Author: Reg Roberts

Week three has hit and so too has a dose of reality perhaps. The Reds were back at Ballymore and back to losing a tight one they should have won. The Tahs are back running the footy but the Bulls were just too strong. The Brumbies were back to their clinical best, showing the other teams how to shut out a game (despite a late try). And the Force? Well, they’re back to the drawing board. The Brumbies, with two wins out of their first three games on the road has set the up very well for the rest of…

With the Melbourne Rebels now in the player market place, not too long after the WA Force entered, a subset issue is now a subject of hot discussion.  Who can lay claim to the player.  It is a common cry out of NSWRU and the Sydney club land that they created the majority of all our professional players and now they are being ripped off because of it. Another parallel discussion of late, particularly up here in Queensland, has been with regards the number of New Zealand born players seemingly making their way in elite rugby over here. It is…

And so we look back on week 2 with mixed views. The Reds won, and won well, which everyone seems pretty pleased about. The Brumbies, Force and Tahs all lost on the road which shouldn’t really be a surprise should it? Perhaps we expected more from the all-star Brumbies, but they were right in it till the last 20 or so.  The Force? Well their dreadful injury run left them behind the 8-ball from the start. But the Tahs, now they are coping some flack.  Wowza! Barnes, Burgess, Waugh, Hickey, Carter, Beale, SANZAR – all of them are in the…

This Saturday night Super Rugby heads back to Ballymore for the first time since 2005.  It shapes as a fascinating night for Queensland Rugby as ‘traditionalists’ have been calling for a return to Queensland Rugby HQ since we left five years ago. In the end its taken a soccer game at Suncorp to get us back there, which is somewhat ironic considering soccer is now a major tenant at Ballymore. I was at Ballymore only a few weeks ago to watch Will Chambers run around for the QLD A team.  Whilst the ground itself still looks superb – as good…

Every week during the Super 14 season G&GR will take a look at the key plays and players of the week just had. We can be a myopic lot here at G&GR sometimes, so no point stopping now. Let’s make it clear. Our focus is the Wallabies, so these reviews will focus on the Aussie teams and Aussie teams only. Not that we won’t cover the kiwi and saffa teams in our posts, but in this particular weekly wrap up it will be all about the Aussies. So let’s get to it.

Messers Hickey and McKenzie have done their part, the teams are named.  Now it is time for the real analysis. So let’s have a look through the teams, on a head-to-head basis and see who will come out on top on Saturday night. Fullback: Sosene Anesi v Peter Hynes – Let’s face it.  Anesi is an All Black cast off. And a one match All Black cast off at that. Injury prone, to put it mildly, the fact he has now played three games in a row means he WILL BE injured this game.  It’s just a matter of what…

Prodigal son Justin Harrison will make is return to the Brumbies, and Super Rugby, starting at lock this Friday night against the Western Force in Perth.  Coach Andy Friend as named Harrison it would seem largely to improve on the below par line-out display the Brumbies exhibited in their last trial against the Waratahs. Other new signings for the year Rocky Elsom, Matt Giteau and Pat McCabe have also been named to start however the word on the street is that Giteau is highly unlikely to play meaning young Matt Toomua is set to start in the 10 jersey. McCabe…

Twas a quiet night in Brisbane so I ventured out to Ballymore, which was also quiet, to watch the QAS Reds 2nd XV defeat a thrown together mosh posh of Brisbane club players in the guise of the Australian Barbarians.  More specifically I went to watch Will Chambers, and to a lesser extent Lei Tomiki, to see if our big buys of the year would bring us any glory. The match gained a slight degree of increased importance as a result of the Reds’ team humbling at the hands of the Force the night before. From a scoreboard perspective, the…

Wallaby Legend George Smith is leaving the building.  In this odd metaphor, harking back to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the King is George Smith and the ‘building’ is the Wallaby team. In a somewhat surprising development, we today learn that we will never get the chance to see George Smith play for the Wallabies again. Effective the end of the Super 14 season this year, Smith will no longer play rugby in Australia, having been granted a release by both the Brumbies and the ARU. It is a stunning development for someone who has achieved everything in world…

The Brumbies play their last trial match of the pre-season this Thursday night against the Waratahs in Canberra, before opening their campaign against the Force next Friday night. The team named for the Tahs game SHOULD be a pointer towards their line-up come the real thing out west.  It SHOULD be the chance for coach Andy Friend to see how is number one team combines and performs. But will it be? There are combinations there, but will this game provide more questions than answers? Let’s look at the team and decide. Brumbies v Waratahs 1 Salesi Ma’afu, 2 Stephen Moore,…

In the lead up to the premier of the movie Invictus in Australia, our friends from Village Roadshow gave us a whole heap of double passes to give away to our readers.  We opted for the option of getting you to cast your own Wallaby movie.  Some of the entries were, frankly, pretty average with absolutely no effort made other than an e-mail. But some were crackers.  For mine there were two stand outs, but I will get to those later. Firstly, a few observations from our entries. Approximately 90% of our entries were women.  We here at G&GR don’t…

Ok, first the standard match report stuff.  The Reds scored a 26-24 win over the Waratahs in a Super 14 trial match played at beautiful Oakes Oval in Lismore tonight.  The Tahs scored three tries to two, but it was the Reds option of taking a number of penalty shots at goal that got them over the line.  The most significant shot taken was the one by replacement Tim Walsh which he kicked from about 40m out with two minutes left on the clock to take the lead. So that’s that.  Let me try to give a bit more of…

There are many changes to the sporting landscape that come with the advent of professionalism.  One, that the NRL has consistently struggled with, is the impacton their brand of player ‘misadventure’.  Sporting bodies such as the ARU can spend millions on marketing showcasing the positives of their sport, their ‘brand’ and all it takes is a couple of dodgy photos, or a 3rd hand news report, for it all to come crushing down. Take the NRL, please(….boom tish). Yesterday it was revealed that their 2010 marketing campaign would focus on the action and fans rather than their ‘star’s in…

In the lead up to New Years Eve 2009, we published a series of articles looking back at some of the highlights of Australian Rugby throughout the decade. This culminated in the selection of the Wallaby Team of the Decade and the nomination of five players as Wallaby Players of the Decade.  The Player of the Decade post can be seen here. The voting and debate was torrid. And in the end very very close, with only two votes splitting first and second place.  In the end the winner was…..

I have heard the Brumbies of 2010 described as the Chelsea Football Club of Australian Rugby.  Now, I don’t follow European football, but can hazard a guess that Chelsea is renowned for purchasing their highly successful team? For creating a winning team from the cheque book up? Personally I think this is damn hard on the Brumbies. Unless there is something I don’t know about I figure the cheque book has rarely, if ever, been the inducement to get a player to the Brumbies.  We all know the story of how they began. How Rod McQueen built a team based on…

Finally! A Rugby movie! We don’t get many do we? You can say “This Sporting Life” with Richard Harris, but that’s league. So desperate are we rugby pundits for some Hollywood action that we’ve claimed the likes of The Motorcycle Diaries and Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. And personally? I’m over all these flicks about American sports.  Sure there can be some crackers – Major League, The Natural, Any Given Sunday. But for every Bull Durham there’s a half a dozen Angels in the Outfield and The Replacements.  But what we wouldn’t give for a rugby version of even The…

Despite a decade in which we probably didn’t win as many trophies as we would have liked, and have probably had our longest period of disappointment since, ummmm, the 70s, we’ve had some great players feature for the Wallabies in the noughties.  The likes of John Eales, Jason Little, Dan Herbert, Matthew Burke, Richard Harry, David Wilson and Tim Horan will go down as legends of our game.  However, who can lay claim to being the Wallaby of the Decade? For mine, Eales and Horan are the best players to have played featured in the green and gold since 2000…

Well, the people have spoken. The votes are in and we have our official Green & Gold Rugby Wallaby Team of the Decade! As many people suggested throughout the series, many of the positions were fairly cut and dried.  Scrum Half and Fly Half, for example.  There were some tough decisions, however, such as balancing the player’s overall career compared to what he put on there this decade. This was probably most relevant in the fullback position in which many people were split beteen Matthew  Burke and Chris Latham. A special mention to Timmy Horan too who still managed to…

Well that was bloody tough I tells ya’! Nailing down the top five tries of the decade! I pride myself on my Wallaby recall, so I hope I didn’t forget any glaring ones. I tell you what, there were plenty I considered. Stirling Mortlock’s in 2000 against the All Blacks in Wellington was a superb move only minutes into the game bringing back memories of that great game a couple of weeks prior. There was a beauty by Ben Tune v the Springboks at the Gabba in 2002. Another brilliantly executed team try – from training paddock to the field!…

I reckon there’s a fair bet that this next try, number two on the list, would have probably been most people’s choice for the try of the decade. Correct? Then why the hell have I not appointed it as such!!! All the elements are there. Beautiful set piece playe, last minute try that wins just about every trophy available. It is an amazing piece of individual brilliance that combines with some bang on team elements. Hell, it’s even scored by a Queenslander! Hang on, I’m starting to question myself now, so must stop before I have to completely redo this…