Author: Scott Allen

Here they are, the entrants for April’s Green & Gold Rugby Best Aussie Club Try in association with the Rugby.com.au. Have a gander, pick your favourite and VOTE USING THE POLL BELOW the YouTube video! If you don’t want to watch the little video again, just click on the cross in the box. Voting will close at midnight this Sunday 23rd May 2010, so get your last votes in. Please don’t just leave your vote as a comment! Read more about the mega prizes from Skins and Kooga and learn how to get your entry in for May here. To…

The 2010 Australian Club Rugby Championship was played in Brisbane last month between Brothers and Sydney University.  You can read Juan Cote’s match report at https://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/brothers-vs-sydney-uni-match-report/ The game was a great advertisement for the quality of club rugby and Brothers can now claim to be the Best of Australian Club Rugby for the next 12 months.  There were plenty of highlights in the game – this video covers the tries and some of the sparkling attack that was on display.

During the recent Wallaby of the Decade series plenty of readers dropped hints suggesting we put together a video showing highlights of Stephen Larkham’s career.  Well, here it is!  After wading through hours and hours of footage of the Wallabies over the 12 seasons from 1996 to 2007, this video shows Larkham in all his glory … those magnificent passes, ghosting runs and glorious kicks … and of course, that Drop Goal! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WREmrQ6WC-Q[/youtube] No matter how many times I’ve watched these clips during the edit,

The fact that the Wallabies didn’t bring home their own little slice of history was a grand shame.  However, as has been pointed out by a number of others, if they’d come back with a Grand Slam, it would have masked the fact that there’s still a lot of work to do before the Wallabies can consistently challenge the All Blacks and the Springboks. Let’s look at the team statistics first across all four test matches and then examine the key statistics for the individual players.

What a difference a week makes! Against Scotland the Wallabies were running across field and throwing cut out passes to try and get around the defence.  Against Wales the attack was much more direct and effective. The really good thing about the attack this week was players working hard off the ball to offer different angles, which kept the defence in two minds and created space.  The other great thing was the reduced number of cut out passes. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sDIgDXWQGk[/youtube]

It’s only two years since the Wallabies scrum was in tatters after the World Cup.  Coaches Foley and Noriega have done wonders since then to develop the Wallabies scrum into a weapon. [youtube id=”KFpSDq69Vw0″ width=”600″ height=”350″] Just as pleasing is the performance of the front row in general play

It’s been a little painful preparing statistics for the last two games against Ireland and Scotland because you need to watch and re-watch segments to confirm what happened.  Re-living the missed opposrtunities in both of those games was hard but it’s been a pleasure re-watching the Wales game. So many positives but still things to work on – in partcular a number of lazy missed tackles.  The performance of the front row, Pocock and Smith was outstanding. 

There’s been lot’s of discussion about what’s going wrong with the Wallabies attack.  This video looks at a few examples that, not surprisingly, confirms what has been said on this site over the last few days. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjLP4zFTXyE[/youtube]

What to make of the Wallabies aimless kicking against Ireland? I’m not sure of the origins of the expression but I thought the Irish commentator summed up the Wallabies kicking performance pretty well last weekend when he said “That one will be Meat and Drink to Rob Kearney” as the Wallabies sent another ball straight to a waiting Irish player without exerting any pressure. In putting the video together I wasn’t looking to analyse whether we should have kicked – that’s probably a separate discussion on the game plan (although if I was having that discussion I’d say we kicked the…

What’s happening with the Wallabies lineout and what can they do to fix it? As I watched the game against Ireland the other night I formed the view that our lineout performance had been woeful.  After analysing each lineout, I’m not feeling as unhappy. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t good enough and there’s lots to work on – but it wasn’t a complete disaster.  Have a look at the video analysis of each attacking lineout (apart from the one where there was no footage) to see what I mean. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRxucMFMSVY[/youtube]

The statistics from the game against Ireland confirm some of the areas that need attention! Obviously the scrums were fantastic and it’s amazing that they are probably the strongest part of our game, given the shambles that existed only two years ago at the World Cup.  I credited the Wallabies with three tightheads – one a true tighthead and the other two were penalties against Ireland where we put them under so much pressure that they had to commit an offence to stop us gaining the tighthead.  In reality there was also another one but Kaplan decided we weren’t “square…

Here’s a look at some of the key indicators from Saturday’s test at Twickenham Carries Carries Forwards Backs Total First half 26 27 53 Second half 25 30 55 Total 51 57 108

Stats always tell an interesting story, and here are a some key ones, together with a few points of analysis from Scotty who’s a regular poster in the forum.