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...
While New Zealand focus on skills training in their youth teams, too many others emphasise strength and conditioning to the detriment of players’ ability to thinkHow do you solve a problem like New Zealand? It has been a question that has been asked down the ages and as the All Blacks troop to Soldier Field in Chicago on Saturday looking for a 19th Test victory at Ireland’s expense, heads are being scratched harder than ever. And for Australia’s head coach, Michael Cheika, after his grumpy media conference following his side’s latest defeat to their rivals, irritation has become the sincerest form of flattery. Related: Jerome Kaino: ‘I do feel American, I like it when I see rugby growing in America’...
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 face Argentina in the Rugby Championship at Twickenham on Saturday as the Sanzar nations take drastic measures to stimulate financial growthWhen Australia last played Argentina away in the Rugby Championship, the game was staged in Mendoza. On Saturday, the sides will meet at Twickenham, the Pumas playing home and away as the Sanzar nations look for ways to stimulate financial growth.The Mendoza match attracted a crowd of 25,000; when the two sides met in Perth last month, fewer than 17,000 turned up. Even if Twickenham is half full this weekend, the attendance would exceed that of the two matches in the Rugby Championship on the round before last. The last four matches between Australia and Argentina in the tournament...
The relentless treadmill of the professional game is leaving a trail of battered bodies and a sport in need of a streamlined Test scheduleThe perfect global rugby season will never exist. Well, maybe it does on paper but not in reality. There are competing hemispheres, unions and clubs to pacify, not to mention different financial imperatives, audiences, time-zones and ambitions. Sticking half-a-dozen adolescent ferrets down your trousers simultaneously is slightly less problematic.Now imagine all six ferrets arriving with their own legal advisers and you begin to grasp the unenviable situation facing World Rugby as it attempts to broker a schedule that suits everyone. Small wonder the initial proposals to have emerged from negotiations have fallen short of jaw-dropping. A suspension...