Tuesday’s Rugby News has more ARU crap, even more ARU crap, Marika Koroibete happy at the Rebels and Blake Enever reckons he knows how to beat the Lions.
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Ruh Roh Rebels
The Herald Sun is reporting that the ARU has offered to buy out the Melbourne Rebels, which would end the Super Rugby saga.
Andrew Cox, the Rebels owner, says no offer is made. Ain’t this stuff great?Cox said: “No comment. We have reserved all our rights with the ARU.”
On one hand the Victorian government are quite wary about the Melbourne Rebels rugby league team folding, for reasons unknown, probably because the government staff are busy furiously researching the rugby union Wikipedia article to find out what this whole thing’s about.
More to the point, $14 million worth of contracts to stage rugby union events in Victoria, that certainly couldn’t be held elsewhere in the country, are under threat if the Rebels fold.
The Herald Sun also says that “there will also be contractual ramifications around the club’s contract with the Melbourne and Olympic Parks Trust.”
On the other hand, “rhe ARU…is believed to have been made tempting offers by the WA Government to ensure the [Force] survive.”
The reports come ahead of SANZAAR’s executive meeting in Tokyo this week, the first since the decision to cut Super Rugby from 18 teams to 15 was announced.
There have been reports that SANZAAR could take action against Australia and South Africa if they cannot come to a resolution on their teams after agreeing to the new format, but that seems unlikely, as does a possible U-turn to maintaining 18 teams, says rugby.com.au
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Coaching Summit
There’s gonna be a coaching summit and it’s going to fix all of Australian rugby’s woes.
World Cup-winning coach Bob Dwyer will be there, former national coaching director Dick Marks will be there, ARU’s general manager of high performance, Ben Whitaker, will be there, and the all the Wallabies and Super Rugby coaching staff will be there too.
“I don’t think getting everybody in one room initially would work, because those guys would demand airtime which they should given their credentials, but we’ve made contact with Bob Dwyer and Dick Marks to start off with,” Whitaker told Fox Sports.
“We certainly don’t sit there thinking we’ve got all the answers. We’re in a rut, but do players become duds overnight? Certainly not.
“We have continual dialogue with the states and we have to work really clearly together. I think everyone has got part of the answer, but we need the whole answer.
“We’re performing poorly at the moment but I do think it is something that can be fixed reasonably quickly.”
The best thing about this conference is that Alan Jones won’t be there.
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Koroibete Happy
Despite playing in a team that gives the 2016 Springboks a run for its money as ‘Team Most Resembling Crab Juice’, Marika Koroibete is happy playing for the Rebels.
“They’ve been tremendous this year and I’m proud of them as it’s a great club,” he said to rugby.com.au. “But I’ve got no regrets.”
“I’ve got a couple more games left to prove myself so hopefully I will get picked by Australia,” he added.
Coach is happy too.
“From us internally, looking at Marika’s work off the ball and his understanding of the game and getting in good positions, that’s the most pleasing thing for us,” Tony McGahan said.
“We haven’t been able to provide many clean opportunities for him in attack but his work off the ball, those things are getting better and better.”
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Brumbies Need Finish
The Brumbies are set to play the Lions this weekend, and Blake Enever reckons he knows what the Brumbies need to do.
“We’ve got to finish a game strong,” he told rugby.com.au.
“It’s just little things throughout the game, can’t quite put a finger on it all but we’ve just got to pick up our performance and put those behind us and be more clinical.
“Some major decisions throughout the game that we’ve looked back and know for the future what we’d do differently.
“We’ve learned from it and hopefully we’ll fix those things that we’ve done wrong in the past.”
Enever had even more to say: “You’ve got to match them with aggression.
“They’re a big team that love running the ball so we’ve got to get up there in defence and try to slow them down and shut their options down a lot.”
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