By Tank Lanning In the wake of the doping furore hitting Australian sport, All Black prop Ben Franks has hit the headlines with his call for supplements to be monitored more closely. Drug Free Sport New Zealand urges rugby players not to take any supplements, due to the risk of them containing banned substances. And […]
The defending Heineken Cup Champions Leinster got out of jail with a bonus-point-saving-try against the 14 man Clermont Auvergne in their pool match at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. In what was a pretty dull and drab first half during which the two flyhalves exchanged penalties for a 9-6 scoreline in favour of the visitors, until […]
If I were a betting man I would probably have got around 100/1 on that scoreline in the last match of the autumn tour as England faced world champions New Zealand at Twickenham, a team rated No1 in the world and unbeaten in 20 tests. But by halftime with England leading 12-0, the All Blacks […]
What has gone wrong with the once mighty Blitzbokke? They managed to beat England but fell to both Portugal – for the first time in history – and to Samoa to finish the round robin section joint bottom of pool C with England on five points. No Cecil Afrika is a huge loss to the […]
By Tank Lanning Played three games on tour, won three. Played 12 matches this year, won seven, drawn two and lost three. On 86.05 points, ranked second in the world behind New Zealand, who dominate on 92.91 points, and very marginally ahead of Australia 85.94 points. A school report card would probably award a pass, […]
Heyneke Meyer must be the luckiest coach around, because despite his inconsistency in selection and unadaptable game plan, he still has managed to stay unbeaten on the autumn tour to the north. None of the victories has been in any way spectacular and they only managed to beat England 16-15 – but as any coach […]
By Tank Lanning So how much time is spent actually playing rugby during a game? Some really interesting info out of the SA Referees website this week with regard to the amount of time that is spent with the ball in play during a match … With the Boks vs Ireland game not being stellar […]
By Tank Lanning It’s one up on the complete apathy I felt last week, but people are certainly not completely appeased by the performance against the Irish last weekend. And given the first-half shambles, one can understand, but it was a pretty gutsy second-half performance that saw the Bok defence taken up a notch or […]
Suspended coach John Mitchell will return to the Lions rugby franchise next week, the union said on Friday. “The Golden Lions Rugby Union confirm they have met with John Mitchell and have discussed the relevant matters following his suspension earlier the season,” GLRU CEO Ruben Moggee said in a statement. “John will join the team […]
By Tank Lanning Much talk about the Boks vs Ireland game being a game of two halves, and the halftime team talk given by Heyneke Meyer. And while the second half was a better one for the Boks, to me it was a game of two sets of 10 minutes … The Boks lost JP […]