New Zealand Rugby
EWEN MCKENZIE: ‘‘Steve has got lots of thoughts. I enjoy reading his thoughts. Last week he was picking the team. This week he’s wondering about our improvement.”
This time, Ewen McKenzie couldn’t bite his tongue.
Two weeks in a row All Blacks coach Steve Hansen fired barbs his way – the first about the Australian Rugby Union influencing Kurtley Beale’s selection and this week questioning how much more the Wallabies had to give.
Before yesterday, McKenzie wasn’t biting. But, finally, the Wallabies coach couldn’t help throwing out one subtle jab.
“Steve has got lots of thoughts. I enjoy reading his thoughts,” McKenzie began.
“Last week he was picking the team. This week he’s wondering about our improvement. We’ll just concentrate on what we’re about. That worked alright for us last week.”
Waikato 27 / 58 Canterbury
Canterbury look unstoppable in this year’s ITM Cup after another slick showing in their second outing, putting Waikato away to the tune of 58-27 in Hamilton tonight.
Round one of the Rugby Championship is done and dusted, and it would seem as if the rain was the winner in both games.
Two players picked a draw between the Wallabies and All Blacks and are sitting pretty on 3 log points.
Well done Angostura and Charo, brave call to go for a draw and the rewards for bravery means a yellow cap for Angos.
Selectors are sitting targets, an inevitable butt for criticism of the teams that did not quite work out.
But there are times when they are entitled to congratulate themselves, never more than when a single selection meeting launches not just one, but two or more outstanding international careers.
Richie McCaw, does he still have plenty to offer?
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen disagrees Richie McCaw is a fading force but insists neither he, nor his captain, will be afraid to make the right call to end his illustrious career.
On either side of the Tasman, there are growing concerns an ageing McCaw won’t make it to next year’s World Cup.
The Wallabies are brimming with confidence and have challenged the All Blacks to bring their A game to tomorrow night’s test at Eden Park in Auckland.
The Australian side arrived in Auckland yesterday and have their captain’s run this afternoon.
They come to Auckland having not won at Eden Park since 1986 but captain Michael Hooper said at a press conference it was not something that bothered his side.
SOBERING NIGHT IN SYDNEY: Is All Black coach Steve Hansen running out of ideas for his All Blacks?
Love the rain. Give me a stick of dynamite and I would blow the roof off the Millennium Stadium. Wet weather rugby is a whole new ball game. It demands a higher skill level, a flexible tactical mind and it gives the fate of the contest to the forwards.
Suddenly these All Blacks didn’t look half the team that some people had assumed they were.
Don’t tell me the conditions were impossible or that they ruined the spectacle. And don’t tell it to the 39,523 people, it is still hard to believe the size of the crowd, who were jammed into Wellington’s Athletic Park back in 1996.
The conditions that day were far worse than they were in Sydney last weekend, because a howling wind drove the rain, but those All Blacks played the rugby of the gods.
Referee Jaco Peyper gives a yellow card to Beauden Barrett of the All Blacks during the Bledisloe Cup opener
The performance of Romain Poite in this weekend’s Bledisloe Cup re-match will be under more scrutiny than ever after provocative comments from the All Blacks and Poite’s contemporary Jonathan Kaplan this week.
Kaplan, who refereed 68 Test matches, including seven Bledisloe Cup battles to become the most experienced international referee before his retirement last year, opened the batting with a defence of Jaco Peyper, who has come under fire for his officiating of the Wallabies’ 12-12 draw in Sydney last week.
Brad Thorn: Still going strong at 39
Brad Thorn will continue his incredible 444-game career beyond his 40th birthday with English rugby giants, Leicester.
Meanwhile another code-hopper is preparing for his own return to action with Sonny Bill Williams hoping to return for Sydney Roosters either this weekend or next.
Williams will be hoping to sign off in rugby league – for now anyway – with a second straight NRL premiership before he returns to Hamilton to re-join Super Rugby’s Chiefs.
Both Williams and Thorn are incredible cross-code stories. But who deserves the mantle as the greatest code-hopper of all time?
Kiwi straight-shooter Steve Hansen says the All Blacks can lift 10 or 12 notches from their Bledisloe-opening draw but doubts whether the Wallabies can rise any further.
Hansen has reacted to the 12-12 Sydney stalemate like a loss and admitted widespread criticism of his team’s poor display was wholly warranted.
He said New Zealand needed to improve “just about everything” to continue their amazing 32-Test Eden Park streak on Saturday night.
All Black coach Steve Hansen.
It was no consolation at all to All Blacks coach Steve Hansen that a post-game meeting with last week’s referee Jaco Peyper yielded a frank “mea culpa” from the South African whistle-blower.
Hansen factored a poor refereeing performance into the contributing reasons for a sub-par All Black performance in last week’s 12-12 draw with the Wallabies in Sydney to open the Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup series.
Sonny Bill Williams’ training session in Apia ended with the league star giving his shoes and socks to Toe Evile.
“Shoeless” Joe Jackson got his nickname during a mill game played in Greenville, South Carolina. Jackson suffered from blisters on his foot from a new pair of cleats, and they hurt so much that he had to take his shoes off before an at bat.
As play continued, a heckling fan noticed Jackson running to third base in his socks, and shouted “You shoeless son of a gun, you!” and the resulting nickname “Shoeless Joe” stuck with him throughout the remainder of his life.
Will a similar fate await Sonny Bill Williams? The Good Samaritan was also left shoeless after obliging a fan in Samoa.
A youthful Phil Kearns and David Campese showing off the World Cup in 1991.
According to those Wallabies who have played there, nothing is particularly forbidding about the graveyard of Eden Park. It’s not the sound of a hostile crowd, or the reverberation of the grandstand above the visitors’ dressing room.
The spookiest part for those in gold jumpers is the number: how many years it has been since Australia last beat the All Blacks at the famous Auckland ground.
Twenty-eight years… Boo!
Alan Jones coached the Wallabies in 1986, and he knew in the opening 20 minutes of the third and deciding Test of the series that his Wallabies were about to carve out their own slice of Bledisloe Cup history.
“I knew they would throw the kitchen sink at us,” Jones recalls. “I picked up that vibe by my contacts around the pubs and so on.”
From the fringe to centre stage, Ryan Crotty will start his first test for the All Blacks in Saturday’s rematch with the Wallabies at Eden Park.
After seven cameos from the bench in the past 12 months, which included scoring the match-winning try against Ireland to seal last year’s prefect season, Crotty now gets the chance to push his case in a big occasion.
IT starts at Auckland airport customs and grows from there.
When Wallaby great Tim Horan closes his eyes and thinks of the infamous Eden Park curse, he recalls an aura that assaults your senses long before you lace on your boots.
“It starts from the time you arrive at customs in Auckland,” Horan said of Australia’s winless streak there since 1986.
Tony Johnson
I’m not sure I can remember a game from South Africa in which it rained so heavily. We get a fair bit of that in New Zealand, but Pretoria? Is this global warming in action?
And Sydney turned on a bit of a shocker for the first Bledisloe Cup test, contributing to an error-ridden, penalty infested stalemate.
The Springboks will be happy to get out of a tricky game with a win, and they’re the only team to have one of those right now!
Former All Black Chris Jack is building a new career.
In his heyday, former lock Chris Jack was accustomed to being lifted in countless lineouts. These days, he’s the one doing the heavy lifting.
The 35-year-old has taken up a building apprenticeship, a move which saw him hang up the boots after 14 years of professional rugby.
“It’s rewarding but it’s a big learning curve having not done much outside of school except professional rugby,” Jack says.
Ewen McKenzie
Ewen McKenzie has stuck solid with his Wallaby side from the opening Bledisloe Cup clash to prevent dual droughts continuing in Auckland; a twelfth year without the prized trophy, and a 29th without victory at Eden Park.
But aside from on-field personnel, the Wallabies coach has continued to tinker with many of the team’s preparation and behavioural habits to snap both hoodoos against the All Blacks.
Though individually small, the changes are designed to add up to the Wallabies psychologically breaking the shackles of a long-run of defeat against New Zealand.
Brad Thorn: Still going strong at 39
Leicester Tigers have confirmed the arrival of World Cup-winning former All Black second row Brad Thorn.
39-year-old New Zealander was referred to by Tigers director of rugby Richard Cockerill as “one of the great all-time rugby players the world has ever seen.” He is expected at the club at the end of September.
Thorn became the first player to win World Cup, Super Rugby and Heineken Cup titles and arrives from the Highlanders having previously represented the Crusaders and Leinster.
“He is a very driven individual,” Cockerill told the Leicester Mercury.
“He wants to play in the Premiership and he wants to win the Premiership.”
Romain Poite, the most influential Frenchman since Inspector Clouseau
IF Wallabies fans were dismayed by the whistle-happy performance of referee Jaco Peyper last weekend, they will be equally alarmed to hear that Frenchman Romain Poite is in charge of Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup return bout in Auckland.
Poite controlled last year’s big third Test defeat to the British & Irish Lions in a game in which the Wallabies front row was hammered by the referee.
Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie has named an unchanged line-up for Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup encounter, convinced the team that drew 12-all in the series opener in Sydney can topple the All Blacks at their Eden Park fortress.
McKenzie resisted calls to reinstate Bernard Foley at five-eighth to retain Kurtley Beale as Australia’s chief playmaker as the Wallabies bid to break their 28-year drought in Auckland.
Beale had an influential game in the first Test, kicking all of Australia’s points and McKenzie is backing the mercurial match-winner to continue sparking the Wallabies attack in more favourable conditions this weekend.
Extra-Time for Bledisloe Cup matches will not be introduced following the 12-12 draw between the Wallabies and All Blacks last Saturday.
SANZAR believes there is no need to change to laws as they stand, and given the rarity of tied results, they have no doubt there will be a clear winner of The Rugby Championship tournament within which the Bledisloe is contested.
Richie McCaw
The New Zealand media is an unforgiving animal, pouncing at the very first sight of a potential weakness.
In the wake of a rare draw, after a 17-Test winning run, the question is now being raised: ‘Is this All Black team on the slide?’
NZ Herald columnist Chris Rattue suggested the All Blacks appeared to have peaked and are now sliding towards rugby mortality – where the rest of the world resides.
“Are these All Blacks any longer the indomitable force that we like to portray them as?,” Rattue suggested.
There has been no change in the Top 12 of the IRB world rankings following the opening round of The Rugby Championship.
Despite seeing their 17-Test win streak end in Sydney thanks to a 12-12 draw with the Wallabies, New Zealand continue to lead the way on 93.42 points.
The Wallabies, courageous in their efforts – and perhaps a little unlucky – remain in third position on 87.32.
The All Blacks were left feeling “hollow” and “gutted” after their record-equalling test win streak came to a limp end on Saturday night at the Olympic stadium.
To that they might have added relieved at escaping with a draw they scarcely deserved.
Truth be told, the All Blacks were fortunate indeed to slip out of Sydney with a 12-12 stalemate that was flattering to them, after being outplayed in the second half by a Wallabies outfit who just weren’t good enough to close out a victory that was theirs for the taking.
If Michael Hooper could have turned back time, perhaps he would have revised his decision-making in the closing stages of the opening half of last night’s saturated Bledisloe Cup stalemate in Sydney.
Instead, as he reflected on a 12-12 draw that at least ended the All Blacks 17-test winning run, the Wallabies captain and influential openside flanker had to concede: “We’re in the same position as we were two hours ago.”
That means the Wallabies must win at Eden Park for the first time since 1986, in seven days time, to maintain any hope of reclaiming the symbol of trans-Tasman rugby supremacy at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium in October.
Wallabies (3) 12 / 12 (9) All Blacks (Final Score)
The Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks did battle in The Rugby Championship at
ANZ Stadium, Sydney at 12:00 SA Time (20:00 AEST, 22:00 NZ Time, 10:00 GMT).
This was the live match discussion Article.
The match was broadcast LIVE on SuperSport 1 on TV in SA.
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New Zealand side perform the haka before taking on South Africa in Richmond, Surrey, reportedly in April 1916. No further details of the match exist, with the All Blacks’ last official Test coming in August 1914.
Rugby Union did not shut down completely with the declaration of war in August 1914.
Australia and New Zealand were, as dominions of the British Empire, included in Britain’s declaration on 4 August, but inevitably the matter was less urgent.
The machinery of military recruitment clicked into action and the Wellington Rugby Union cancelled its programme of second, third and fourth grade matches on the following Saturday to enable players to attend volunteer parades. But war caught both countries in mid-season and with the All Blacks part way through a tour of Australia.
The Rugby Championship kicks off Saturday when Australia host the All Blacks in Sydney.
The New Zealand All Blacks are on a run of 17 wins and could set the record for the most successive Test wins for a Tier 1 nation, should they win.
None of the current Wallaby squad has ever held the Bledisloe Cup, Australia has last won that in 2003.
All Blacks centre Conrad Smith is out of tomorrow’s Bledisloe Cup test in Sydney after returning home for the birth of his first child.
Smith will join wife Lee-Ann in Wellington, with Canterbury midfielder Ryan Crotty called in as cover and likely to start from the bench. Malakai Fekitoa is expected to take Smith’s spot at centre outside Ma’a Nonu.
New Zealand Haka
The Haka has been a contentious issue of late, and here, courtesy of Fox Sports, we bring you the top 5 responses to the challenge.
Personally, I feel that the IRB has erred in placing so many restrictions on the opposition sides regarding their response, all it means is that they must meekly stand X amount of yards away without being allowed to properly take up the challenge.
Come on IRB, grow a pair and allow the opposition to give as good as they get. It’s not as if it has an averse effect on the men in black, they still win most of the games.
All Black coach Steve Hanson with captain Richie McCaw
Steve Hansen is “dumbfounded” by Ewen McKenzie’s selection of Kurtley Beale at first-five ahead of Bernard Foley for Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup test in Sydney, suggesting the Wallabies coach might have been told to select him because of an apparent interest by rugby league.
The comments by the All Blacks coach came this afternoon ahead of the test at ANZ Stadium where Australian confidence will be high following the Waratahs’ recent Super Rugby triumph at the same venue.
Canada will face former champions England in the final of Women’s Rugby World Cup 2014 on Sunday at the Stade Jean Bouin after they enjoyed contrasting semi-final victories in the French capital.
England booked their place in a sixth Women’s Rugby World Cup final after an emphatic 40-7 victory over first-time semi-finalists Ireland, the Red Roses finally producing the all-round performance they had been craving.
Steve Hansen has sprung a Bledisloe selection surprise of his own, picking the in-form Ben Smith at fullback and dropping a fully fit Israel Dagg for the first time since he became the first-choice All Blacks No 15 three years ago.
The All Blacks coach has decided to stick with the back three that played the last two tests against England in June, which means there’s no room for Dagg in the squad of 23 to open the Rugby Championship against the Wallabies in Sydney on Saturday night.