Veteran playmaker Kurtley Beale has earnt a shock recall for the Wallabies after he was one of 38 players named in Joe Schmidt’s first squad as Australian coach that includes 13 uncapped players.
The Breakdown | Ireland and South Africa should be mates but have rugby’s hottest rivalry
Next month’s Test double-header on South African soil will write a new chapter in an increasingly rancorous struggle
No sooner had Ireland claimed a 13-8 win over South Africa in the Rugby World Cup last year – an epic tussle in a tournament littered with all-time encounters – a thumping rendition of the Cranberries’ Zombie rang out around Stade de France. The song’s connections with the Troubles, the IRA and Ireland’s struggle for peace was lost on most South African fans that sweaty Saturday night in Paris. Their primary reaction to Ireland’s adopted anthem was rage.
“What’s in your heeeeaad, in your heeeeeeeaaaaad!” It was hard for them not to feel this was meant as a jibe; that the Irish, who have never seen their players lift the sport’s most glittering trophy, who had never even seen them reach the semi-finals of a World Cup, were rubbing South African noses in their success. That their No 1-ranked team had wormed their way into the subconscious of every South African by relegating the Boks to a stepping stone on their march to glory. The face of Rassie Erasmus, South African rugby’s god-king, said it all. He was seething. What was a friendly rivalry had now become personal.
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Continue reading...Connor Garden-Bachop, New Zealand rugby union player, dies aged 25
- Highlanders outside back died on Monday following a ‘medical event’
- Garden-Bachop represented the Māori All Blacks in two Tests in 2022
Otago Highlanders outside back Connor Garden-Bachop died on Monday at the age of 25 following a medical event, New Zealand Rugby has said.
Garden-Bachop, who made his Highlanders debut in 2021, was on the team’s roster this season but parted ways with the Super Rugby Pacific club after their latest campaign finished in the quarter-finals.
Continue reading...Super Rugby player Connor Garden-Bachop dies aged 25
New Zealand rugby player Connor Garden-Bachop has died aged 25.
Wallabies star Carter Gordon turns back on rugby union and joins NRL’s Titans
- Member of 2023 World Cup squad signs two-year deal on Gold Coast
- Five-eighth was looking for new club after demise of Rebels
Gold Coast have pulled off a stunning signing coup with Wallabies five-eighth Carter Gordon to join the club in another huge blow to Australian rugby. The 23-year-old, who will join the Titans next year until the end of 2026, was a key member of the Wallabies World Cup squad in 2023 and played No 10 for the now defunct Melbourne Rebels.
Gordon will join fellow World Cup star Mark Nawaqanitawase in the NRL next year with Test winger signing with the Sydney Roosters from the NSW Waratahs. Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i is heading the other way, switching to rugby union from the Sydney Roosters next season.
Continue reading...‘This is real now’: Tears as ‘sad’ reality sinks in after Melbourne Rebels play final game
The Wellington Hurricanes overcame a slow start to win their quarter-final 47-20 against the Melbourne Rebels, who farewelled the Super Rugby in fighting fashion.
‘It’s a sad time’: Rebels bid emotional farewell in last ever Super Rugby Pacific match
- Hurricanes end Melbourne’s hopes of fairytale finish with 47-20 victory
- Financially-stricken club to now be closed down after 14 seasons
Tears among the Rebels players have signalled the end for Melbourne, whose place in Super Rugby Pacific was brought to a close by a quarter-final loss to the Hurricanes. The Rebels were given almost no chance of upsetting the table-topping Hurricanes in Wellington on Saturday, but held them to an eight-point margin at half-time on the back of some desperate defence.
That took its toll, with the home side piling on five second-half tries to post a 47-20 victory. Rebels winger Lachie Anderson scored a late double but the Hurricanes remained on track for the semi-finals.
Continue reading...‘Mad scenes’ as England international puts fan in headlock
England rugby star Jonny Hill has been accused of “putting a fan in a headlock and leaving him with a cut eye” after a semi-final defeat.
‘What a d**k’: Medic causes outrage over ‘pathetic’ rugby act
Rugby fans have been left shaking their heads in response to a medic’s classless act of unsportsmanship on the sideline of a game in Australia this week.
MCG’s 2027 Rugby World Cup final dream ‘in doubt’ over Melbourne Rebels shutdown in Super Rugby
The MCG’s hopes of hosting the 2027 Rugby World Cup final, and Victoria’s chances of hosting other major rugby events are in severe doubt, over the shutdown of the Melbourne Rebels.
The Melbourne Rebels will not continue in 2025 after Rugby Australia rejected a bit to keep them alive
Rugby Australia has rejected an application from a consortium seeking take over the Melbourne Rebels with a move to the courts the only possible saviour for the embattled club which will be shut down after 14 seasons.
Financially-stricken Melbourne Rebels axed from Super Rugby Pacific
- Private consortium’s rescue plan deemed ‘overly optimistic’
- Australian club’s last match will be played next month
A legal battle looms between Rugby Australia and the consortium who planned to save the Melbourne Rebels, with the Super Rugby Pacific club to be shut down after 14 seasons.
Five months after the Rebels entered voluntary administration, Rugby Australia broke the news before players boarded a plane to Fiji for the final round of the competition.
Continue reading...‘I’d never play again’: Rugby world in shock over viral 20m tackle
A South African schoolboy rugby player has gone viral after he carried his opponent 20m backwards in wild scenes during a recent match.
NSW Waratahs coach Darren Coleman won’t get a new contract after two win season
Waratahs coach Darren Coleman was given credit for navigating “three challenging seasons” but won’t get a fourth after the battling Super Rugby outfit confirmed he wouldn’t be offered a new contract.
Tony O’Reilly: the Lions cub who earned place in Irish sporting folklore
Before entering business, O’Reilly played rugby for Ireland and the Lions and could have been ‘one of the world’s greats’
Tony O’Reilly has died aged 88 and this week’s business pages will pay tribute to a titan of the corporate world who struck commercial gold with Kerrygold and built a hill of beans with Heinz. It is a sign of a life remarkably well lived, then, that his name will also always have a place in the pantheon of Irish sporting heroes and prompt a wry smile whenever rugby union’s classic old-school anecdotes are retold.
As a player good enough to have been selected as the youngest Lion in history when chosen to tour South Africa as a teenager in 1955, O’Reilly might have reached even loftier heights in the game had his burgeoning business career not intervened at the age of 26. There was to be one last impromptu hurrah, however, when he was famously recalled seven years later to face England at Twickenham.
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