Watch every second of the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nRugby.com.au looks at the weekend that was in ‘Aussies Abroad.’<\/p>\n
Europe<\/p>\n
The big news from the weekend was the reported ruptured Achilles to Wallabies giant Will Skelton in La Rochelle’s 26-15 defeat to Bayonne.<\/p>\n
Skelton suffered the injury trying to step in the 32nd minute, staying down for several minutes before limping off the field.<\/p>\n
“There’s a suspected Achilles tendon rupture,” La Rochelle assistant coach Remi Tales said.<\/p>\n
“It’s tough for a player like him, given the effort he’s put in to come back after his calf injury. We’re all thinking of him and hope he recovers quickly, because we need him.”<\/p>\n
Further confirmation is set to come from the club in the coming days, with Skelton posting to social media in a moon boot with the caption “C’est la vie” – French for “that’s life.”<\/p>\n
It was better news for winger Jordan Petaia, called into action early off the bench as Perpignan got a crucial 36-20 win over Toulon.<\/p>\n
Jack Maddocks also started for Pau as they took down Taniela Tupou’s Racing 92 21-17.<\/p>\n
In England, Tom Hooper continued his successful return from injury with two turnovers in Exeter’s 38-14 win over Gloucester, while Angus Bell came off the bench for Ulster in their 28-12 win over Zebre in the URC.<\/p>\n
Japan<\/p>\n
Former Wallabies flyhalf Bernard Foley has bossed the battle of the trans-Tasman No.10s, scoring 19 points as Spears Funabashi Bay thumped All Black Richie Mo’unga’s Brave Lupus Tokyo 51-7 in Japan Rugby League One.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old, who is the competition’s leading individual scorer, picked up his third try of the season on Saturday to extend his points tally to 150.<\/p>\n
The Spears’ 25th victory in a row at western Tokyo’s Spears Edoriku Field, where they are unbeaten, returned the 2022-23 champions to the top of the table after previous leaders Saitama Wild Knights failed to secure a try-scoring bonus point in their dramatic 36-34 win over Tokyo Sungoliath.<\/p>\n
Sean McMahon came off the bench for Sungolitath but was forced to watch on as the Wild Knights scored an 84th minute winner.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s games saw three-Test Wallabies prop Paddy Ryan on the scoresheet as fifth-placed BlackRams Tokyo crushed Sagamihara Dynaboars 33-7.<\/p>\n
Israel Folau’s seventh try of the season wasn’t enough for Urayasu D-Rocks who fell to their ninth consecutive defeat, outclassed 43-17 by Mie Heat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A big-name Wallaby has commanded all the headlines overseas after a brutal injury to Will Skelton looks to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,97542,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-575134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-aussies-abroad","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}