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When considering: - Reds playing on 'spiritual home of Queensland rugby' - Reds seasoned Wallaby players on field to Rebels Wallaby players on field: the numerical ratio. Both teams at full strength and two coaches that have to prove themselves in 2014 - Rebels virtually a team of...

For almost the entire game the Reds display was one of the poorest I've witnessed since 2009. It was as though the team had re-formed from a long and indulgent vacation just last Wednesday. Merely as one example: I think the Rebels won at least 5/6 scrum penalties in an uninterrupted sequence...

It's such a delight to see so many GAGR old hands, and just as many new hands, excited by and proud of our national rugby team once again. Like the first awakening sight of a glistening rainbow, after a long and dark storm that felt like it may never pass.

It's an interesting debate IMO. If we want championship-class results, attention to every detail of preparation and its optimisation is crucial, especially when we're not yet proven to be a consistently outstanding team. I get that national cricket is a limited analogy for rugby, but you would...

One thing's for sure: if we keep up our reckless penalty count, the generally fragile defence of 2013, and mediocre forwards intensity and technical skill at the breakdown against good teams, with Halfpenny kicking, we can kiss this Test goodbye irrespective of how skilled our backs may be.

The other point I'd add is a speculative suspicion that the ARU/Wallabies schedule model for the EOYTs that has us arriving in the EU after a 24 hr flight no more than 6-7 days before the first Test (this year England, France last year) is flawed and risky, at least for our players vs say the...

Interesting dialogue re Lilo's poor kicking v Scotland and who should kick for the team come Wales. Of course a plus of the Wallabies team at last being able to score more than one try per match is that our historically erratic kicking record is marginally less problematic in the winning of...

We're slowly exiting from a long period of Wallaby darkness and depression. Deans had no clue re building himself a competent, hard-driven, united organisational culture rooted in discipline; it's so clear in hindsight that, in his Crusaders days, that came more or less pre-built for him via the...

Very valid daz. Genia's consistently poor box kicking for the Reds (I'd estimate that, over the 2010-13 Reds period, his rate of genuinely effective and well-placed box kicks would be 15-20% of total at the most generous) has been a negative feature of Reds play. Yet clearly being told by...

Whatever else are Link's failings, is it not now obvious that very poor calls regarding his own management team are one of his biggest. And the negative consequences deriving therefrom will prove exponential, not linear. Neither the scrum nor defense have improved one iota throughout 2013. That...

For me the best thing to come from Dunedin, and it was a massive event, was this: The Confirmed Exit from the Long Nightmare of the Deans Era. We are restoring an ability to design and execute ensemble tries via a reasonably coherent back line. We are believing in our capacity to attack...

Jets Agree with your own and others' assessment of what a great event this is: I took my 15 year old son to the whole day yesterday and we both could not believe just how good it was in every aspect: entertainment, rugby skills on show and to a high consistent quality, atmosphere (despite...

1. The suggested PR wording was little more than the fact that it's ARU policy that a Wallaby candidate must be contracted to an S15 team. My thinking had nothing to do with the Force per se, purely that that's what they'd have to say in such a context. 2. Fair point re 'JO'C is Force home...

^^^ When oh when will RugbyWA learn the lesson after years of failed experiments with 'imported star players'? That model and all its attendant issues has NEVER built success for them, and I doubt it ever will. Yet they are still tantalised and drawn by the star siren song that is the...

I just wish there wasn't so much PC mamby-pambying over these announcements by the ARU. We have 'put past behind us', 'mutual releases' and other fairy floss mumbo fucking jumbo re JO'C's 'change of status'. FFS, show some standards leadership and backbone in what you say to the highly...

RC: Good points. It really surprises me that there's been little debate here re Gill sitting at home in Brisbane. He's clearly the best fit classic fetching 7 that we have, his stats v Hooper prove that, he's shown generally good personal and skill development over recent years, he also...

New Warning Bell re Delusional State of Wallaby-Land: Ben Alexander offering up extensive media input that Wallabies' scrum problems are all 'mental' in nature...

QH: The Wallabies play all of 2013 has been littered with serious errors of defensive structure, realignment and individual defensive confusions and incorrect defensive reads. It's consistent, its fundamental and contributes hugely to game losses and of course an opposing team's useful calculus...

OK, so somehow it is possible for Link to have rapidly assembled a virtually complete new coaching team at the Reds for late 2009/early 2010 very soon after joining the QRU, and urgently and immediately got J McKay into the Wallaby Attack Coach position within a few weeks of his Wallaby...

I won't get into the Robbie-remembered debate just yet, but what is so important in assessing relative coach improvements and achievements is looking at the state of competition in terms of where other teams were at in comparative periods and how well they were coached in those same periods...