Monday’s Rugby News sees the weekends Super Rugby results, K.Hunt’s return to rugby, the World Cup 7’s format questioned and the Australian School Competition
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Super Rugby Results
Super Rugby provided some interesting results over the weekend, particularly the all Australian, Reds v Rebels match at Suncorp on Friday night.
The Reds, who have struggled to string wins together this year, recorded their 5th win of the season, defeating Melbourne 37-23.
The win all but finishes the Rebel’s chances of securing a maiden finals berth in 2018.
Queensland kept to their strengths, with their powerful scrum forcing 6 first half penalties, a handful more in the second half and directly led to 14 of the total points.
Taniela Tupou, AKA The Tongan Thor, AKA Mr. Tree Trunk legs showed why many or putting his name in contention for a starting Wallabies position with a powerful display at both set piece and in general play.
Another one of the Reds young brigade was Jordan Petaia, who started his first game at outside centre.
Petaia struggled to get his hands on the ball in the early stages of the game but became more involved as it moved on, providing a superb offload for Jonno Lance to stroll over.
The 18 year old starlet oozes class and completed his defensive assignment against Tom English (A hard man to tackle may I add) with ease.
Lance himself scored 20 points for the Reds in a performance that reminded me of his strong Force days while Reece Hodge was also influential, scoring 13 of his own.
Next up it was the Waratahs, who came away as huge winners against the Sunwolves at home, 77-25 on Saturday night.
The impressive part about this win for me is that many people have said that the Sunwolves is a ‘must win’ or an easy fixture, yet it is one thing to say it and another thing to do it.
The Sunwolves stayed in the contest for the first 30 minutes before the Tahs ran away with it, took it to Japan and came back with a ton of points.
There were 60 points scored in the second half alone with the Waratahs outscoring their opposition 53-7. Ouch.
The smooth backline played their part, roaming around and breaking the line at will, showing why they are top of the Australian conference.
Basically it was a bloody good night for the Waratahs and Daryl Gibson agreed in his post match comments courtesy of stuff.co.nz.
“I always knew the potential in this team and I’m really pleased that we’re starting to see that and it’s really coming out,” Gibson said.
“I always said that we wanted to transform ourselves into winners.”
“As you head into the finals you know, it’s going to be tight.”
“There’s some exciting times ahead.”
This also comes at a time where Gibson contract is being reviewed and in my opinion the skill development of this side, particularly in the passing ability of the forwards (as well as the team’s performance) deserves a new contract.
Congratulations on your efforts fellas.
Finally the Brumbies had a heartbreaking 24-19 loss to the Chiefs on Saturday.
Unfortunately the game was marred by some refereeing howlers at crucial stages and with the Brumbies still chasing a important victory to gain a place in the top 8, the errors became seriously important.
The Brumbies are still mathematically in the hunt, but need a fair few results to go their way to still be a chance.
Dan McKellar was spewing post game and had this to stay to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“We’re disappointed. But we look back and we made too many errors, we didn’t turn up from the first minute thinking we could dominate.”
“We did that in the second half and that’s learning for this young group. The learning is to turn up from minute one, roll up the sleeves and get the job done.”
“You can’t come here, turn over so much ball in 40 minutes and be off around the collision area and expect to win. But I’m so proud of that second-half effort.”
Now they head in to a must win clash against an in-form Waratahs side and McKellar is licking his lips.
“It’s is our grand final, isn’t it. The old rivalry, us against the Tahs, she’s gonna be one hell of a battle,” McKellar said.
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Special K Return
After much speculation in Brisbane rugby circles, Karmichael Hunt returned to the field this weekend and not for who you might expect.
His club, Norths, made the decision not to play Hunt, taking a similar stance to the Reds in that their young committee did not need a role model that was involved in the use of recreational drugs.
Hunt has been frozen out of Queensland Rugby as a result for the last 7 months and only had the opportunity to play through Quade Cooper.
Quade recognised that his friend was struggling mentally after not being able to do his passion, and reached out to Karmichael to play with him at Souths in order to help him stay in touch with the game.
As a result, Souths formed a million dollar backline on the weekend and Hunt, who came off the bench (and isn’t eligible to play finals) through the pass the led to the match winning try.
Hunt spoke to rugby.com.au about his situation, saying:
“I’ve been trying to get some footy all year – it just wasn’t to be,” Hunt said post match.
“Obviously, as you guys would understand, I have been with Norths for the last couple of years so I wanted to go back through them – Fogs, Eddie and all the coaches.”
“I’m just happy to be back, I want to thank Souths, I want to repay those boys and I want to just try win some footy games.”
“All I know how to do is play footy, help my teammates become better and sure, I haven’t been the best behaved over my life – you can ask mum and dad – but they know the quality and character of their boy and that’s someone who gives his all to his team.”
He also spoke about his desire to still be involved in the NRC, after it was revealed last week that this was most likely not a reality.
“Definitely keen,”
“I tried to contact Mick on Thursday and we have been playing phone tag but I’ve made him aware that I’m definitely keen to play for him.”
I wonder if there is another opportunity for Hunt. Only time will tell.
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7’s World Cup format questioned
In a fortnight’s time the Sevens Rugby World Cup tournament will kick off in an unfamiliar format to those who are players, coaches and fans of the Sevens World Series.
The tournament is a knockout from the very beginning and there are no pool matches to kick off proceedings meaning that every match is a sudden-death thriller.
Australian sit 4th on the overall Sevens Series standings, 1 point above England after a few disappointing series in Hong Kong, London and Paris.
Coach Tim Walsh isn’t the biggest fan of the tournaments set up, believing that it doesn’t give an accurate picture of how the team actually performs, more so the result of a particular game.
“It remains to be seen, I think we have to go and experience it but it is an exciting format because every game is a grand final and you’re not day one, cruising through, it’s cut-throat,” he said to rugby.com.au.
“But again, is it going to reward consistency, (if you have) a bad day or a bad game?
“I don’t think it (has) longevity for a world series but we’ll see how it pans out and we can do a review on it afterwards.”
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Australian Schools Tournament begins
State Representative sides from all around the country have come to Sydney to compete at the annual Australian Schools Tournament.
The competition has produced many of Australian rugby’s players (is this a good or bad thing?) and will once again showcase the talents of many fine young players.
QLD 1 and NSW 1 are arguably favourites for the tournament, despite the ACT coming in as winners last year.
The first day of results saw QLD 1 beat WA 67-12, with electric winger Glen Vaihu (who is still in year 11 might I add) crossing for 4 tries.
NSW 1 also dominated their opposition Victoria on the first day, romping home with a 80-5 home victory.
Tane Edmed, the flyhalf from NSW 1, steered his side around superbly and is the early favourite for the coveted flyhalf position for the Australian Schools side which will tour Europe at the end of this year.
ACT kept their title defence alive with a strong 18-0 victory over QLD 2 in what was a hard fought victory.
Brendan Jimenez, the fullback for ACT is returning for the second straight year (and was of high quality last year when I watched his matches), was a standout for the ACT in the game and is another front runners for the Australian Schools side.
NSW II also got up on day one, beating the Combined States side 45-22.
Good luck to all the students involved.
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