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In Deans's wonderland he might be behind me. I'm still waiting to hear the real story.

A year from now, when the million-dollar-man has left our shores, we might get around to trying out the tight head who will make the position his own. The likely replacement, Link, may be filthy on Lawrie now for going south but I don't think that will stand in the way of him putting the best...

Certainly no more novel than that one of yours, MM. A "switch hitting prop" eh? It just might work. If I follow your logic, and I think I do being an old prop myself, it's easy to see how front rowers would get sullen and morose on a long tour, watching the local groupies make a bee line...

Hawko, I'm starting to hear some good reports from Driver Avenue. It appears that Foley is influencing the gym training of the 'Tahs players with regard to doing some solid strength training along with Shirvington directing the speed work. If what I hear is true and they persist with it they...

Ben Ainslie, now that you describe him I think I've read about him. Isn't he the bloke that does his fitness training with the national darts squad?

Numero uno, I can still hear the Marrickville Mauler post fight: "Em, 'e gave me a hard fight. Em, 'e never hurt me. Em, I loves yez all." I never did figure out who Em was.

TT, are you expecting him to make those three tackles in a season - or all in one game?

Yes, Scarfie, my mouth's still hanging slack from that one. Just shows how the game has developed in the professional era. An absolute army of specialist coaches and not one had thought to pass on this most basic of principles. Or perhaps they didn't know about it.

I completely agree, BH. The most simple way to identify a very powerful athlete is to look for the combination of low skin folds and big arse.

Let's have a quick update on the tour so far; We beat the All Blacks by 2 We beat Wales by 9 but since then Fiji has played a draw against them. We beat Leicester by 9 We lost to England by 17 We lost to Munster by 9 The declared objective of the tour is to build momentum for...

Most people would be astounded to learn how few of our experienced professional forwards do serious lower body strength work. A lot of this is the legacy of damaged backs, usually caused by injuries arising from poor squatting technique or having been pressured to do squats when fatigued. Locks...

Centreman, it's interesting how people see things differently. I would have thought that was an unusually lucid comment from him. Astute, although hardly original. Partly because of the heavier grounds but also because of their respect for hard physical engagements Northern Hemisphere teams have...

Actually, BH, he's not. If you're around him long enough it all makes sense. This thread reminded me that I have to organise for him and a few of us who identify with him to have lunch before Xmas. When I say it all makes sense, it's a bit like a foreign language where you don't understand...

Brock's great innovation was his "Step Forward" policy. Australian teams had always been intimidated by the Springboks, All Blacks, England and Wales. Brockhoff determined that his players would never take a backward step and he fired his forwards up with his unique style of rhetoric. Before one...

No, Rothschild, compared to previous Wallaby Coaches. In the nine years immediately prior to Brockhoff’s appointment Australia had won only seven of its last 39 Tests. In his first year as national coach the Wallabies won nine of twelve Tests, including defeating England twice to win the first...

I'm with you, Langthorne. There seems to be an unfortunate tendency to criticise our million-dollar-man just because we lose most of our matches and tend to play a headless chook style of rugby. It's easy to say after the event that Robbie Deans should have warned the dirt trackers that the...

We've had a Kiwi coach for nearly three years. We've got a team that doesn't know the basics of playing wet weather football. There's a disconnect here somewhere.

Thanks for the endorsement, MrMouse. We are gradually rolling out a range of machines and the commercial gym and rehab markets are very much in our future plans. Since June we have had an English company manufacturing and distributing MyoQuip machines throughout Europe. One of their initial...

My view is that it would compare to a very heavy squat. As an example, like other Sydney Uni players, Jerry Yanuyanutawa used the ScrumTruk as a regular part of his training. Jerry was prodigiously strong as a squatter, box-squatting 300kg in 2008. But as far as I know he never used anything...

In the modern scrum, Groucho, that hand would have to come from his own side of the scrum. Similar tactics are not unknown as a means of getting a dumb prop fired up.