Author: Sucker for Red

Does anyone know what happened to the last week? Has anyone been to Oktoberfest? Nah me neither. My story & I’m sticking to it. Game day!!!!!!!! Anyone else nervous much? Judging by the lack of banter in the city beforehand I am thinking the English fans were nervous as well. There was lots of luck being wished, but not the jovial banter you might be used to before a rugby game. But HOW GOOD WAS THAT? I didn’t think that anything could silence the English crowd, but that second try from Foley just about did it. The wheels seems to…

I know it was not an Australian game but I really do need to start with Twickenham. I had the good fortune to have a ticket to England vs Wales at Twickenham on Saturday night. (England time that is. I am having enough trouble working out the day & time here, I am not even going to try to work out Aussie time.) And wasn’t that an experience! View image | gettyimages.com Is it bad that I was more excited for this game then I was for the Wallaby v Fiji game? It was at the home of rugby after…

So, another Rugby World Cup is upon us and here I go. All you people at home, getting up at stupid o’clock during the night to watch our Wallabies play…. just think of me. Over here. Travelling around to all the games. Going to Twickernam and Cardiff……. Yeah ok. I have got the better end of the deal. Sorry. Just had to rub it in a little. View image | gettyimages.com This was my second visit to Millennium Stadium and it didn’t disappoint. The atmosphere in this Stadium is one of the best in the world. Even when Wales isn’t…

I don’t know about you but I need some positive vibes about Queensland Rugby at the moment…..  1. Gilly is still here Liam Bradley Gill. 23. Openside flanker. Even by his own lofty standards Gilly has had a good year that has been topped off by winning the 2015 Pilecki Medal. As an indication of how dominant a year he had, his total of 420 votes is only eclipsed if you add the second, third and fourth place getter votes together. Now being named captain of the Brisbane City NRC team he has had an awesome year! I, like many other…

After a rather, um, trying game last week for the Sharks they have come north to see if they can take a bite out of a resurgent Reds team. After what could be described as their best performance of the season, the Reds have managed a fairly stable team from last week. The big missing is Lachie Turner, who has had to take a rest due to concussion concerns bringing Chris Kuridrani straight back into the the starting XV on the wing. This is the only change. This is also the first time (I think) this season when there has only…

This is the game with the hashtag most likely to be stuffed up on the weekend  (#REDvREB), and with the number of Jacks, James’s & Jakes in the sides my predictive text is already having conniptions. Let’s face it, the Reds have had a horror of a season with the result their latest outing to Crusader land still feeling like salt being stomped into fresh ruck marks by a bunch of rampaging All Blacks then being doused in vinegar.  Ok, maybe a little less painful, but still painful to say the least. But there has been movement at the station…

While watching the Reds play the Bulls on Sunday morning I had a thought…….. How many changes have there been in the Reds sides over the first eight games of the season? Let’s start with what has been stable. James Slipper has started every game at lose head prop. And his replacement, Ben Daley, has been named on the bench for each game, however missed one game as a late change. The only other position where there has been no changes is Scrum Half with Will Genia also starting every game. Hooker duties have been shared between Saia Fainga’a and…

This Friday the back markers of the New Zealand and Australian conferences meet in the first game of the round from Eden Park. (And yes, saying that does stick in my throat……….) With the Reds coming off a 3 game losing streak and the Blues coming off two victories it will be interesting to see who gets the upper hand. Who has more at stake, the Reds or the Blues? The Teams Following the defeat at the hands of the Hurricanes in Wellington last weekend Richard Graham has made 4 changes. Greg Holmes swaps into the starting line-up for…

As much as I love the idea of watching rugby at Ballymore…… I now remember the problem with watching from XXXX hill. Numb bum, drunk idiots & only seeing the game from one end. Sigh. The memories. Apologies for the lateness but travel, lack of sleep and technology have all conspired…….. The Match The game was messy, messy, messy. There were dropped balls, knock ons, knock backwards, passes to not going to hand, collapsing scrums, lost line outs……. I made a comment during the Junior Gold Cup game that the coaches would be running passing drills during the next training…

I’ve looked at the attendance trends for the Aussie Super teams and footy codes, we’ve looked at the difference between the Super Rugby conferences. Now let’s have a look at how the Super Rugby crowds measure up against the Heineken Cup. Actually, they don’t too badly. Even though it boasts the world record crowd for a club rugby game (83,761 for a match between the Harlequins & Saracens on 1 April 2012), the Heineken Cup obviously does not consistently attract the crowds that Super Rugby does in the southern hemisphere. Even Australia, being the middle child of Super Rugby and fairly…

After my little boasting session last week about the Reds’ crowd  numbers, quite a few people asked me what these figures looked like in comparison to other conferences and competitions. (Well, three people actually, but I was interested too.) So I went in search of numbers. Key Points Australian Super Rugby crowds are bigger than New Zealand’s More people per capita go to Super Rugby games in Australia than in South Africa Again, I have a few clarifying statements to make. To come up with these averages I have sourced individual game data, where I could, and then calculated the…

I don’t know about you but I was one happy rugby supporter when it was reported in The Courier Mail last Thursday (13 September) that the Reds had eclipsed the Broncos in their average crowd attendances during the 2012 season. It doesn’t matter if you are not a Reds fan — you have to admit that that is a job well done in an NRL stronghold. Woo-hoo! We are on top! Perhaps not by a significant margin, but we are still leading the three other codes of football played in this state. Then I started thinking: should we be really…