Search results

Cheika wants Potgeiter at lock to improve the tight five physicality. Its a brave call (in the Sir Humphrey Appleby definition) to only have one tall lock, though Brad Thorn only jumped occasionally and was there to provide the steel in the tight for NZ and he went OK. But we would be looking...

Australia started this year's campaign having put a lot of work into their defence and they were very competitive with the top four at the Gold Coast. Its been downhill ever since and the reason is their poor defence - it has basically evaporated from where it was at the start of the season...

The Rebels teams for the second half look stronger than those for the first half. The Waratahs team has only been announced for the starters, so we don't know their whole squad. In times past there seems to have been agreement between coaches that for the early trials, that is all except the...

If you're not so badly hung over after the Old boys meeting, we would all appreciate a full game report on the Saturday match. It looks like that will be the only info we'll get on the game.

Last year I tipped the Stormers to take out the Super comp. They had a great draw, a team on paper that was almost worth selecting as the Bok team with the easy-beat Kings in their franchise (two guaranteed 5 pointers). I still don't understand how it all went wrong, though the loss of Schalk...

Which leads me to ask the question: When is someone going to sit down and consider the weaknesses in the Stormers' defensive system and come up with a way to counteract it? EVERY system has its weaknesses but when was the last time the Stormers had four tries put on them?

Paarl, Any idea why the SA conference is starting a week early? Surely they've got the same International window Aust and NZ have and there's no Lions tour this year. I don't think it helped the Australian teams to start early last year, just made the split in the comp wider and disrupted...

Try living in South Australia. Murdoch's rag is the only game in town and it'll be a cold day in hell before rugby gets much of a mention.

I do like a good dose of reality, Lee, but I think this is going a bit too far! You'll drive me to full scale depression. Passing and catching should be as fundamental as breathing for a backline trying to play the gameplan we do. If you play like the Force it doesn't matter too much; but with...

I am starting to get a good feeling! When the Tah supporters on the forum are beginning to discuss "why the Tahs might not go so well this year" rather than the usual then it seems a dose of reality has set in. We don't have a squad that can do everything well; there again who has? The...

If Crawford could step up he would be the best option. He's got a long punt kick so he would definitely be worth a try. Of all the candidates so far he is the most likely one to start in all matches.

These relationships appear to be so irrevocably broken that we will only discover which side was "right" when one side is declared the winner (probably in the courts) and they can then get to rewrite the history. To the victor goes the spoils, even if it is a pyrrhic victory.

It would be even nicer to have three world class tight head props come the cup!

Gee there's some Palu hate around on this site. For someone who almost won the John Eales medal on the basis of the 2013 EOYT plus the Lions games he's now expected to give his top-up back? I have stated elsewhere that the fact that the ARU topped up some poorly performed Wallabies and...

The true measure of this will be how many games our teams can win against SA and NZ teams, particularly the two less-favoured sides.

But you will have to dump SA players from your team after round 16 and then pick them up again in round 18. Depending on how many you have got to transfer (incl. injuries and sackings) it will be crucial to know how many changes you get for week 17 and 18. Last year was really tough because the...

Bloody hell. Only 27,500 posts to go!

He never made it to the Wallabies but what you could hear in his voice is that he had a burning desire to do so. Same desire as drove Scott Fardy to come back even though he was "too old". Different people with different lives - what's right for Mowen is not right for someone else.

I could probably figure it out if I sat down for an hour with the draw, but do you know if the same issue is likely this year? Last year, after a disastrous start, I used my wildcard early and lived to regret it.

That's a nice looking jersey for an away strip. It will look very effective under lights or on TV.