Wallabies’ end-of-season tour in jeopardy after English Premiership hit with coronavirus cases
The chances of Australia’s traditional end-of-season northern hemisphere tour going ahead this year is looking remote as coronavirus cases wreak havoc with English club rugby.
Rugby
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The Wallabies end of year tour to the northern hemisphere is just about dead in the water after news that six players and four staff in the English Premiership have tested positive to coronavirus.
The chances of the Spring Tour – which included Tests against Ireland, France, Italy and England – going ahead were already slim but the positive tests could be the final straw.
The identities of the players who tested positive have not been revealed so it’s unknown whether any internationals are involved with only Northampton Saints so far saying one of their players was included. Two other clubs, Saracens and Harlequins, said staff members tested positive.
At this stage, the Premiership is still planning to kick off in mid August.
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TV DEAL TO BRING CODE SOME RELIEF
Rugby Australia officials are understood to be inching closer than ever to sorting out a broadcast deal with Fox Sports with suggestions a two-year contract could be the most viable short term solution.
All the previous deals have been for five years but the ongoing uncertainty about COVID-19 and the state of rugby has meant all options are currently on the table, not that talks have resumed.
Nothing has been decided yet but the flexibility of a deal anywhere between two and five years in length has increased the chances of Rugby Australia getting some mid-term relief and security after the previous administration failed to get a deal done.
NO LOVE LOST
Melbourne Rebels coach Dave Wessels has returned serve against Morgan Turinui after the former Wallaby said he should be axed.
There’s clearly no love lost between the pair after Turinui said Wessels was not the answer after the Rebels failed to make the Super Rugby semis in each of the past two seasons and opened the new domestic competition with a loss to the Brumbies.
But Wessels hit back at Turinui’s record when he was part of the Rebels’ coaching set up as to why he cut from the staff.
“Whether or not I take Morgan‘s comments too seriously is probably another question, I mean Morgan won one game when he was in Melbourne,” Wessels said.
“I think his attack, he‘s criticised our attack, his attack scored 21 tries, we scored 56 the year after he left.
“He was just a member of staff that we didn‘t keep on.”
WORRIED WARATAHS
With just one win from seven matches this season, the Waratahs have got every right to be nervous about Saturday’s Super Rugby rematch with the Western Force at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Before they were booted out of the competition, the Force used to routinely spank the Waratahs and no-one on the other side of the Nullarbor has forgiven the eastern states for throwing them off the cliff.
“I think we‘ve been gunning for this for a while, playing against the other Australian Super Rugby clubs, and I think we’ll manage it quite well,” Force coach Ian Sampson said.
“We might be tagged as the underdogs – we don‘t mind that. It’s fine.”
The general consensus is that the Force are going to be the easybeats of Australia’s new domestic comp because the Global Rapid Rugby tournament they’ve been dominating for the past two seasons is vastly inferior.
That may be true but anyone who has watched the Waratahs go round this season will know complacency should be the last thing NSW fears.
“We‘re going to have to be very careful,” Waratahs coach Rob Penney said.
“It‘s these sort of fixtures where one team gets an emotional boost, another team for one reason or another might be a bit low and it turns into a massive banana skin.”
With the Force having the bye in week one, Penney is flying blind with what his opponents will throw up but that hardly matters because he’s got enough problems of his own.
He’s a big believer in the young cattle he’s got to work but has been pleading for patience because so many of them are still in their first year of senior rugby.
“It‘d be great if we can get on the right side of the scoreboard for a start but in terms of (improvement), it’s more incremental increases,” Penney said.
Waratahs
15-Jack Maddocks, 14-James Ramm, 13-Alex Newsome, 12-Joey Walton, 11-Mark Nawaqanitawase, 10-Will Harrison, 9-Mitch Short, 8-Will Harris, 7-Michael Hooper, 6-Lachie Swinton, 5-Rob Simmons (captain), 4-Ned Hanigan, 3-Harry Johnson-Holmes, 2-Robbie Abel, 1-Angus Bell.
Replacements: 16-Tom Horton, 17-Tetera Faulkner, 18-Tiaan Tauakipulu, 19-Tom Staniforth, 20-Jack Dempsey, 21-Michael McDonald, 22-Ben Donaldson/Tepai Moeroa, 23-Karmichael Hunt
Force
15-Jack McGregor, 14-Byron Ralston, 13-Marcel Brache, 12-Nick Jooste, 11-Brad Lacey, 10-Jono Lance, 9-Ian Prior (captain), 8-Brynard Stander, 7-Tevin Ferris, 6-Henry Stowers, 5-Fergus Lee Warner, 4-Jeremy Thrush, 3-Kieran Longbottom, 2-Feleti Kaitu’u, 1-Angus Wagner
Replacements: 16-Andrew Ready, 17-Chris Heiberg, 18-Greg Holmes, 19-Johan Bardoul, 20-Ollie Callan, 21-Jacob Abel, 22-Henry Taefu, 23-Kyle Godwin
Kiwis will be the biggest losers if they reject Australia
Julian Linden
The breathtaking arrogance of New Zealand Rugby is only matched by their blind stupidity.
That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from the outrageous threat from the Kiwis to kill off the prospect of finally creating the trans-Tasman competition that fans on both sides of the ditch have wanted for decades.
New Zealanders never tire of thumping their chests about how good their rugby teams and players are but the demand from board officials that Australia can only enter two teams in the competition is more than just the usual bluster.
And Australian rugby officials are calling it for what it is.
“If you have your conspiracy hat on, it’s to divide Australian rugby and we’re not going to play that game,” Rugby NSW chairman Roger Davis said.
“It’s sort of a bullying attitude. They’re a terrific rugby nation but there’s many ways to skin a cat but we don’t have to always follow them.”
Davis is not the only one who realises it’s sheer lunacy because the Kiwis will end up being the biggest losers if they go it alone.
And that’s also coming from their own.
A recent poll found that more than half of New Zealanders favoured a trans-Tasman competition over a domestic-only competition, while the Waratahs’ Kiwi coach Rob Penney warned his countrymen they would end up with egg on their faces and having to come crawling back once they had realised their mistake.
“If New Zealand don’t get positive around the relationship they can have with Australia, that’s their loss,” Penney said. “They probably see themselves in a powerful bubble, which they have done for a number of years, but so be it.
“We’ll create one here and then they’ll come knocking, I’m sure.”
Australian rugby officials remain strongly in favour of the trans-Tasman concept and believe it will still happen but say they won’t be forced into bowing to New Zealand’s crass demands to field two teams.
“That’s not really fair on us,” Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan said. “We’d be forced to go it alone. But we have options.
“I’ve seen with the Big Bash that heavily localised competitions with good community engagement and overseas players would rate well but we’d love to play the best in the world, which are the Kiwis. And we like the idea of playing Japan.”
It’s no secret that Australia is already forging closer ties in Japan with Andrew Forrest‘s Global Rapid Rugby competition already including teams from Asia and the Pacific.
The Waratahs are sponsored by Japanese technology giant NESIC and Davis warned the Kiwis that they would damage more than just the game if they didn’t back down.
“We’re certainly not going to go with a one-horse solution here and fall over backwards to accommodate them,” he said. “One would hope that commonsense would prevail but good luck to them. They can destroy each other but it would be a shame for the game and a shame for Australianasian relationships.
“They’ll do whatever’s good for them but I think you have to take your head out from under the sand and think a little bit more broadly and do what’s good for the game.”