New Zealand Rugby
The Crusaders kicked off their Super Rugby pre-season warm ups with a 28 / 15 victory over the Highlanders in Motueka.
The Crusaders played an internal match last week against a development team so this is their first match against another team.
New Zealand fly-half Luke McAlister has extended his contract with French Top 14 side Toulouse by two years plus the option of a further year, the club have revealed on Thursday.
The South African Blitzbokke Sevens team head into the weekend’s Wellington Sevens in New Zealand looking for a 3rd successive tournament title in what would be a first for the South Africans.
The last time any team could win 3 consecutive tournaments on the IRB Sevens World Series was in 2010 when Samoa took the honours in the USA, Australia and Hong Kong.
Highlanders wing Buxton Popoalii will miss the entire Super Rugby season to focus on recovering from surgery planned for later this month.
The Highlanders, Crusaders and Blues have named their squads for this weekend’s warm-up games in preparation for Super Rugby 2014.
The Highlanders have added Clarke Dermody to boost their prop stocks.
The Crusaders coach, Todd Blackadder, has named a new-look 30-=man squad to face the Highlanders on the weekend, including some players who have never played Super Rugby.
Sir John Kirwan has named his squad to face the Waratahs, once again Benji Marshall gets the nod at flyhalf.
Auckland teenager Akira Ioane is set to make his international debut in the Wellington leg of the IRB Sevens World Series this weekend.
Maori lock Hayden Triggs has been called into the Blues squad to replace the injured Culum Retallick.
Double Super Rugby champions the Chiefs have announced that they will continue to use a co-captaincy system in 2014 with Liam Messam and Aaron Cruden acting as co-captains.
Crusaders’ coach Todd Blackadder gave his team a pass mark after their internal Super Rugby warm up against a development team at Rugby Park on Saturday.
The Crusaders played their Knights’ development team in game made up of three 20-minute intervals and won the match 67-5.
KFC today announced its sponsorship of the five New Zealand Super Rugby teams in this year’s Investec Super Rugby competition, which kicks off on 15 February.
The headlines were all about Benji Marshall, but the real winners were the Hurricanes.
The Hurricanes spoiled Marshall’s party, his debut in Rugby Union after his conversion from Rugby League, as they came from behind to beat the Blues 38-35 in their pre-season outing in Masterton on Saturday.
The former Kiwi League captain, Marshall, played in the first half and some of the New Zealand media reports raved about his performance.
It is 2 weeks prior to the kick off of 2 brand new Rugby Tournaments and just less than a month away from kick off of the 3rd Tournament – Super Rugby.
We will have SuperBru Widgets up in the Righthand sidebar for these 3 Pools, for easy access to make your PICKS, go to the POOLS and see an abbreviated version of the LOG in each pool (Top 10).
Rugby-Talk SuperBru pools are open to all REGISTERED RUGBY-TALK SUBSCRIBERS, so if you are not yet registered, get clicking man!
As is the custom and the excitement, Rugby-Talk will be taking part in rugby competitions on SuperBru in 2014 again, but at the end of last year we took it a step further, we also formed our own SuperBru Club, the Rugby-Talk.com Club. The Club gives us an added and combined interface, where messages are posted in the “Social Room”, where the current Rugby-Talk Bru Pools are detailed in the “Games Room”, where members are tabled in the “Members Wall” and where medal standings and tables are displayed in the “Trophy Room”.
So, firstly, join up to the 3 NEW POOLS and also join up at the Rugby-Talk.com Club!
The details are as follows:
The Highlanders kicked off their Super Rugby pre-season warm-up games with a 15-11 victory over Australian rivals the Brumbies at the Queenstown Recreation Ground in Queenstown.
The injured Springbok Sevens duo of Seabelo Senatla and Rosko Specman will return to South Africa and will be replaced by Jamba Ulengo and Kwagga Smith for the Wellington Sevens on 7 – 8 February, the South African Rugby Union (SARU) confirmed on Thursday.
The two wings sustained ankle injuries during last weekend’s Las Vegas Sevens, where the Bok Sevens team won the tournament title for a second successive year. Smith and Ulengo will join the squad on Saturday.
Star recruit Benji Marshall has been handed the No 10 jersey for the Blues’ opening pre-season match against the Hurricanes in Masterton on Saturday.
The 28-year-old Marshall will play the first 40 minutes at flyhalf, with head coach Sir John Kirwan confirming he had been impressed with the way in which the former Rugby League Wests Tiger player had taken to the playmaker role.
All Black captain Richie McCaw may be moved around by the Crusaders this season, according to coach Todd Blackadder.
It appears Matt Todd is the preferred choice at No 7 for the Crusaders and when he returns from a chest injury next month, McCaw may well be wearing another number on his back.
All Black Brad Thorn is “helping” with the conditioning of the Highlanders and may turn to coaching.
Hurricanes head coach Mark Hammett has named his 27-man team to face the Blues in Masterton this Saturday.
Ma’a Nonu admitted that the Blues fans may not embrace him after his highly publicised walk-out on the franchise in 2012.
The return to action of the veteran midfielder, who re-joined the Blues squad this week along with the rest of the All Blacks, will be delayed by an injury.
David Pocock will make his return from injury when he leads the Brumbies in their pre-season clash with the Highlanders in Queenstown this weekend.
Highlanders’ head coach, Jamie Joseph, has named an inexperienced starting XV to play the Brumbies at Queenstown Recreation Ground on Friday.
Seven players in the starting XV will pull on the Highlanders jersey for the first time, namely; Craig Millar, Gareth Evans, Lee Allan, Tom Franklin, Richard Buckman, Winston Stanley and Patrick Osborne.
He may have a long way to go, but former Rugby League star Benji Marshall has set his sights on eventually playing for the All Blacks.
The talented new Blues recruit is set to take his first steps on that journey when the Auckland franchise face the Hurricanes in a pre-season friendly this weekend, but he has made it clear that the ultimate goal is to play Test rugby for New Zealand.
Hurricanes wing and centre Alapati Leiua is believed to have signed a three year deal with London Wasps that will see him moving to England after the Super Rugby season.
South Africa defended their Las Vegas Sevens successfully when they defeated New Zealand 14-7 in another dramatic and tense Cup final between the two rugby rivals in the early hours of Monday morning (SA time).
The teams were tied 7-all at halftime after Scott Curry had opened the scoring for New Zealand and Branco du Preez replied for the Springbok Sevens.
New Zealand were dealt a big blow ahead of their home leg of the IRB Sevens World Series.
The Kiwis, who lost to South Africa in the Cup Final at the Las Vegas leg at the weekend, will be without the services of Sam Dickson, who was handed a nine-game ban for eye-gouging in their final pool match against Fiji.
In December 2013 and January 2014 we looked at Squad Contenders in the SA Super Rugby participating franchises. This tiime we will focus on the SA Conference Coaches for Super Rugby 2014.
We’ll have a look at all the head coaches and briefly their assistant staff, for the various South African Super Rugby franchises.
We look at their history and discuss their coaching styles and speculate about what can be expected.
Chiefs hooker Hika Elliot has been training with his team-mates but a decision on his short and long term playing future will have to be made.
The Super Rugby winning hooker has a serious neck injury which could force him into retiring from playing rugby altogether.
Blues coach Sir John Kirwan has revealed that his big name new signing Benji Marshall is likely to wear the No 10 jersey.
The excitement in Grant Doorey’s husky Australian voice was palpable, as the Blues assistant coach looked on while the backs ran through their attacking strike moves.
“I said the first time I had the backs group together that there wouldn’t be any backs coach in Super Rugby that was as excited as me in terms of the quality he had in his room so we’ve got real star quality across the park,” Doorey said.
Jackson Willison is the latest player to ink a lucrative contract with an overseas club, signing a two-year deal with Top 14 French outfit Grenoble.
Auckland player Akira Ioane has had to withdraw from the team for the Las Vegas Sevens tournament and has been replaced by Manawatu’s George Tilsley.
This is the 8th and last article in the series of Bulls Squad Contenders for Super Rugby 2014. We do 2 articles per week per South African Super Rugby participating franchise.
We discuss the players IN the Super Rugby Group, and not all the options beyond that.
In this Article we look at the contenders for BACK THREE in the Vodacom Bulls 2014 Super Rugby group, and whether they could force their way into Bok contention.
This is the 8th and last article in the series of Cell C Sharks Squad Contenders for Super Rugby 2014. We do 2 articles per week per South African Super Rugby participating franchise.
We discuss the players IN the Super Rugby Group, and not all the options beyond that.
In this Article we look at the contenders for BACK THREE in the Cell C Sharks 2014 Super Rugby group, and whether they could force their way into Bok contention.
This is the 8th and last in the series of Stormers Squad Contenders for Super Rugby 2014. We do 2 articles per week per South African Super Rugby participating franchise.
We discuss the players IN the Super Rugby Group, and not all the options beyond that.
In this Article we look at the contenders for BACK THREE in the DHL Stormers 2014 Super Rugby group, and whether they could force their way into Bok contention.
This is the 8th and last in the series of Cheetahs Squad Contenders for Super Rugby 2014. We did 2 articles per week per South African Super Rugby participating franchise.
We discuss the players IN the Super Rugby Group, and not all the options beyond that.
In this Article we look at the contenders for BACK THREE in the Toyota Cheetahs 2014 Super Rugby group, and whether they could force their way into Bok contention.