Super Rugby
The Cell C Sharks, through their very vocal Director of Rugby / Coach, Jake White, certainly bombards us with news on their endeavours!
It is reported that Tonderai Chavanga now trains with the Sharks squad, in an attempt to revive his Super Rugby aspirations.
In other news, Jake White describes Ryan Kankowski (Kanko) as a player with X-Factor.
Whilst the Cell C Sharks take on the Lions in a double-header of clashes at Ellis Park on Friday, the Sharks website have declared that the Cell C Sharks are ready for the season of Super Rugby.
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.
Western Force head coach Michael Foley has named a 34-man squad to play Samoa A in their first Super Rugby warm up fixture at Lark Hill Sports Complex in Rockingham on Friday.
Matt Hodgson will lead the side that features both of the club’s Wallaby representatives from last year’s Spring Tour in winger Nick Cummins and No.8 Ben McCalman.
Following the pre-season hit-out against Saracens on 25 January, the next challenge on the Cell C Sharks schedule is a double-header set of matches against the Lions at Ellis Park next Friday night.
Their preparations for Vodacom Super Rugby – aside from what they do on the training pitch and in the gym – involve just two warm-up games before the competition gets going. Their first match will be against the Bulls at Growthpoint KINGS PARK in two weeks’ time, and by the time the match kicks off, they would have had the two warm-ups to prepare.
Maori lock Hayden Triggs has been called into the Blues squad to replace the injured Culum Retallick.
The Southern Kings will have to appoint a new captain for the game on Friday when they take on the DHL Stormers (in a pre-season Super Rugby warm-up game for the Stormers) at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.
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.
Victor Matfield has revealed his ambitions to coach the Springboks in future.
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.
Southern Kings stand-in coach Robbie Kempson feels his charges require a major “mind-shift” or they won’t convert close defeats into victories.
The Kings have been “competitive” in back-to-back outings against Super Rugby franchises – losing 21-36 to the Cheetahs last week, before running the Lions even closer (a 12-19 loss) this past weekend.
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 Vodacom Bulls loose forward Arno Botha has been ruled out of rugby for at least six months after picking up an ACL injury against the DHL Stormers in Saturday’s season opening friendly in Polokwane, team doctor Org Strauss confirmed on Monday.
The injury, which will see Botha miss most of the 2014 Vodacom Super Rugby season, came in his first match back after injuring the same knee in June last year, which ruled him out of the rest of the 2013 season.
Lions coach Johan Ackermann will be sweating over the fitness of two key players, following his team’s 19-12 win over the Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth at the weekend.
With their final pre-season outing, before their return to Super Rugby in a fortnight, against the Sharks at Ellis Park on Friday, the last thing Ackermann needed was serious injuries.
However, both fullback Andries Coetzee and lock Rudi Matthee looks set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines.
Victor Matfield made his return to the playing field, but it was not enough to prevent the Stormers recording an impressive 26-19 win at the Peter Mokaba Stadium on Saturday.
The Super Rugby pre-season outing in Polokwane was a double blow for the Bulls, who will also be concerned about another knee injury suffered by star loose forward Arno Botha, the extent of which is knot known at this juncture, although it seemed a serious injury.
It was a strong second half performance and a late try that secured the win for the Stormers, who outscored the Bulls by four tries to three.
The Toyota Cheetahs finally hit their stride, after a couple of pre-season wobbles.
The men from Bloemfontein recorded a comfortable 31-6 win over the Pumas in their final Super Rugby warm-up match in Bloemfontein on Saturday.
The Lions continued their build-up to their Super Rugby return with a 19-12 win over the Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth on Saturday.
Flanks Jaco Kriel and Derick Minnie crossed for tries in the first 15 minutes to set up the victory for a Lions team that has now beaten the Kings three times in four meetings in the past year.
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.
Australia international James O’Connor will leave London Irish after completing his six-month contract at the end of the season, the English Premiership club announced.
Springbok wing JP Pietersen made a big impact when he came on as a substitute for the Panasonic Wild Knights in their Japanese league semi-final on Saturday.
Panasonic thrashed the Toshiba Brave Lupus 55-15 to book their spot in the final.
Victor Matfield, one of the most decorated players in the history of South African rugby, will make his return to the playing field for the Vodacom Bulls in Vodacom Super, the Blue Bulls Company (Pty) Ltd confirmed on Friday.
Matfield is a former Springbok captain with 110 Test caps behind his name – only John Smit, with 111 caps, has played more Tests for South Africa. He also lead the Vodacom Bulls to all three their Vodacom Super Rugby titles, in 2007, 2009 and 2010.
It could not have been a worse start to the year for the Brumbies – losing their opening trial match and seeing star back Pat McCabe go down again.
McCabe, who has already overcome a neck fracture twice, was returning to action when he suffered a head knock as the Brumbies were overrun 15-11 by the Highlanders in a trial match in Queenstown on Friday.
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 Bulls are expected to provide a stern pre-season test for the relatively young Stormers tight five in Polokwane on Saturday.
The versatile Rynhardt Elstadt is the oldest in the Stormers engine room at just 24, although he and loosehead prop Steven Kitshoff have three years of Super Rugby experience whilst Frans Malherbe and Scarra Ntubeni both toured with the Springboks at the end of last year.
It may be the newest rivalry in Super Rugby, but they don’t get much more appetizing and entertaining than the Southern Kings against the Lions.
We can thank the South African Rugby Union and its bungling for creating this delectable showdown for us.
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.
Dr. Sherylle Calder, the world-renowned Visual Skills and Performance Specialist joins the Cell C Sharks as a consultant, on a two-year contract, effective immediately.
Jake White has, repeatedly in the past, taken teams from the doldrums to the top of their game.
He took the South African Under-21 from being no-hopers to winning a world title, the Springboks from ranked sixth in the world to No.1 and winning a World Cup, and more recently he took the Brumbies from finishing 13th out of 15 teams in 2011 to finalists last year.
Lions coaches, Johan Ackermann and Russel Winter, have named the 2 sides which will face the Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth and Polokwane respectively, to take on the Southern Kings and Vodacom Blue Bulls.
Sharks coach Jake White has confirmed that he left London after his team’s friendly match against Saracens last weekend feeling that most of the questions that he was asking had been answered.
Although the team considered by most to be the likely South African flag-bearer in this year’s Vodacom Super Rugby competition lost 23-15 on an inclement northern hemisphere day, White said in his post trip wash-out that he had always told the players to be realistic about what they could expect against the inform English side so early in the new year.
Rebels coach Tony McGahan has named four trial teams to play against the Waratahs in a Super Rugby warm up match to be held in Albury.
The match is the Rebels first trial match of the 2014 pre-season and with temperatures predicted to soar over 40 degrees, the match will be played in quarters and will feature nearly the entire Rebels squad, as well as two trialists.
Kurtley Beale, back in the Waratahs light blue for the first time since 2011, will pull on the No. 10 jersey when he lines up against his old team mates the Melbourne Rebels in a warm-up game in Albury on Saturday.
Also starting are fellow newcomers Jono Lance, who joins the Waratahs from the Reds, and Australian U20s and sevens player Tala Gray.
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.
The competition for starting berths for the 2014 Super 15 is hotting up. It is reported that coach Naka Drotské has selected Caylib Oosthuizen to start in the loosehead position ahead of Bok Trevor Nyakane, based on form shown in the prior warm-up matches played.
Springbok captain Jean de Villiers is expecting another long Super Rugby season with the Stormers without much rest or rotation.
The experienced centre has recently returned from a month’s break after a 2013 season which saw him play almost every possible fixture for the Springboks, Stormers and Western Province, and he expects more of the same this year.
Victor Matfield, who became a father for the third time on Wednesday, is expected to confirm his return to the playing field later this week.
Matfield’s name was omitted from the Bulls’ team ahead of their warm-up match against the Stormers at the Peter Mokaba Stadium on Saturday, when coach Frans Ludeke unveiled two teams for the trip to Polokwane.