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Well spotted, Moses.

The journos were obviously scrambling to get their stories in ahead of the announcement. Rupert Guinness took the easy route by turning to the Quote Factory, Eddie Jones, who sagely opined that "with Vickerman's experience in England, he will return far more mature." "His exposure overseas in...

What a stupid statement.

I may have focussed too much on my perception that the current All Blacks are always willing to extemporise whereas Macqueen's Wallabies seemed to adhere very closely to a game plan, rather than what you actually said. I concede that what you describe applies to both of those teams.

Just a couple of points, TBH. I don't recall the Macqueen era being characterised by "forwards and backs being able to run, pass and carry and change the angle and method of attack when the opportunity arises." Rather it was a time of inches-thick playbooks à la American football, and recycling...

Are you sure your mate's not having a lend of you, rugby man? "Physical: 1.84m, 90kg". That's not exactly big for a 24-year-old Fijian.

The young bloke will be up to the task. I have never known then Sydney Uni Colts coach NIck Ryan put so much effort into acquiring a player and when he first came down from Orange I knew why. He had “Wallaby” written all over him. He’ll play 50 Tests. One thing I like about him is that...

I agree, Lee, and also with your other comments. Unfortunately you can get a relevant decrease in strength very rapidly with a wrongly focussed conditioning programme. The best example of this de-training is Jerry Yanuyanutawa who in September 2008 box-squatted 260kg for 6 reps. I am not...

I am afraid that the worthy Dr Grant has correctly identified the symptoms then made the wrong diagnosis. I suspect I'm in a sub-group which has only one member, but I am convinced that the underlying reason why our team cannot sustain intensity over 80 minutes is that there is not enough...

To the extent that those running the NTS program have any input into the selection process at state or national level this is an unsurprising outcome. I have no knowledge of whether this is the case but would assume so. Additionally the fact that the NTS trainees have had "the benefit of ARU...

I think you're onto something, Lance. With Quade, proving intent might have been considered too daunting a task. I don't normally play the man, but at my age you learn never to waste a good line.

If so, Scarfman, the model you're using is totally inappropriate and inadequate for making any meaningful statements about the real world of rugby collisions.

A logical extension of your statement, Scarfman, is that it would make no difference whether the moving player was trying to minimise the force of impact, i.e., the acceleration is negative, or tried to maximise the force of impact, i.e., positive acceleration.

Scarfman said; "Interesting. I was thinking that momentum (= mass x velocity) would be the appropriate equation." It's way out of my area of competence, but wouldn't the relevant variable be acceleration rather than velocity?

You mention only Tatafu of the Parramatta players, #1, for fairly obvious reasons. Almost all of their other players are virtually unknown whereas the Uni players get a lot of exposure and are therefore easy to pick out. But the Parra players deserve a lot of credit for frequently opening up the...

I would have thought , topo, that you of all people would know that Tommy also handles prodigious weights in the gym. There would be few backs in Australian rugby who could match him.

I can remember thinking that myself when I first saw the video. Fortunately there are rather bent steel rods on either side of the frame that would hopefully prevent him being driven into the floor.

Thanks, fatprop. I wasn't aware of the Mike Cron videos. His knowledge is extraordinary and his logic compelling.

That's a very sore point. At the Brumbies his scrum coach was Bill Young, the quintessential "small sneaky prop to teach him all the dirty tricks about scrummaging". Young proceeded to do just that. And the reason that Bill Young had to rely on "dirty tricks" was that he didn't have the size or...

Quite a few members might recall some of Jerry's galloping runs down the sideline in the 2008 season - runaway train style. He was something of a cult figure with the ABC TV commentators. This suggests that his strength was certainly not impacting negatively on his mobility. Since then he has...