It’s time for our Monday wrap of who has their name in lights and who is making the headlines for all the wrong reasons after the weekend.
THEY’RE ON FIRE!
Wallabies: Australia’s win over the Springboks on Sunday was quite the statement victory a year out from them hosting the 2027 Rugby World Cup. Of course, it can’t be ignored that they were playing a heavily rotated South African side in Perth, but the old adage is you can only beat what is in front of you, and this they did brilliantly.
Leading 42-17 with 15 minutes remaining was an incredible effort, a coming-of-age display by a side now led by Les Kiss after the snakes-and-ladders Joe Schmidt era. The shenanigans that followed, including the Wallabies temporarily having just 11 players defending South Africa’s 15, helped ensure the match will be remembered as an all-time classic.
However, the fundamental that can’t be lost sight of about a match where the winning margin was cut to four points in an enthralling finish is how the Aussies impressively built their score with a game plan that had several admirable aspects, including their aerial game. The result, which stretches their unbeaten run to six, perfectly set up the upcoming two-match Bledisloe Cup series with the All Blacks.
Welsh players in Prem: It’s rare that there is any positivity about the Welsh game these days, but the influence wielded by some of their exports across the opening weekend of the English league was a reminder that they do have an abundance of talent. Gloucester hadn’t won away at Exeter in 12 years, but with new skipper Dewi Lake contributing two tries and Jac Morgan proving a nuisance, they registered a record Devon victory for their new club.
This newly arrived duo didn’t hog the headlines, as Louis Rees-Zammit scored two tries for Bristol at Sale and Tomos Williams looked the part on debut for Saracens in their win at Leicester.
This Welsh influence was just one aspect of a brilliant opening weekend for the new Prem season where 57 tries were scored across the five matches, a record number for a round of fixtures. That’s a figure that will have defence coaches collectively sweating this week leading into round two, and it will be interesting to see what they can come up with to try and apply the brakes on the grand level of scoring in a league where the emphasis is very much on attacking entertainment.
South African clean sweep: There was a level of concern that the demands of the Greatest Rivalry tour, where the four franchises had to amend pre-season to accommodate their respective untimely matches against the touring All Blacks, could have a negative effect, but this pessimism proved to be folly following the United Rugby Championship opening round results.
All four South African franchises registered the W, with Stormers winning at Connacht, Bulls at Zebre, Sharks at home to Ospreys and Lions were also home winners versus Leinster.
Now, having all four win in the same round of matches is nothing new: it was a feat achieved as recently as last season’s round 14 in March, following on from the clean sweep enjoyed in the previous weekend’s round 13. However, kudos is deserved for the quartet getting off to a new season flyer given they had to work August preparations around the New Zealand tour.
Joseph Suaalii and some other star turns: Wallaby midfielder Suaalii has copped plenty of criticism for not yet becoming the out-and-out star he was expected to be following his arrival in union from league, but his trial on the wing on Sunday versus the Springboks produced impressive results, and there is every chance now his name will be on everyone’s lips when the Rugby World Cup kicks off in 12 months.
His wasn’t the only individual performance that nourished the soul across the weekend. Santi Carreras’ try for Bath at Harlequins was stunning ingenuity: his volley of the ball into the air with the boot ended a Quins attack and it was followed by him coolly regathering it in the air one-handed and then racing all the way to the line down the other end of the pitch.
A shout-out too for South African rookie Luan Giliomee. The fleet-footed 20-year-old ran in a fantastic try for the Sharks from his own half that was reminiscent of the great Christian Cullen in his unstoppable All Black pomp. Fintan Gunne also deserves an approving nod as his first-half hat-trick for Leinster at the Lions suggests that the Irish side could well have found their long-term succession at nine for Jamison Gibson-Park. The final word on this goes to Antoine Dupont, as the star’s two early second-half Toulouse tries finished off Montpellier.
England’s appeal: There was a danger that the hoopla that surrounded last year’s home Rugby World Cup title win would be the crest of the wave for the popularity of the English women’s team, but it encouragingly wasn’t judging by the 59,871 attendance that turned up at Twickenham on Saturday to see John Mitchell’s team defeat New Zealand 26-19 in the WXV.
England’s fantastic unbeaten run since the 2022 World Cup final defeat had left so many of their games without any jeopardy as they were just too good for everyone else, but recent weeks suggest that the gap between them and the rest has closed – and that can only be good for the sport’s competitiveness.
The 26-all draw with Canada in Exeter ended their 39-game winning streak, but they got back to winning ways against the Kiwis with a dramatic last-gasp Zoe Harrison try when it seemed as if a draw would be the result. These tight games have added to the appeal of Mitchell’s team, not taken away.
745 Game: What a treat it was after all the weekend’s club rugby and that bonkers Test match in Perth to see union combine with league and put on an entertaining compromise rules match at Leicester for an incredibly worthy cause. There is no massaging the devastating ugliness of MND, the neurological condition that leaves people wasting away and dying.
However, the coming together of the rival rugby codes to raise funds and awareness following the deaths of Doddie Weir and Rob Burrow and the battles currently being fought by Ed Slater and Lewis Moody can only tug at the heartstrings.
The camaraderie of the former professionals who pitched up to play at Welford Road on Sunday was infectious, and how brilliant was it for the match – the third edition of the 745 Game – to end with Burrow’s seven-year-old son Jackson coming on in the final minute and running in a try from halfway.
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COLD AS ICE!
Springboks: Let’s not beat about the bush here. After so much giddy patter about the supposed enviable depth of Rassie Erasmus’ squad, Sunday’s defeat to Australia highlighted that there is an unmistakable difference between his first-choice side and the B-team selection that started in Perth. To see the world champions fall into arrears by 25 points was the type of situation no one envisaged, and it is something that has now given Erasmus and co. plenty of food for thought following the sweetness and light of their Greatest Rivalry series victory over the All Blacks.
Forget how the bomb squad eventually managed to claw the margin of defeat back to a face-saving four points; what transpired was a wincing dig in the ribs, a painful reminder that their squad isn’t invincible and winning a third successive World Cup isn’t the done deal that so many people believe it to be.
That is great for the finals, but what will first intrigue is how the Springboks react when picking their squad for the November conclusion of the Nations Championship. Some of Sunday’s starters, players such as Aphelele Fassi, have surely played themselves out of contention.
Ref comms: If there was one thing that needed to be perfect for Sunday’s Test match, it was the communications equipment used by the referee, his two assistants and the TMO. Having the fourth game in the Springbok-All Black series delayed during the first half in Baltimore a fortnight earlier made the sport a laughing stock.
However, its credibility was further eroded by the second-half carry-on in Perth where a sideline jobsworth frequently had to run onto the pitch and hand referee Andrea Piardi a mobile phone so that he could talk with TMO Matteo Liperini. It was embarrassing. Men’s Test rugby is the financially challenged sport’s golden goose, and anything that makes it look amateurish is unacceptable.
Surely the investigation into what happened on September 12 in the United States of America would have ensured there would be no repeat of the farcical situation, yet here we were, enduring rugby’s version of the Batphone. The more the sport’s administrators talk about speeding up the action, the more it seems to fall over itself and instead take longer for matches to be completed.
Sale/Harlequins: Mention of laughing stocks, these two English teams became the butt of way too many jokes in last season’s Prem when they respectively lost 13 and 12 of their 18 matches. Both have talked the souped-up talk over the pre-season, suggesting there would be an improvement in the new campaign, but the opening weekend only generated more pain and anguish for their hard-pressed fans.
There was a time when visiting teams turned up at CorpAcq Stadium and Twickenham Stoop and were beaten before they even got off the bus, but these venues have become frequent happy away day hunting grounds. It was just 16 weeks ago, in last season’s round 18, when a deflated Bristol, their play-off hopes gone, crashed 38-17 in Manchester, but with everyone back on square one, the Bears were good value for Saturday’s 10-point rematch win.
Down in London the night before, the new Quins managerial set-up received an immediate notice that the rot won’t be easily eradicated. Being 28-10 down at the interval and then failing to score from the 45th minute onwards highlighted the numbing hangover they have inherited.
Ireland’s rare blank: For only the fourth time in the history of a league that began as the Celtic League in 2001/02, all four Irish provinces dubiously began a season with a defeat. Connacht lost by 14 points at home to the Stormers, Ulster by five at home to Edinburgh, Leinster by one at the Lions and Munster by six at home to Glasgow. That last time this negative opening round clean sweep occurred was September 2009, 17 years ago.
It’s also the first time since April 2025 that all four Irish were beaten in any round of the league. When this happened 18 months ago, it broke a 10-year record stretching back to the last time there were four Ls across the same weekend.
Of course, it’s too early in the new season to suggest that the past weekend’s setback results are an indication of some sinister going on in Irish rugby, but everyone losing was an unwanted start and there now will be plenty of interest in the round two reaction with Connacht at Benetton, Leinster at Sharks, Ulster at Glasgow and Munster hosting Bulls.
Top 14 fortress: It’s no secret that French clubs place more emphasis on winning at home than getting up on the road, but the absence of more away victories is a drawback in the tournament’s boast that it is the world’s best domestic competition.
In this past weekend’s round four, there was just a single away winner in the seven fixtures, with Bayonne winning 20-17 at Racing. This one-in-seven strike rate was a repeat of the opening weekend when Pau at Montpellier were the lone away winners. In between, there were two away wins in round two and three in round seven, giving a total of seven away wins in 28 matches.
It’s a 25 per cent win rate easily eclipsed by the Prem and URC. The opening rounds in those competitions produced a respective four away wins in five (80 per cent) and five away wins in eight (62.5 per cent). That’s a level of jeopardy that France could do with having.