Monthly Archives: July 2013
The Chiefs will play the Brumbies at home in Hamilton in front of a sold out Waikato Stadium as the fixture is officially sold out.
Anything you can do, we can do better! This is the message, loud and clear, from Lions fans to their Southern Kings rivals.
The Kings have been praised for their good crowd attendances at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, but the Lions will well and truly upstage them.
The South African Rugby Union’s (Saru’s) policy of favouring local players over overseas-based stars could be under threat, especially when the Springboks name their squad for the Castle Rugby Championship at the end of the week.
Saru have been firm that there has been no change in the policy regarding players based overseas, but a recent exodus of Boks stars may make that policy shift when the Bok squad is chosen for the November tour of Europe.
Lions president Kevin de Klerk is confident that his team will take what he believes is their rightful place in Super Rugby.
New Zealand’s front row resources have been reduced ahead of the starts of the Rugby Championship.
This is what really happened behind the scenes…
[youtube]http://youtu.be/_APSHxnTZp8[/youtube]
You know we’re joking, of course
Springbok scrumhalf Francois Hougaard will not play again this year and will undergo surgery next week.
Australia centre Anthony Faingaa has been ruled out of the remainder of the 2013 international rugby season due to left shoulder reconstruction surgery.
South African Rugby player Bryan Habana pushed himself to new heights as he went up against British Airways’ brand new superjumbo, the Airbus A380.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P66ISniQCqY[/youtube]
The Irish Rugby Football Union today announced the appointment of John Plumtree as Ireland forwards coach.
In what can only be described as a very dead rubber, SA faced a weakened Sri Lankan side in Columbo, where AB felt that losing 3-2 would be better than losing 4-1. Something I hadn’t thought of – well done, AB. Sri Lanka, with 3 Perera’s and as many changes, won the toss and chose to bat. Unfortunately AB’s side did go down 4-1. Good news is that AB did realise, at the interview, that they needed to improve
The Blue Bulls Company (Pty) Ltd is pleased to announce that Piet van Zyl has agreed terms and will join the Vodacom Bulls on a two year contract from November 1st, 2013.
The Pretoria-born 23 year old scrumhalf made his Springbok debut in 2013 following some very good performances for his Super Rugby franchise, the Toyota Cheetahs.
JC Janse van Rensburg will ‘ride off’ into the proverbial sunset soon, but the long-standing captain is determined to leave the Lions with a perfect parting gift.
The 27-year-old uncapped Springbok prop wants to ensure he plays part in the Johannesburg-based franchise regaining their Super Rugby status.
Having captained the Lions to a 26-19 win over the Southern Kings in the first of the two promotion-relegation matches in Port Elizabeth last week, Janse van Rensburg will run out in front for the last time in the return match at Ellis Park on Saturday – before heading to French team Bayonne, where he signed a to-year deal.
Who remembers the old movie, King Solomon’s mines? Well, The Southern Kings, own Solomons… Alan Solomons, is off to dig for gold elsewhere. We’ve known about it, it has been denied, but still came to pass.
Kings Director of Rugby Alan Solomons will part ways with the Eastern Cape franchise after being appointed head coach of Edinburgh.
Springbok wing JP Pietersen has bid farewell to South Africa as he prepares to head to Japan to take up his contract with the Panasonic Wild Knights.
Hi,
So, the transition to new webservers by our web hosts created all sorts of problems today.
Rugby-Talk was suspended, the SQL Database was blocked… we were OFF AIR for a day!
It felt like I was the naughty child who had to go stand in the corner and it reminded me of the old fighting days when Pietman, myself, Cuzzy, Kwagga and the old fighters from the bad old Voldy days would get banned, suspended and worked our way around the impediments till we were shouting from the rooftops again, fists bared and the bit between the teeth.
The defending champion Chiefs will be looking to produce the perfect parting gift to five players.
However, they will be keen to stay focussed on the job at hand – beating the Brumbies in the Super Rugby Final in Hamilton on Saturday, rather than getting caught up in the hype of the occasion.
The Vodacom Bulls missed out on a fourth Vodacom Super Rugby final in seven years when they were beaten in the second tense semi-final by a spirited Brumbies team in Pretoria on Saturday evening.
As a result, the Brumbies will now travel to Hamilton to face the defending champion Chiefs in the 2013 Final. Both teams have won the title before – the Chiefs last year and the Brumbies in 2001 and 2004.
The Chiefs won hosting rights for the Final when they beat the heavily-favoured Crusaders by 20-19 in a nail-biter at the Waikato Stadium on Saturday morning (SA time). The defending champions fought back brilliantly in the second half after they were behind by 3-9 at the break.
Uncapped Hurricanes loose forward Brad Shields has been included in a 30-man All Black training squad who will gather in Auckland this week ahead of the Rugby Championship.
Blues utility back Francis Saili is the second uncapped player included in the squad by All Black coach Steve Hansen, who has as expected welcomed back captain Richie McCaw.
South African referee Craig Joubert has been confirmed as the man to take charge of the Super Rugby final between the Chiefs and Brumbies in Hamilton this coming Saturday.
Friends, Brumbies, Countrymen (rugby supporters)… lend me your ears… or in your case eyes!
Rugby-Talk’s web hosts indicated before the weekend that they were in the process up upgrading their Servers to bigger, better, faster ones and to carry far more load.
It seems that the web host server migration process completed successfully and luckily we have not had any OFF-LINE time, having managed it well from our side and also from the web hosting side.
Because the new web host servers point to new DNS Nameservers at the web hosts, we might experience SLOW LOAD TIMES on our website and web pages for about 24 hours, due to the fact that the changes to these DNS Nameservers would have to propagate throughout the world’s internet sphere to point to and direct traffic to the new ones. The old DNS Nameservers are currently forwarding traffic to the new Nameservers, causing expected longer load times, however as the New Nameservers propagate the speeds will increase until all world traffic to our site points directly to the new and improved Nameservers.
It’s a small and almost negligible cost to pay for no downtime whatsoever, though!
Thank you for your continued support and patience during the vital upgrade process!
As you might already be aware, a couple of years back we switched web hosts when the earstwhile web hosts could not deliver what we needed, wanted and demanded and they could not handle all the traffic the way we wanted them to. The change was a big positive one, to one of the largest web hosts the world offers. We have to keep up with the times as we steadily grow!
Kings Flyhalf and top points scorer, Demetri Catrakilis, will miss the second promotion relegation game against the Lions in Johannesburg after sustaining a shoulder injury.
Following the results of the Super Rugby semi-finals of 2013 the Super Rugby Franchises are already starting to make their plans and get their structures in place for 2014.
Fresh news is that the Crusaders have extended coach Todd Blackadder’s contract till end of 2014, the Waratahs report that they have secured the services of Dave Dennis and Rob Horne and Kyle Godwin has cleanes up the awards for the year for the Western Force.
Reports of a proposed ‘split’ between South African and their Australasian partners are still “some way off”, but remains a reality.
It was reported in the Australian media on Saturday that Australia and New Zealand would form their own Australasian competition – one of a number of scenarios being considered by SANZAR.
Bulls (11) 23 / 26 (16) Brumbies (Final Score)
The Vodacom Bulls and Brumbies did battle in a Super Rugby semi-final at Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria at 17:05 SA Time (15:05 GMT).
This was the live match discussion Article.
The match was broadcast LIVE on SuperSport 1, SHD & M-Net on TV in SA.
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Chiefs (3) 20 / 19 (9) Crusaders (Final Score)
The Chiefs and Crusaders did battle in a Super Rugby semi-final at Waikato Stadium, Hamilton at 09:35 SA Time (19:35 NZ Time, 07:35 GMT).
This was the live match discussion Article.
The match was broadcast LIVE on SuperSport 1, SHD & M-Net on TV in SA.
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Kings (14) 19 / 26 (19) Lions (Final Score)
The Southern Kings and MTN Lions did battle in the 1st of 2 Promotion / Relegation games for Super Rugby
at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, Port Elizabeth at 19:10 SA Time (17:10 GMT).
This was the live match discussion Article.
The match was broadcast LIVE on SuperSport 1, SHD & CSN on TV in SA.
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Reds flyhalf Quade Cooper has returned to the Wallabies set-up after being included in new coach Ewen McKenzie’s first training squad for The Rugby Championship series against South Africa, New Zealand and Argentina.
Wallabies fullback Kurtley Beale has been ruled out for the year after being told by new coach Ewen McKenzie to have an operation on his shoulder and come back fit and healthy next year.
Kenyan-born Kings loose forward Daniel Adongo has made the leap from Super Rugby to the NFL.
Here are the Super Rugby team sheets for the teams contesting the Semi-Final Round of Super Rugby 2013, as they were announded.
The Free State Cheetahs have been quick out of the blocks in preparing for the Currie Cup and beyond. Apart from the new signings Piet Lindeque, Tonderai Chavhanga and Wian du Preez, previously reported on Rugby Talk, Coach Naka Drotskè has also confirmed that Leopards tighthead, John Roy Jenkinson has also signed a two year contract with the Cheetahs.
The Brumbies may be bleating on about the challenge of beating the Vodacom Bulls in front of a full house at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday, but initial indications are that the stadium may not even be full.
Both the Chiefs and Crusaders have announced their teams nd squads to contest the Semi-Final at Waikato Stadium, Hamilton at 09:35 SA Time (19:35 NZ Time) on Saturday 27 July 2013.
Here are the names of the gladiators who will go to war on Saturday:
The Cheetahs have further bolstered their backline for this year’s Currie Cup, by signing former Springbok wing Tonderai Chavanga. Incidently Chavanga also started his age group rugby with the Cheetahs, so he is also returning to his roots.