to many of the same laughs, gripes and frustrations regardless of the language, accent or geography – from Stuttgart to Constantinople, Glasgow, Limerick and Wagga and indiscernible places in between. As such, these are nothing more than the random thoughts of a never was (so can’t be a…

Hiya Cobbers In this round of Rugby Positions Revisited I am focusing on numbers 11 & 14 – the Wingers – and their contribution to our wonderful game. It is too easy, some may say obtuse or droll, to insist Wingers contribute nothing. Facta non verba, even though numbers 11 & 14 are officially listed by the UN as among the 7 Most Useless Things in the World (next to the Pope’s balls and 3x Cheers for the Ref), it is nonetheless true that when someone actually useful is given a card, Wingers are still kept on-field while Loosies take…

Hey Cobbers, So here we are, continuing the ambling continuum of a Prop pondering the Pixies and meandering among the inexplicable. Today we consider the First-Five, Five-Eight, Fly-Half, Outside-Half… or the guy tagged with any one of a plethora of other nonsensical terms, that when conjoined mean even less than one of a single anything. What this confirms is that no one really knows what the bloke wearing no10 is actually there for. And so, while I have played alongside a couple who were truly gifted artisans, I prefer the nomenclature of Standoff for the rest of the general denizenry…

This little Prop just could not sleep, because his thoughts were way too deep. His mind had gone out for a stroll and fallen down the rabbit hole… Continuing the discourse of the folk we meet when charging down the street with your local rugby team, today we discuss the Half, also known as Scrum-Half, Half-Back, Smart-Half, Half-Hole, Half-Wit… whatever you want to call them, they wear no9. Some may find it surprising, but I generally genuinely like no9s. The true first-principles of their role heartens me on so many levels; the plucky little Hobbit in the face of rampaging…

Hail Well Met Cobbers, Again we continue the anti-climactic meandering by the never-was-so-can’t-be-a-has-been in attempting to explain the personalities that inhabit the average mud-luvin’ rugby team around the world. And today we are turning to discuss the enigma closing out the back row, tailing the rear of the lineout and locking the back of the scrum together; therefore clearly explaining why this joker is called ‘Number 8’ (No8). Unfortunately, there’s really not much to say about this fella, as in every facet of the game they are simply excess baggage. And they know it. I mean they are so obviously…

Hey Cobbers, And so the revisionist journey of rugby positions, and the folk who stereotypically inhabit them, continues… This time we contemplate the numbers 6&7. Originally called Wing-Forwards, the denizens of the 6&7 jerseys developed a complex about being conjoined in name with Backs. And so they approached the Rugby Illuminati and agitated for a name change (Hansard includes phrases such as ‘degenerate Faeries’ as being bandied about). Everyone else eventually agreed, but only because Wing-Forward rhymed with nothing. That’s why they are now called Flankers. Flankers are interesting because they are such a contradiction. Flankers will tell you they…

Hey Cobbers, For those with lives and thereby not paying attention to recent posts, and are now wondering WTF this is all about, well during our mutual festival of rolling Corona-meets-Christmas shut-down I’m revisiting, plagarising and updating my previous observations on the various attributes of the folk one may meet on the atypical rugby park. I’m lucky enough to have played rugby in some pretty obscure places around the world over the years and despite variations in language, standards, styles and law interpretations, it’s remarkable how similar the game and its participants were no matter where I found myself pulling…