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• Worcester v Gloucester Rd 3 Ben Kay the wiley ex-England player an co-commentator - on props: “There is a psychological battle: not only with their opposite number, but with the referee – get into the referee's head that you're in total command in the the scrums and suddenly all the...

That was the best game of Sevens I've seen him play; he is on the improve in that discipline of our sport. He didn't have such a great IRB U/20 tournament but crikey, he's still only 18, and he was hardly the Lone Ranger in the Oz U/20 team not to shine. On the Rugby Club Mick O'Connor, the...

Yeah - that has been their achilles heel for some time now and even when they won the tournament in Tokyo this year they had to work around the physical battle as the Wobs have to sometimes in XV man games they win. I don't think the lads in the 12-man squad could have done any better in the...

The video clip was from an U/19 Academy match.

It was tongue in cheek. I have been appalled at the poor ball work of the Tahs for many years and their line running, and was disappointed when Gaffney didn't fix things last season. I thought he was the Messiah that we needed to see the Promised Land of using the ball, but it was the same old...

One category I forgot is "quarterback" the type of sevens player that Stannard was - and Golling for England. You need one of them on the park and a backup somewhere in the 12. We have a back up in Lucas but nobody like Stannard nor B. Foley or H. Angus who were backups. When I look at the 12...

Looking at those names, it's good to see a bit of continuity to this new Sevens season as there has been a revolving door selection issue in the past. To be fair some of the absentees in the last few years have progressed to Super Rugby; so you can't grumble about that. The last I watched the...

Rohan Saifoloi He played well this year in the Shute Shield - at least in the games I saw (and not to the point, but so did Pakalani for the same Southern Districts team; so I wonder what he is doing.) I wrote yesterday about how valuable an ARC would be, if for nothing else but to use it as...

Good to see Jed Holloway officially named in the EPS. I know he was in the Oz A schools team and went on the Pacific tour with a squad 2 years ago but he wasn't a schools star. Like a lot of youngsters at that age he has improved out of sight since his he left school compared to some of his...

The U/16 version was seen in such a negative light apparently. I spoke to some ARU guys last year at the U/16 tournament about why they discontinued the U/16 merit team and they mentioned the reasons you gave. Apparently the people selecting the team, and others who were thought to be...

I think so - it was 36 in 2010, the last real tour - 20 forwards and 16 backs. It's interesting to note that only half of those 36 are likely to be touring in 2012 for one reason or another - though that depends on when and if injured 2012 players get healthy in time. Does anybody know what...

Excellent article from Andrew Logan of The Roar after the Rosario test: http://www.theroar.com.au/2012/10/08/heart-beale-and-hooper-may-save-deans/ Not least for its giving a link to Green and Gold's blog by Julian Huxley which is here, by the way...

Terrific rugby articles there of different types. Thanks for posting them. This (before the Soweto test) was funny about the ABs quest to beat the record of number of wins in a row: Escape the republic with a win and Hansen/Henry’s men will move to 16 in a row, with only a pub team from...

2007 also had a Merit Team; it included PAE, Luke Jones, Michael Hooper and Tom Kingston. One of the forum members said there was a Merit team up in Qld in 2008 but I've never seen it; so he may be mistaken. .

Maybe they won't be too worried about hearsay. .

The Force have had some bad luck with injuries, especially to their flyhalves, but they have made some poor decisions also. In a way it is not their fault. If they are looking at players from the Shute Shield in Sydney for example, they have to assess a fellow for pro rugby on how he plays...

That was a blast from the past. What I wrote was:

Freier is a natural to be the media guy.

Yeah Jonah was in the Ones this year and had a pretty good tournament though nowhere near as sensational as he was in the 2011 U/16s when I wrote this in my team of the tournament: As I said in the Oz Schoolboys thread: if Oz Sevens used four 2011 Schoolboys in 2012, Placid could play 7s in...

I remember commenting in some forum in 2004 about the new franchise coming in and Oz having 4 teams instead of 3. I said it would dilute the results of the existing teams because they would lose players to the new team but it was worthwhile because it would add 33% more professional players to...