One year on from the Rugby World Cup, Robert Kitson ranks the top tier sides, with the All Blacks showing no sign of losing their dominanceEighteen wins on the spin and counting. The All Blacks will not stay unbeaten forever but sometimes it feels that way. Over the next month they will face Ireland (twice), Italy and France and, barring accidents, it should be 22 straight victories by the time they fly home. The head coach, Steve Hansen, and his lieutenants deserve credit for the impressive manner in which the team has refocused and developed since retaining the Webb Ellis Cup last year. Who said Dan Carter, Richie McCaw, Ma’a Nonu et al were irreplaceable? In the shape of Aaron...
Five teams have featured as the ‘fourth nation’ in the tournament without any managing a win but Scotland will benefit by playing England and the sport should give smaller nations more regular opportunitiesWhen Scotland take to the field in Coventry on Saturday to face England in the Four Nations – a sentence that would have been barely computable in rugby league circles a few years ago – it is not only their winless run in the tournament they are trying to end as the sport breaks new ground in the Midlands.Since the Tri-Nations was extended to a four-team tournament in 2009, five teams have taken part alongside the traditional big three of Australia, New Zealand and England – but France,...
New Zealand are in imperious form but the gap between the northern and southern hemisphere teams, All Blacks excepting, may not be as great as beforeNovember is a month when the clocks have just gone back and darkness descends on the home unions in the form of the major southern hemisphere nations. This year there is some light to tickle the green shoots of hope: the All Blacks are not venturing into Britain, the Wallabies are wobbling and the Boks have lost their spring.Australia start their five-match tour in Cardiff on Saturday5 November. Given the combustibility of their head coach, Michael Cheika, in recent months – he raged in his media conference after the Auckland defeat to New Zealand last...
Australia’s dominate win over Scotland makes you question the merits of a Four Nations tournament in which only three nations provide a contestIn the original version of The Longest Yard (1974), starring Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert and James Hampton as “Caretaker”, Reynolds’ character, former NFL quarterback Paul “Wrecking” Crewe has a conversation with Albert’s prison warden Rudolph Hazen.Crewe, for a slew of reasons, has ended up in Hazen’s jail. And Hazen wants some advice from Crewe about how to improve his prison football team, otherwise he’ll further imprison Crewe because he’s been bad. Related: Australia open Four Nations with comfortable victory over Scotland Related: Rugby league Four Nations: team-by-team guide Continue reading...
The Australian’s lack of respect for his sport has rightly been clamped down upon, and while he is the only one to blame it would still be a shame if he was lost to the gameNow that the authorities have cracked down on his persistent poor behaviour, the question for Nick Kyrgios to answer – and hopefully it is one that he will be asking himself during his unexpected sabbatical – is whether he owes it to himself to explore the outer reaches of his vast talent. In the end, it is not about you, me or the paying punters he so disrespected with his shameful exhibition of indolence against Mischa Zverev in Shanghai last week, the sheer egregiousness of which compelled...