With a new captain at the helm for Saturday’s second Bledisloe Cup clash Australia’s coach says his team have an opportunity to continue their growth Rugby old-timers call it the hospital pass – “a pass made under pressure without considering the situation of the receiver, who is stationary and an easy target”. In the opening minutes of Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup opener, with New Zealand perched on Australia’s line, Tate McDermott was thrown a dangerously floating ball from the lineout that necessitated he raise his arms, expose his ribs, and catch the ball eye-high before readjusting to swivel it off his hips and get it to someone with half a hope of not being obliterated.One measly extra second was required but...
Australia’s coach can draw hope from a hot half hour at the MCG when they led the Bledisloe Cup Test but time is running out with the World Cup loomingPainful as Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup defeat was for the Wallabies, and frustrating as the Eddie Jones’s team were, they cannot afford to drop their heads. They must fly into Dunedin on Sunday and prepare for an All Blacks rematch on Saturday. Jones says they will “train on the plane” if they must. “Transforming a team from where they are now to a team that’s capable of beating New Zealand takes a lot of hard work. The clock’s ticking.”Ever louder for Jones himself. His grand reboot of Australian rugby is still in...
Research finds players who perform war dances reach elevated heart rates before their rivals. Is it an unsporting advantage?Should the Haka be scrapped from rugby? Let’s ask a different, less inflammatory question. If the New Zealand Haka and equivalents like the Fijian Cibi and the Tonga Sipi Tau provides an unfair advantage to those teams that perform it before kick off, should there be a limit on when and where those teams can do so?Research conducted this year at the University of Queensland’s School of Human Movement found that players who performed these war dances reached elevated heart rate levels moments before the start of the match. Those squats and lunges are the equivalent of undergoing a warm-up while the...
Australia had a spring in their step in Sydney but walked away with one of the more woeful implosions of recent yearsThe Wallabies’ trajectory this year has been, like their namesake, steadfastly up and down. Every ascent – the courageous 14-man win in Perth against England, the pounding of the Pumas in Mendoza, the demolition of South Africa in Adelaide – has been followed by a thud, as they come back to earth the following Test with a crushing defeat after a glorious victory.The inconsistency is infuriating for fans who crave momentum and want to see progress heading to next year’s World Cup on 8 September – now 12 Tests and 12 months away. But the Wallabies have not won...