Archive for the 'Press clippings' Category


Rugby to embrace referral option?

Peter Bills, in his column for the Independent (UK) looks at the referral system coming to rugby.
Shock, horror! Rugby Union is embracing cricket’s third official referral system and there’s already a logjam of cases piling up.
New Zealander Colin Meads is challenging the long held assumption that the broken jaw of Welsh hooker Jeff Young […]

Watson: all white and useless

UK rugby writer Stephen Jones has this to say about Luke Watson in his weekly newsletter:
Luke Watson is a very ordinary flanker. I have seen him play three times in the flesh and around five times on television and also taken the opinions of judges who I trust.
Say he joined Wasps (not that they would […]

June 24, 1995 - afternoon

The following is an extract from Playing the Enemy by UK journalist John Carlin. The book will be released in South Africa at the end of the week.
“Sixty minutes between two o’clock, when Nelson Mandela arrived at Ellis Park, and three o’clock, when the game began, everything happened. First there was a song, then a […]

Zavos on the Boks

Aussie journo Spiro Zavos finds it quite difficult to say nice things about the Boks. So when I stumbled on this little piece I just had to share it:
“The Springboks destruction of the Wallabies was the sort of defeat that gives massacres a bad name. This was a thrashing, a walloping and a devastation.
Go through […]

Bills on the Boks

Writing in the Pretoria News, Peter Bills reveals how bad things in the Bok camp have got:
“Unless you believe that rabbits really can be plucked out of conjuror’s hats, then Springbok coach Peter de Villiers has a critical decision to make this Monday morning.
Humiliated by the Durban crowd after South Africa’s latest abject defeat, De […]

All Blacks still a team to fear

Michael Aylwin of the Guardian suggests we should still be in fear:
“So that is how the All Blacks used to play. It has been too long. This was like seeing old friends again, or rather, enemies, nightmares, and swarms of black shirts ruthlessly engulfing anyone unfortunate enough to have the ball and be dressed in […]

Mallett on the difference between North and South

This extract is taken from a piece which appeared in the UK’s Independent some weeks ago:
“The comparison that Mallett makes between the northern hemisphere’s Six Nations Championship and the Tri-Nations competition in the south that forms the most fascinating of his views. Technically, he says, the Six Nations is the equal of the Tri-Nations. Fitness […]

Is Butch good enough?

Kiwi journalist Chris Rattue - who frequently likes to stick his neck out - has written a ridiculous attack on something he clearly has very little understanding of…
“Positive discrimination is alive and well in the Springboks camp and they will continue to pay a high price for it until new coach Peter de Villiers comes […]

Is De Villiers a puppet?

This is an excerpt from a nice piece from Australia’s RugbyHeaven:
“It’S clearly that time of the year when rugby officials, who should know better, try to fight the winter chill by warming themselves up through talking hot air.
Over in New Zealand, Springboks coach Peter de Villiers has played the race card after former All Blacks […]

The world’s greatest rugby nation

Sportingo - James Mortimer (06/06/2008)
As the Southern Hemisphere international season commences, many - including some Kiwis - gloat about and mock the New Zealanders’ demise. How uninformed they are.
‘… let’s get this hollow commercial concept of World Cups out of the way. The only real tournament was played in 1987 – which the All Blacks […]