Monday’s Rugby News sees the Wallabies wobble, All Blacks cruise to victory and the championship, a wrap up of round 5 of the NRC and Forest’s project gets the green light.
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Different week, same disappointing result
Another week another loss for the Wallabies who went down 23-12 to the Springboks in the early hours of Sunday morning. The match started out with a Kurtley Beale pass off his own goal line lead to an Aphiwe Dyantyi intercept try with 7-0 and the Springboks dominated the contest from there.
The Wallabies showed some fight in the first half, with Will Genia again looking like our best option to create points after laying on the first try for Reece Hodge and then scoring the second try to reduce the margin down to 17-12.
However, the Springboks would push out to a 20-12 lead before half time and this scoreline would only be altered by a 45th-minute penalty goal from Handre Pollard. This was despite the Wallabies being camped within South African territory for the majority of the second half and the Springboks losing a man to the sin bin in the 65th minute.
As for where the blame lies after this performance, it’s tough just to narrow it down to one area. The attack looked disjointed and failed to fire when we needed it to, surely the last nail in the coffin of the Kurtley Beale at 10 experiment.
The forwards were solid, especially David Pocock and Michael Hooper around the ruck, but were again let down by a poor showing when it came to lineout time, with the Springbok praying on an inconstsitant throwing performance by Folau Fainga’a.
As always after a poor showing, the pressure immediately went onto the head of Michael Cheika, who dug in his heels after the performance, reaffirming his stance as Wallabies coach for the future.
“No-one wants to win more than me, trust me,” Cheika said. “Tough situations come, then they go away and the tough people will stay.”
“If you want you can cry about it and sook, or get on with getting improvements. And I think we made an improvement this week, definitely.”
Whilst its all well and good to preach out sticking around in the tough, it seems like we’ve been hearing the same sentiments from Cheika on a weekly basis, there is only so much ‘improvements’ that people can take before people start calling for your head, which came for most fans a few weeks ago.
Luckily for Cheika most of the casual fans/media were distracted by the AFL andNRL Grand Final so the result hasn’t received as much traction or abuse as it usually would. However for Cheika after his 8th loss in his last 10 matches with the Wallabies, at what stage does the queen of the Rugby Australia Castle decide to part way with him if this form continues into Argentina and the end of year European Tour.
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All Blacks all class
In the other Rugby Championship match, the All Blacks have cruised home to victory in Buenos Aires, defeating Argentina 35-17. The side easily amended for their shock loss to South Africa and wrapped up the Rugby Championship for the third consecutive time and their 6th in 7 years.
The All Blacks came out firing, marching to the 21-3 lead at half time with booming winger Rieko Ioane scoring a double inside 30 minutes. The side held off a fast-finishing Argentinan side who reduced the lead down to 28-17, but a try to Anton Lienert-Brown secured the win and championship for the side.
The side showed their dominance throughout the contest, never seemingly truly challenged by the Pumas despite giving the side plenty of opportunities, showing their depth to win without Kieran Reid, Luke Whitelock, Brodie Retallick and Joe Moody.
Coach Steve Hansen still believed the side could build on the performance, only giving the result a pass mark.
“At times we played some good footy and at other times we didn’t play that great. But you’ve got to give a wee bit of credit to Argentina, too, they’re a very difficult side to play against, particularly here,” Hansen said.
“We were better. But you don’t go from nought to 100 straight away,” he said. “There will be some more learnings for us, but when you look at who was out there on the park at the end, it was a pretty young group, so you have to be really pleased with how they coped with some of the pressure.”
His opposition coach and honorary Aussie Mario Ledesma was absolutely filthy with his side performance and failure to continue on from their groundbreaking win over the Wallabies a fortnight ago.
“I thought they [All Blacks] weren’t very clinical. They dropped a lot of ball, lost a lot of lineout. If we played better, we could have put them under a lot of pressure” Ledesma said. “The only thing I wanted to see from the boys was ourselves, and I couldn’t see it tonight.”
Full credit to the New Zealand boys, they have once again been the benchmark for World Rugby and deserved to wrap up the Championship with a round to go. As for the Pumas, the Wallabies should be wary of bounce back performance that the side will produce after a week-long spray from Ledesma.
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NRC wrap up
The fifth round of the National Rugby Championship threw up some excellent encounters as title conteders impressed as finals season gets closer.
The first match of the round saw Fijian Drua host strugglers NSW Country on a day which was a celebration for Fijian rugby and curtailed by a tropical downfall before the game. Despite the conditions, the Drua dominated the contest 48-7 with Green and Gold chief editor and legend Reg providing a detailed report about the solid performance for the Drua.
The second match saw a prime-time encounter with the Canberra Vikings looking to continue their hot start to the season against a Melbourne Rising side who was attempting to turn around their season after a series of strong showings without. The Vikings would end up finishing strongly over the Rising 31-21, with Canberra rugby man Steve detailing the thrilling encounter.
Sunday opened with the Queensland derby between Queensland Country and a resurgent Brisbane City who were both looking for bragging rights and to hoist the Andy Purcell Cup. Brisbane City would continue their resurgence after a slow start, hanging on in a thrilling display of rugby 39-24, with Reg working back to back like Drake in delivering another high quality recount of the derby.
The final match of the round saw the Force return home to host a Sydney Rays team brimming with confidence after nearly knocking off Fijian Drua a week earlier. However there would be no such luck for the Sydney side today, with the Force dominate winners 63-15, with doubles to Jack McGregor and Heath Tessmann off the back of a strong showing from their forward pack. (there are no match reports from Green and Gold Rugby of this match at the time of writing, for further information check out the excellent report from Montanna on Rugby.com.au)
With the finals two weeks away, it seems like a three horse race between the Drua, Vikings and the Force for the title, with both Queensland teams the dark horses. This sets a set of enticing fixtures for next week, highlighted by Fijian Drua hosting the Canberra Vikings in what could be a finals preview.
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Forest’s vision gets green light
After laying the foundations of World Series Rugby in a series of friendlies between the Western Force and a selection of rugby sides, Andrew Forest’s dreams for the competition have come to fruition.
This comes off Forest receiving the backing of World Rugby during their visit to Australia, which sees the tournament expand out to eight teams, including the Force, to battle it out for the $1 million purse.
The tournament will kick-off in March and is expected to feature two sides from Japan, one expected to be the Panasonic Wild Knights, and one each from New Zealand (made up of an “all stars” team drawn from the Mitre 10 Cup), Fiji, Hong Kong, Singapore and Western Sydney.
“We are in the final stretch and I remain confident rugby fans and players in our part of the world will have an innovative new competition to get behind in 2019,” Forest said.
“We have worked closely with World Rugby, Rugby Australia, Hong Kong Rugby Union and New Zealand Rugby for several months to get this over the line and this concept is about developing and growing the great game of rugby union in an untapped region, with the support of local communities”.
World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper backed the proposal publically during the week, naturally backing any billionaire who is willing to throw truckloads of money into world rugby.
“If someone comes along with a chequebook and wants to develop the game in areas, in particular where we need that development, and I’m thinking across parts of Asia which Mr Forrest has in mind, then that’s of interest to us.”
The competition will be played between March and June next year over a 14-week home-and-away season, with the top four sides will go into a three-week sudden-death finals series. The competition is also expected to contract eight marquee players who will be directed to clubs to hopefully produce a level playing field.
This news has seemingly flown under the radar after the wobbly Wallabies and the attention that the other codes finals have received, but this tournament hopefully has the capabilities to match the success that its namesake had within cricket and hopefully fans can get behind it.
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