Former Wallabies captain Stephen Moore doubts Eddie Jones was ever truly committed to Australia’s cause during his disastrous second stint as national coach.
So much for those 14 denials: Eddie Jones officially lands Japan job
Eddie Jones was named by Japan as their new head coach on Wednesday, six weeks after the Australian quit the Wallabies following their dismal showing at the Rugby World Cup.
Lions announce historic rugby first with Dublin match against Argentina
- British & Irish Lions have never played in Ireland before
- June 2025 match is warm-up for three-Test tour of Australia
The British & Irish Lions will take on Argentina in Dublin in preparation for their 2025 tour to Australia in what will be their first ever match in Ireland, the team said on Thursday.
The game will be held at the Aviva Stadium on 20 June 2025, and the two teams will play for the Lions 1888 Cup, which marks the first year British teams toured the southern hemisphere.
Continue reading...Rugby Australia trials new tackle height laws to combat concussion
- Trial law designed to reduce head-to-head contact in tackles
- Research shows concussion risks far higher in tackles above sternum
Rugby Australia has confirmed that it will implement a new trial that will see the legal height of tackles in the game lowered to below the sternum from February.
The trial is designed to reduce the risk of head-to-head and head-to-shoulder contact between ball carriers and tacklers. World Rugby research has shown the risk of concussion is more than four times higher when the tackler’s head is above the ball carrier’s sternum.
The new 9.13 law will see match officials place greater emphasis on preventing a ball carrier “dipping” into a tackle and placing themselves, and potentially the defender, in an unsafe position for contact. However, it will not change the ability for an attacking player to “pick-and-go” when starting and continuing at a low body height.
The two-year trial comes after Rugby Australia announced its support for World Rugby’s global research initiative last March, and will apply to all levels of Rugby below Super Rugby level when introduced in February. It follows more than six years of research that has already seen trials of lower tackle heights undertaken in nations including France, England, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Wales and Scotland.
Preliminary data in South Africa has shown a 30 per cent reduction in concussions, while France recorded a 64 per cent reduction in head-on-head contact – as well as a 14 per cent increase in participation on pre-COVID levels.
This change in law will apply to all Australian rugby union competitions below Super Rugby that commence on or after 10 February, 2024, through till the end of 2025, and includes school and pathway competitions to protect the code’s young players.
Since their abysmal 2023 World Cup, in which the Wallabies failed to make the finals for the first time in 36 years, Australian Rugby has reeled from crisis to crisis, with coach Eddie Jones quitting in October and CEO Hamish McLennan rolled from the leadership in a boardroom coup last month.
Rugby Australia takes over NSW high performance as strategic reset begins
- Top state becomes first to commit to centralisation plan
- RA say aligned system is essential for future of game
Rugby Australia and the NSW Rugby Union have agreed to the first step in the strategic reset of Australian rugby. NSW becomes the first state member union to formally commit to Rugby Australia’s plan to align the sport across the country.
The agreement to centralise means responsibility for the operations of the Waratahs’ professional entities will be passed on to RA from 1 January. RA will take responsibility for the Waratahs’ high-performance operations, assets, liabilities, and commercial arrangements. All Waratahs employees will continue in their current roles.
Continue reading...England v Ireland: third men’s one-day international abandoned – as it happened
Ben Duckett, Phil Salt and Zak Crawley all starred with the bat before torrential rain brought a premature end to play in Bristol
5th over: England 65-0 (Salt 42, Jacks 22) Time for a bowling change, Paul Stirling reckons. On comes Craig Young, who has one job: to stem the flow. And he does, cramping the batters for room and going for just a run a ball. Miserly stuff.
4th over: England 60-0 (Salt 39, Jacks 19) Does Jacks settle for playing second fiddle? He does not. He has a gleam in his eye and he flicks Little’s first ball for six, then pulls for six more. Just for a change, Salt plays a straight drive for four. Alas, poor Little – when he does induce a top edge, it lands safely at short fine, and then Salt adds another four. That’s 23 off the over! And the fastest 50 in England ODI history.
Continue reading...Ben Duckett looking to nudge England selectors with World Cup looming
- Duckett is vice-captain against Ireland at Trent Bridge
- 28-year-old excited by possible central contract
For England’s looming World Cup defence in India a gaggle of players will sit in reserve back home and it may just be that Ben Duckett is the best fit to jump on a plane should a batter go down injured during the tournament.
An option anywhere in the top seven and armed with an array of sweeps and reverse sweeps, the 28-year-old would offer Jos Buttler and the management excellent flexibility regardless of whether Jason Roy makes himself available. A pugnacious desire to get on with it – evidenced across all formats – is another thing to pop in the pros column.
Continue reading...Talking Horses: Heat needs to be turned down fast in sauna-gate
A solution must be found in the simmering dispute between racing’s rulers and jockeys over the removal of track saunas
Battle lines have been drawn and trenches dug in the latest dispute between the British Horseracing Authority and Britain’s Flat jockeys, and the two sides seem set for a protracted struggle.
At issue is the racecourse sauna, which was, for generations of riders, a daily point of call until Covid-19 prompted to their closure, as a measure to prevent spread of the virus when racing went behind closed doors. The Professional Jockeys’ Association insists that a majority of its members now want the saunas back, while the BHA is equally adamant that it is not going to happen.
Continue reading...Hillsin, Dylan Kitts and one of the most talked-about races of 2023 | Greg Wood
Before joining the rush to suggest that a 22-year-old conditional rider with 94 rides to their name should be banned for life, it is probably best to wait for the investigation to conclude
It is, as they say, a very ill wind that blows nobody any good, and the organisers of the Wacky Weekender Festival at Worcester racecourse this month must be quietly ecstatic that the handicap hurdle for conditional jockeys, which they sponsored at the track last Wednesday, has turned out to be one of the most talked-about races of recent months.
For the rest of us, though, it remains a horrible watch, as Dylan Kitts, the rider of Hillsin, sat stock-still all the way up the straight on a horse that looked to be travelling like a surefire winner, and finished third, a length-and-a-quarter behind the winner. It was, in Timeform’s typically understated view, “an unedifying ride that failed to get the best out of him, to say the least”, and the local stewards promptly banned Hillsin from running for 40 days while referring Kitts’s ride to the British Horseracing Authority for further consideration.
Continue reading...‘We don’t stop horses’: trainer Chris Honour hits back over Hillsin’s ban
- Horse suspended for performance at Worcester on Wednesday
- Trainer claims jockey Dylan Kitts went ‘to an extreme’ in race
Chris Honour said he would “never tell someone not to win” and revealed his family have been caught up in the fallout from Hillsin’s controversial performance at Worcester on Wednesday evening.
Hillsin was making his first start for trainer Honour in the two-and-a-half mile conditional riders’ handicap hurdle and looked to have a fine chance of notching his first career victory, in the hands of conditional jockey Dylan Kitts, when moving into contention up the home straight.
Continue reading...England’s Ben Stokes insists he’s ‘on course to bowl’ in first Ashes Test
- Captain ‘happy’ with fitness despite not bowling against Ireland
- ‘Very impressed’: Stokes hails Josh Tongue after fine showing
A week ago, Ben Stokes had never met Josh Tongue. But as the England captain heads into the Ashes series with questions over his own fitness, he fancies an additional fast bowler has been found to augment his attack.
Tongue was already in the 16-man squad for the first two Tests against Australia before completing a maiden five-wicket haul on debut at Lord’s, with England, a team in a hurry, naming the group at lunch on the third and final day against Ireland.
Continue reading...South African teams are happy post-divorce but has Super Rugby lost its bite? | Daniel Gallan
The flavour of the competition will never be the same and it remains to be seen if Australia and New Zealand teams can fill the gap
For 26 years club rugby in the southern hemisphere had a distinctive flavour profile. There have been some interesting garnishes, with produce from Japan, Argentina and, more recently, the Pacific Islands enriching the plate. But from the dawn of the professional age in 1996 until the Covid-enforced hiatus in 2020, the three main ingredients have come from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
But now Super Rugby has “lost a bit of spice”, at least according to John Plumtree, the now Durban-based Sharks coach and former All Blacks assistant.
Continue reading...‘Not dead yet’: Reds beat Chiefs to snap 10-year Super Rugby hoodoo
- Queensland 25-22 victory halts Chiefs’ 10-game victory streak
- Western Force climb to eighth after 34-14 win over Fijian Drua
Queensland Reds coach Brad Thorn has declared they are “not dead yet” after a historic upset in New Zealand rescued their season.
A 25-22 win in New Plymouth on Friday night was the Reds’ first in New Zealand since 2013. It ended a 21-game Super Rugby losing streak in the country and the Chiefs’ 10-game unbeaten run to begin this season.
Continue reading...Grand National: Irish horses to dominate field for second year running
- Forty-one of the top 60 in the weights trained in Ireland
- BHA handicapper calls for ‘English challenge’
The steady evolution of the Grand National into a contest dominated by runners from Ireland seems certain to continue in April. As few as a quarter of the runners in the world’s most famous race may arrive at Aintree from British stables.
Ireland supplied a majority of the field for the first time last season, with 21 of the 40 starters and after Tuesday’s publication of the weights to be carried in this year’s race on 15 April, 41 of the top 60, and all but one of the top 10, are Irish-trained.
Continue reading...Former jockey Danny Brock faces long ban from racing for betting conspiracy
- BHA panel found Brock deliberately stopped horses
- Case concerned three races in late 2018 and early 2019
Danny Brock, a jockey on the Flat from 2009 to 2021, will face a significant ban after the British Horseracing Authority’s independent disciplinary panel decided on Tuesday he had deliberately stopped three horses as part of a conspiracy to profit from betting on their races.
The BHA’s case against Brock and five other individuals, including Sean McBride, the son and assistant of the Newmarket trainer Philip “Charlie” McBride, concerned three races at all-weather tracks between December 2018 and March 2019.
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