Rough and tumble World Cup clash suited Eben Etzebeth and company, with Scotland sucked into playing opponent’s gameIt must be something about Marseille. For the second day running the city hosted a right rough and tumble game of rugby. It looked, for long stretches, less like a match than something dark going on down a back alley after hours in the old port, the sort of thing which you might cross the street to avoid. At one point it really did break out into a fight, when Ben White bundled Damian de Allende into touch and everyone came wading in after them. The Scotland captain, Jamie Ritchie, raced across to make his point and suddenly found himself in the unfortunate...
Serious strength and physicality will be fundamental for success but rolling mauls will not win over neutralsTwo hundred years ago no one thought Charles Darwin would amount to much. “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family,” his father told his 16-year-old son, who went on to achieve global fame for his contribution to evolutionary biology. Which just goes to show how wrong even the most up-close predictions can be.Maybe we should remember that as we assess the next stage in the evolution of rugby union. Because the temptation over the weekend was to gaze down from the press box at Twickenham and conclude that rugby is...
Young Springbok has not played on the outside in midfield since school but looked a devastating natural in his new roleCanan Moodie had never played at outside-centre in a professional game. At least, not until this super-charged Twickenham evening, as fierce a Rugby World Cup warm-up as you will see despite the one-sided scoreboard.In a match where the devastating power of the Springbok pack was again to the fore – when Jacques Nienaber selected a seven-one split in favour of forwards on the replacements’ bench – it may seem odd to focus on a back. But intelligently applied South African power is a given these days, and the 20-year-old Moodie clearly has something special. Continue reading...
Smashed in the Rugby Championship opener, the Wallabies have hit early trouble in their 2023 World Cup quest. Yet their coach says it won’t take much to get his side ‘back in the money’Eddie Jones said he wanted a “robust performance” from his new-look Wallabies. He got an insipid debacle. He told media he had coached his men to play like “mongrel dogs”. He delivered a mob of mewling pussycats. He promised fans this week was the first step toward a “smash and grab” on rugby’s greatest prize. Instead, 62-days out from the World Cup, a season that promised so much has kicked off with disaster.After all the hoopla about Jones returning as the saviour of Australian rugby, his Wallabies...
There was no thrilling Twickenham comeback this time as savvy Springboks come out on top in attritional battleAll the talk before the match was about what a tough Test this would be, England’s players and coaches spoke about how they wanted to “front up”, “take them on physically”, and “match them up front”, as the assistant coach Richard Cockerill put it: “You know what’s coming with the Springboks.” All of which was true enough. It was a nasty Test, played on a nasty evening, when winter seemed to have come rushing in all of a sudden on a stiff, swirling wind, and with a lick of drizzle. It was a game of scrums, thumps, slips, smashes, and penalties, played under...