LEIGH HALFPENNY is looking at the picture of himself embracing Jonathan Davies and Jamie Roberts in the pages of Rugby World and is taken back to Saturday 6 July; he…
Countries
Rugby Championship: European refs in demand
IT'S ALWAYS nice to be wanted. It must be a strange feeling for referees, though. In an age where the men in the middle are as professional as players and…
Diary of a new academy recruit in NZ – Part Three
SINCE MY last blog on my stay at the Inside Running Academy, a huge amount of things have happened in a very short amount of time: finals, gym sessions, tough…
England’s back-row headache for Stuart Lancaster
By Alan Dymock IT’S NOT long until the Aviva Premiership season starts and we’ve only just stopped nursing our British and Irish Lions hangovers. However, with the start of the…
Rugby Championship: Minimal changes for Round 2
By Alan Dymock AS INEVITABLE as the front of the newspapers showing flaxen-haired teenage girls jumping for joy on school-results day, the big guns have made almost no changes for…
Beware the return of Juan Smith
By Alan Dymock AS RUGBY becomes more competitive, more sponsor-driven, more about the trophies than the humans involved, there is a chance that some folk could get chewed up and…
Rugby Championship: fly-half Injuries change All Blacks
By Alan Dymock THE AUSSIES have bombed the conveyer belt. After the Wallabies bumbled and bled during the Bledisloe massacre, falling 47-29 to the All Black in Sydney, they can…
Rugby Championship: What the locals are saying before Round 1
By Alan Dymock AS OUTSIDERS we can analyse and chirp and break down what we can of the Rugby Championship from our cosy hemisphere, perhaps tainted by a little bit…
Bledisloe Cup: Matt Toomua ahead of Quade Cooper for Wallabies
By Alan Dymock THE GLIB and the dry amongst us would perhaps chuckle to themselves as Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie opted not to look after his faithful servant Quade Cooper…
Bledisloe Cup: No surprises or weak links in All Blacks selection
By Alan Dymock THE SUPER Rugby semi-final in Hamilton. An hour gone. Ryan Crotty fires out a loose pass to one of his Crusaders team-mates but before it can touch…