Well, Happy Monday my G&GR compadres. Another huge weekend of rugby, Rugby Championship, the Wallaroos playing. Everywhere you look, rugby, rugby, rugby. Just the way it should be.
So let’s take a gander at the games, and crown the champions. So log on, sit down at your desk, get comfortable, grab a big cup of you know what ☕, and let’s get it on.
The Rugby Championship – Champions
And so it is the South African Springboks who have been crowned the 2024 Rugby Championship champions. A big well done to them, and it was well deserved. The 2023 World Champions, to 2024 Rugby Championship Champions. They’re a team that is riding the crest of a wave, and could possibly become the best team in the world for a long time to come. Whichever way you look at it, the Bokke are now the benchmark that all other teams must chase.
The Rugby Championship 2024 – Round 6
All Blacks 33 defeated Wallabies 13
If you haven’t already, read KARL’s excellent review here. Also, make sure you vote for players.
For me, I’m not sure whether the Wallabies were worse this week or last week, or better this week than last week. To be honest, I’m a little discombobulated about my team. Although the score is worse than last week, for some reason Saturday’s performance felt better to me. Crazy, I know.
During the opening half (other than the last minute) the Wallabies looked like a team that was able to compete with the All Blacks at their level. The defence was better, the attacking runs were strong, and our scrum was good. Just small errors ended up costing us.
The All Blacks looked better than last week and seemed more composed til the second half. Two yellow cards in this game (and a second one in two matches for Caleb Clarke) started drawing attention to their discipline issues yet again. But despite their lack of discipline, the Wallabies were unable to put their foot on their throat.
For me, our best players were Fraser McReight, Harry Wilson and big Bobby V. The others had mostly average to good games. Hunter Paisami was a bit rocks and diamonds, again. I thought Jake Gordon was average at best, and we moved better in that space when Tate came off the bench. Not sure what was going on with Tupou and his knee, but he scrummaged well and overall didn’t look too bad. Let’s see what the player votes bring out.
Overall though we are starting to see the direction that Joe Schmidt is headed. He now has a couple of weeks with the squad before they head north for the Northern Tour. Fingers Crossed.
South Africa 48 defeated Argentina 7
The Bokke have claimed their first Rugby Championship title since 2019 after easily dispatching Argentina 48-7 at the Mbombela Stadium on early Sunday morning. The South Africans came out of the blocks at full pace, looking like they were trying hard to make up for last week’s performance.
The Boks kept the pressure on the Argies and had the FISM scrum going backwards like it was on rollerskates. They were eventually rewarded when Fassi managed to nail a nice little crash over, and Hendrikse added the honours. Not long after the Bokke crossed again through Steph Du Toit.
At the 20 min mark, the Los Pumas finally got some points on the board, when Albornoz managed to cross for a nice little try. But that was going to end up being it for the Argies. A few minutes later Hendrikse slotted a nice little penalty to take the Bokke out to a 17-7 lead. And this is where it really started coming apart for the Argies.
Mateo Carreras was given a slice of cheddar cheese 🧀 for taking out Fassi in the air. The Saffas then used their numerical advantage to score two tries through Fassi and Kolbe to make it a 27-7 margin when both teams went in for oranges.
The second half was a lot of back and forth between both teams with no one scoring until the 70th minute, and in addition to this Pablo Matera was 🧀 for head contact at a ruck only to have it upgraded to red. A maul try from replacement Prop Marx was followed up by Du Toit crashing over to put the icing on the cake, followed by Kriel claiming a late score. And that was it. The champions had sealed out the game.
Wallaroos 37 defeated Wales 5
If you haven’t already do yourself a favour and read Eloise’s excellent review of this match here.
To be honest I can’t add much more to Eloise’s great review. But the Wallaroos certainly made amends for last week. Jo Yapp’s team looks to be on the path to recovery from what hasn’t been the best start to the test season for the girls.
Anyway, enough of this old man yapping. Over to you G&GRs, have at it!
