Thursday’s Rugby News has a new Wallabies captain, a reserved judgement, the musings of Kane Douglas, and a former Wallaroos captain asking for more funding.
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Hooper (c)
The Wallabies social media team kicked up a fuss for no good reason when they foreshadowed an exciting event yesterday.
Turns out that exciting event was a foregone conclusion – Michael Hooper being announced as Wallabies captain.
Huh.
Hooper, with 25 years and 68 caps to his name, has already been Wallabies captain, first becoming so in 2014. His vice-captain hasn’t yet been announced.
“It’s a huge honour to just wear the Wallabies jersey, let alone captain the side,” Hooper said (via Fox Sports).
“I’m extremely grateful to Cheik but also to Steve for all that he’s done for me and the team.
“It’s what you do in the jersey that’s most important and I get another crack at showing what it means to me against New Zealand in Sydney in a fortnight.
“There are quite a few good young leaders in this team like Bernard (Foley), Adam (Coleman), Samu (Kerevi) and Allan (Alaalatoa), so we’ll be working together to take this team to a new level.
“I’m really excited about what we can achieve in the next four months.
“It is a very special opportunity for all of us, and we’ll be doing all we can to show that pride in the jersey.”
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Sonny Bill Waiting
Sonny Bill Williams will have to wait and see if his appeal to have his ban conditions overturned is successful.
Originally banned for four matches after attempting to decapitate Anthony Watson, SBW and the NZRU have disputed World Rugby’s definition of what constitutes a ‘match’.
Earlier this week, World Rugby said NPC pre-season games and an intra-squad friendly don’t count as proper matches – fancy that – but the Kiwis have thought they’d try their luck anyway and try to get the definition changed.
As it stands, SBW will miss out on the first Bledisloe. He has already missed out on the 3rd Lions test, as well as the Blues v Sunwolves game.
“An independent committee has reserved its judgment on Sonny Bill Williams’ appeal,” says a Stuff.co.nz article.
“Williams faced the three-man panel via video conference on Tuesday night following World Rugby’s decision last week to include the Rugby Championship test against the Wallabies as part of his four-game ban for a shoulder charge.
“The committee…[has] yet to come to a decision and there was no definitive word on when that would be, with a World Rugby statement saying the verdict would be “communicated in due course.””
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Douglas Kane-o
Kane Douglas is loving every minute, getting flogged in the Wallabies training camp in Newcastle.
“It’s a great environment,” the great enemy of the Undertaker told Fox Sports. “We’ve been egging each other on to keep going harder.
“We just finished some weights, finished some scrums, a bit of learning and tough grunt work in the middle, but it’s great to be back in this environment.
“It feels like there’s a million coaches and a million trainers here that you can ask different questions, and there’s a lot of different experiences from Brad Thorn to Mick Byrne.”
Douglas has been on a rocky run for the past year and a half. He was part of the Wallabies’ World Cup squad, injuring his knee in the World Cup final. After fighting his way back from injury, he found himself behind the pecking order. And now? Now he’s running for mayor of Knox County, Tennessee!
“Obviously I’d have loved to be out there and I think I’m good enough to be out there, but at the same time I have been pretty impressed with how those young blokes[Lukhan Tui and Izack Rodda] have been going,” said Douglas.
“It’s good to have depth and numbers around in that position, but at the same time you want to be playing. And I knew I’d be no chance to be playing for the Wallabies if I wasn’t getting picked for the Reds.
“You can’t have excuses. If you’re not playing, you’ve got to use Tuesdays as your game at training and go as hard as you can and hopefully the coach goes ‘Ah, he’s having a crack’ and you get picked.”
Like everyone else, except for maybe George Smith, Douglas reckons his best days are in front of him.
“Obviously I was out for a fair while and sometimes it takes a while to get back into things you haven’t done for a while,” he said.
“I did feel good at the World Cup, but I’ve still got some better footy in me that maybe I’ve never played.
“I just need to keep pushing myself, working on a few things and put my hands up more than I have this season.
“I’ve missed a few games for the Reds — where I didn’t get picked — I obviously didn’t make the June internationals, so it makes you want it, not being involved
“It makes you want to work harder and I’ve been trying to do that and I’m hoping to keep doing that over the next few weeks and when the squad gets cut again, hopefully I’ve done enough to stay around.”
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Women’s Rugby Needed
Nickie Wienert, former Wallaroos captain, reckons the ARU really needs to start investing in more women’s rugby. Otherwise, all the good work and interest generated by the Olympic 7s win will just go away.
“With regards to how far it has come since my time, this is fabulous but when I look at women’s cricket and women’s soccer, I don’t we have come as far as we should have,” Wickert, who played in the first Women’s World Cup in 1998, said (via Fox Sports).
“Girls had to take time off their work then, and it’s the same now. They need to address that.
“The ARU have been awesome to women’s rugby in the past but — and this is even with the men’s game — they have to start doing more at the grassroots,” Wickert continued.
“Being a schoolteacher, I have AFL wanting to come out and do development, even rugby league and soccer. They all seem to be organised in hitting the juniors whereas I think that’s where rugby could pick up. Something has to happen in that space. My schoolgirls are always asking where can we go and play. They’re so interested after the sevens.
“The girls want to play. But they’re getting taken by AFL and soccer.”
All of Wienert’s chat comes in the light of the upcoming Women’s World Cup, and long-time ARU sponsor Buildcorp’s decision to pull out of funding women’s rugby.
“You have to have competitions for all these girls to play in,” she said. “And a real push to recruit players … or they are going to lose all the good athletes to other sports.
“We have the athletes, we just need to train them properly,”
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