New Zealand Rugby News
The Wallabies suffer a 12th straight defeat to the All Blacks as the home side extend their unbeaten streak at Eden Park to 54 Tests
Out come the Wallabies into the arena. The response, as you might expect, is muted. The Eden Park floodlights are starting to take effect as a beautiful evening transitions into a gloaming.
Tonight’s referee is the Cardiff-born, former Belgium international, now Irish Rugby Football Union official Andrew Brace.
Continue reading...Demand for Springboks and All Blacks outstrips hosts
England lost 42-21 to Ireland in last Twickenham game
England have been outstripped by South Africa and New Zealand in demand for tickets for the Nations Championship finals weekend at their own stadium in an embarrassing snub for Steve Borthwick’s side.
Six rankings matches will all take place at Twickenham next month – two on Friday, two on Saturday and two on Sunday – in a culmination of the competition’s first edition. The grand finale on Sunday pits the top nation in the Northern Hemisphere pool against their southern counterparts. Second plays second, third plays third and so on.
Continue reading...All Blacks were valiant in 3-1 series defeat but Springboks sent another warning to rest of the world in Baltimore
What is the enduring image of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series? The Springboks put the exclamation mark on their status as World Cup favourites by wrapping up the series 3-1 with victory in Baltimore on Saturday, but in months and years to come where will the mind immediately go when reflecting on this epic?
The reality is that after four Tests of remarkable intensity – a brutal reminder of the levels required to compete with the two biggest beasts in the world game – there are plenty. But it is hard to look beyond the 65th minute of the third Test in Soweto, when the Boks’ tank rumbled over from 20 metres. Malcolm Marx was awarded the try and there would be no more deserving recipient of a player of the series award.
Continue reading...Kurt-Lee Arendse scores from his own half to swing a 10-try thriller in Baltimore as South Africa win the series with New Zealand by three Tests to one.
Loads of emotion from the players as the anthems are sung.
Hate to venture into cliche land, but try telling them that this is just a ‘money game’.
Continue reading...New Zealand great made his name at 1995 Rugby World Cup but rapid rise to fame took a toll as his health worsened
Making a film about Jonah Lomu’s life was never going to thrill everyone. The big man’s widow, Nadene, took legal action in an unsuccessful attempt to block the project and declined to be involved. You can’t imagine Mike Catt being overly delighted either. Even 31 years later, the brutal footage of Lomu running straight over the top of England’s full-back in the 1995 World Cup semi-final in Cape Town almost merits an 18 certificate on its own.
Happily, the makers of Lomu went ahead regardless and have managed to shine a fresh light on the biggest rugby phenomenon in history. There was always way more to Jonah’s story than a huge pair of thighs and here it is, laid out in a manner that is thought-provoking, affecting and wincingly nostalgic. As the former All Blacks doctor John Mayhew puts it: “I’m disappointed he didn’t have the life he deserved to have. I wonder, even [with] the magnificent gifts he had, whether he was ever truly happy.”
Continue reading...Forecast of unfavourable weather cited as reason
Aircraft passed less than 50 feet above stadium
The South African airline Airlink has cancelled a planned flypast before Saturday’s Springboks-All Blacks rugby Test as the country’s aviation regulator reviews a similar display conducted by the airline last week.
Airlink said on Wednesday it had withdrawn its application for a formation flyby ahead of the Rugby Championship clash at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium, citing forecasts of unfavourable weather. The South African civil aviation authority (SACAA) is conducting a compliance verification of the airline’s 29 August flypast over Cape Town’s DHL Stadium.
Continue reading...Late changes to South Africa’s team smacked of mind games, but reinvigorated New Zealand remain in the hunt
The margins are slim in South Africa this past fortnight and not just on the scoreboard. According to aviation experts, one of the two planes flying over the stadium in Cape Town just before kick-off on Saturday came within 12 to 14 metres of hitting the top of the stand which, depending on your perspective, either ranks as highly-skilled piloting or the most gratuitous of matchday stunts.
Something similar could be said, as it happens, about Rassie Erasmus’s ongoing selectorial high jinks. His initial starting XV announced for the second Test bore about as much resemblance to the one that ultimately took the field as Erasmus did to the late, great Dolly Parton, with no fewer than six of the original lineup missing. It had the desired result in terms of South Africa levelling up the four-Test series at 1-1 but was yet another example of Erasmus toying with the game’s supposed conventions.
Continue reading...Cape Town stunt sparks major debate over safety risks
Airlink insist flyby conducted according to regulations
A pre-game stunt involving two passenger jets flying dramatically low over a stadium in South Africa drew huge cheers from the estimated crowd of around 56,000 people, but also sparked a major debate over safety risks.
The flyby by two Embraer jets, operated by local airline Airlink, happened on Saturday before the second rugby union Test between South Africa and New Zealand in Cape Town.
Continue reading...Second Test: South Africa 33-26 New Zealand
Kolisi and Marx inspire world champions to victory
The Boks are back. Level at one apiece in the series and back to what they do best. Blending power and directness, blood and thunder to edge out far enough ahead of New Zealand and withstand a gutsy comeback from the All Blacks. Throw in some brazen mischief from Rassie Erasmus, who swapped his entire front-row just an hour before kick-off, and this was much closer to a trademark Springboks performance after they were unrecognisable a week ago.
They were far from flawless but constantly ferocious and while All Blacks – particularly given how they finished the match – will head back for the third Test still confident they remain in the series because this was not a knockout blow by the Springboks. It was, however, some counterpunch after last week’s humbling. The third Test is scheduled for Johannesburg but they may consider relocating to Manila.
Continue reading...Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s inclusion may be a classic piece of misdirection from South Africa in their must-win match against New Zealand
On the face of it, South Africa have been beset by disruption before their most significant match since the successful defence of their World Cup title. Rassie Erasmus had sought to lean further on the Springboks’ set-piece strengths by selecting Handré Pollard at fly-half for the second Test against New Zealand in Cape Town, suggesting a narrow gameplan. A return to the tried and tested. A reliance on what he knows best. Then came news of the “niggle”.
Out goes Pollard, who, according to the Friday morning bulletin, suffered said niggle in training on Wednesday and failed a fitness test 24 hours before the match, and back comes the far more adventurous Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu into the No 10 jersey. Feinberg-Mngomezulu struggled in last week’s 33-16 defeat at Ellis Park, as he did on his comeback from injury against Argentina earlier this month, but the 24-year-old has a skill set that has marked him out as a future global star.
Continue reading...All Blacks withstand scrum onslaught then tear South Africa apart to take a 1-0 series lead in Johannesburg.
Here come the All Blacks!
Led by Ardie Savea.
Continue reading...First Test: South Africa 16-33 New Zealand
All Blacks score five tries against world champions
As first courses go, this was a delicious appetiser to a series that looks on course to live up to its billing. First blood goes to New Zealand, who withstood a barrage of South Africa scrum pressure and demonstrated a slickness that the double world champions could not live with, clinching a first win at Ellis Park since 2022.
By the end, South Africa had two men in the sin-bin and, given their status as the world’s leading side, this must goe down as a disintegration. There will be a backlash – it is hard to remember a time when South Africa were so inaccurate with the ball in hand – but credit New Zealand for producing a masterclass at weathering the storm and taking their chances.
Continue reading...South Africa welcome New Zealand for their Greatest Rivalry series with the suspicion that they plan on beating the tourists at their own game
The problem with Test weeks is that they can feel long. Cricketers can play for days on end, footballers every few nights but rugby players step on to the international stage for just 80 minutes per week. The result is a drawn-out vacuum in the buildup and if it’s not a “war of words” unfolding, it tends to be head coaches ramming home their points to the referee.
We lap it up, of course we do as we wait for Saturday to come, and though the pre-match sparring between South Africa and New Zealand is tedious to some, it is all part of the fun to others. This week in Johannesburg has been lively without crossing the line into poisonous. Suffice it to say that the referee Matt Carley is in for one hell of an afternoon in Saturday’s series opener at Ellis Park but the very fact that both Rassie Erasmus and Dave Rennie have stepped on to the offensive demonstrates the magnitude of the coming four-Test series. It promises to be a barn-burner.
Continue reading...Back-to-back world champions can use Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry to establish themselves as one of the greatest teams of all time
South Africans are supposed to care about the All Blacks more than this. On Tuesday night 14,759 people dotted the 52,000-seat Kings Park Stadium to watch New Zealand dismantle the Sharks 54-0. Durban was cold and soaked, with snow falling elsewhere in KwaZulu-Natal, but even allowing for the weather it made for an awkward advertisement for a grand new project.
Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry – the eight-match tour by New Zealand, culminating in four Tests, including one in the US – is an attempt to turn more than a century of history into a modern commercial property. The unions have formed a 50-50 venture, sharing commercial income, while taking the final Test to Baltimore is expected to generate $4m-$6m more than another game in South Africa. Both unions need the money and professional sport is supposed to generate revenue. But a rivalry cannot live on branding alone.
Continue reading...Nonu on Sharks bench after signing for South African side last week
‘I thought it was the right thing to do,’ says 104-cap former All Black
South African rugby teams love facing the haka. None have ever replied to New Zealand’s traditional pre-match challenge with another haka until Tuesday.
Ma’a Nonu stepped in front of his new Sharks teammates and performed a solo haka in what will probably be the lasting memory of a tour match the New Zealanders won 54-0 in soggy Durban.
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