Author: RAWF

Rugby union follower from north of the Tweed River, who has been avidly supporting Queensland and the Wallabies for 40 years. I've definitely watched more rugby games than I've played, and love the camaraderie that this game brings us.

10 December 2024 Happy Tuesday G&GRs, and welcome to the last Tuesday news for 2024. I wanted to get this content into the post last week but ran out of time, so here we are.I’ve put together a summary of the Wallaby player ratings for the year based on the ratings for each game, and some weighted for the role in the game. The weightings I used were: Starting Side – weighting of 100% for the score for that game Reserve Front Row – weighting of 75% for the score for that game Reserve Half Back – weighting of 75%…

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#22 Tuesday 3 December 2024 Good morning everyone and welcome to Tuesday’s Rugby news. The Wallabies are done for 2024, and while they didn’t come home with a grand slam, they have improved since the Rugby Championship, and are much better than the team at the World Cup in 2023.The Wallabies YearThe Wallabies played 13 tests this calendar year, winning 6 and losing 7. At face value that’s a 46% winning record, and while it’s a disappointing return compared to better times it’s certainly better than last year, and better than Dave Rennie achieved in his tenure. I think we…

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19 November 2024 #20Good Morning G&GRs and welcome to another Tuesday following a Wallaby victory, a very good victory. As always there’ll be things that the coaching staff have taken away from the game that the players need to work on. We’ll get onto Wallaby player ratings from the Monday morning test, but before that there is some Australian rugby centric news to get through.England A v Australia XV The Australia XV team were on the wrong end of a 38-17 score line in their game against England A played on Sunday (local time) at Twickenham Stoop. There were plenty…

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Wednesday 13 November 2024 #20Hey there G&GRs, and welcome to Wednesday’s Rugby News. It’s a second attempt for today’s news as the first try had lots of old comments attached to it. Apologies to Keith and Eloise for losing their comments.I’m backing up again this week, as both Yowie and KARL are away. Hopefully there isn’t some G&GR writers convention/party that I missed an invite to. Come to think of it, its very quiet on the craparazzi chat as well.Anyway thanks for the feedback on the player ratings from Tuesday’s news. The general consensus was that I was a little…

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The pre-gameI was a bit curious about the history between England and Australia, so I did a bit of research and some of it surprised me.Australia have played against England 55 times since the first encounter on 9 January 1909. The Wallabies won that first match 19-3. Overall the ledger stands at 28 to England, 26 to the Wallabies, with 1 draw. Our win rate of 47% is worse than any other northern hemisphere team, and it was above 50% until the recent run of losses against England. By comparison, and relevant to the next three weeks, we win 59%…

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Tuesday 5 November 2024 #018Good morning team, and welcome to Tuesday’s news. It’s a test match week as the Aussies prepare to kick off their northern tour against England at Twickenham on Saturday. There’ll be a lot of interest in the squad for this game, and I’ll put in my 2 cents worth about the make up of the team. Australia XV are also playing on the weekend, they face the Bristol Bears in what should be good experience for them.There’s plenty, and I mean shedloads of international rugby this weekend including: Ireland hosting New Zealand, Italy hosting Argentina, France…

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Tuesday 29 October 2024 #017Good morning team, and welcome to Tuesday’s news. It’s a quiet time in Australian rugby, the Wallabies are in camp preparing for their northern tour and the Australia XV is getting ready for their shorter tour. There’s always something to talk about though including the location of next year’s Wallabies home test matches, some observations by Simon Cron about our forwards. And the Rugby Australia Awards 2024 finalists, which were announced today.2025 Wallabies test matches Rugby Australia announced the locations for the Rugby Championship test matches next year, and it’s great news for rugby fans in…

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Wednesday 23 October 2024 #016Good morning G&GRs, and welcome to Wednesday’s Rugby News. I’m backing up for a second effort this week, and keen to get stuck in. Pretty much all Australian coverage today with some updates about the Wallaroos and the Wallabies and Australia XV after the squad announcement yesterday. To be fair to Hoss and the readers who commented, Hoss did post the squad announcement yesterday, but it is the major Wallabies article of the so we are running it again today. WallaroosWe know that the Wallaroos really turned the corner in terms of putting quality performances on…

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21 October 2024Good morning everyone, and welcome to Monday and Monday’s Rugby News. Reds and Wallabies Fan here filling in for BLL who has a rare Monday off. It’s Monday morning, so grab yourself a coffee, or if you’ve had one, grab another, and let’s get into the week .Two main pieces of news today: Peter Horne and RA demonstrating they have a plan for the game, and Hamish McLennan urging RA to go back to his plan.Rugby Australia has a planThere’s a good article over at The Roar in which Peter Horne explains the rationale behind the Wallabies and…

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16 October 2024 #015Good morning G&GRs, and welcome to Tuesday’s Rugby News. As BL reported on Monday, there was some great quality women’s international Rugby played over the weekend, and yes the Wallaroos managed a very good win over the Scottish Women. There has also been the next generation of interstate rivalries being played out over recent weekends with the Super Rugby age group squads battling it out in the U16s and U19s.International Women’s RugbyWallaroos get it done against Scotland As covered by BrisneyLand on Monday, the Wallaroos got the job done against Scotland and have taken home the trophy…

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8 October 2024 #014Good morning G&GRs, and welcome to Tuesday’s Rugby News. If we were in Germany, specifically Munich, we’d be recovering from the final weekend of Oktoberfest, and based on the photos that some friends have posted on socials it looks like a great time was had.There was plenty of international women’s rugby played over the weekend, including the Wallaroos getting up over South Arica in a tense finish in Cape Town. A little bit of coverage on the women’s international rugby, then it is over to a summary of the Wallabies player ratings from the tests played so…

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1 October 2024 #013Good morning G&GRs, and welcome to Tuesday’s news. If we were in Germany, specifically Munich, we’d be recovering from the second weekend of Oktoberfest. Unfortunately, we aren’t, so instead we are licking our wounds after another Wallabies loss to the All Blacks. However, we do have the player ratings from the Wallabies game to go through.It’s not all bad though, the Wallaroos have been a work in progress this year under coach Jo Yapp (do we have a nickname for her yet?), and they put in a good shift against Wales to get the job done.There’s plenty…

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24 September 2024 #012Good morning G&GRs, and welcome to Tuesday’s news. We had the penultimate round of the Rugby Championship on the weekend, which also happened to be the first game of the Bledisloe series for this year. And the player ratings as voted by the G&GR faithful are listed below.The Wallaroos played against Wales in their last hit-out before heading to Cape Town to play in the WXV2 series. There’s still some action going on domestically with the 2024 Australian Rugby Shield about to kick off on the Sunshine Coast.Wallabies Player Ratings First of all, congrats to James Slipper…

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17 September 2024 #011Good morning again G&GRs, and welcome to Tuesday. The Wallabies had the weekend off after their last start in Argentina, but the Wallaroos and the Australia A women played against Ireland and Samoa respectively, so a bit of news and commentary on those games.There’s still some action going on domestically with Super Rugby signings across the teams to cover, and the Super Rugby format for 2025 was announced on Friday.And as Hoss pointed out on Friday, the Pacific Nations Cup semi-finals were played on the weekend.Butz covered the Wallaroos loss to the Irish in the Monday news,…

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10 September 2024 #010Good morning G&GRs and welcome to Tuesday. It was a tough weekend for Australian and New Zealand rugby fans, you can read about in the Wallabies match review here, the All Blacks match review here, and a round up from Bris in the Monday news here. There was plenty of discussion in the comments section on Monday, lots about the Wallabies test, but also about the structure of Australian rugby, the good and bad aspects of Super Rugby, the merits of a domestic competition, should we be using overseas players, whether our players are as good as…

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Morning G&GRs, Reds and Wallabies Fan bringing you a review of the second test match between Argentina and Australia. After the torrential rain of last week, the teams got to run out on a dry track in Santa Fe.  The big question for the week was whether the Wallabies could back up the gritty win last week, and whether they could play expansively on a dry field.The stadium is also locally known as the Elephants Graveyard, though they might add Wallabies to that now.A few changes to the starting side for the Wallabies with Lukhan, Noah and Tom Wright out…

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03 September 2024 #009Good morning G&GRs and welcome to Tuesday. And it’s a much happier Tuesday if you’re a Wallabies fan, the Wallabies got it done against Argentina on Sunday morning. You can catch up with Bris’s review of the game here and I’ll summarise the player ratings for the Wallabies as voted by the readers of that review.There was a great weekend of club rugby with grand finals across the grades in Brisbane and the Shute Shield final in Sydney, on which I’ll provide some commentary and then pass the torch to you in the comments section.Wallabies Player Ratings…

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27 August 2024 #008Good morning G&GRs and welcome to Tuesday. The Wallabies didn’t play on the weekend, they’re in Argentina getting ready to take on the Pumas. There was a bit of news about the Wallabies coming out of RA on Monday, which I’ll provide links to, and my thoughts on.There was a big weekend of club rugby in Brisbane with preliminary finals played across all of the grades to see who could book their spot in the grand final, so read on for a summary of that.Then it will be a small smattering of news from the Southern hemisphere…

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