{"id":807660,"date":"2026-10-19T15:10:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T15:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807660\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T15:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T15:10:14","slug":"former-wallabies-coach-laurie-fisher-takes-on-new-test-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807660\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Wallabies coach Laurie Fisher takes on new Test role"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Published: 5 hours ago | 19 October 2026 05:43 EDT
Updated: 5 hours ago | 19 October 2026 05:56 EDT <\/p>\n

mens<\/p>\n

world-rugby-nations-cup<\/p>\n

Assistant coach Laurie Fisher during an Australia Wallabies training session at Sanctuary Cove on August 23, 2022 in Gold Coast, Australia. (Photo by Chris Hyde\/Getty Images) \"Google <\/a> <\/p>\n

Former Wallabies forwards coach Laurie Fisher is currently lending his expertise to the Zimbabwe<\/a> national team as the Sables prepare for this weekend\u2019s Test against Namibia<\/a> in Harare.<\/p>\n

The 68-year-old left his role with the Wallabies when Joe Schmidt handed over the head coach baton to Les Kiss in July, but is now back in the Test arena as a consultant to the African champions.<\/p>\n

With less than a year to go before they appear at a Rugby World Cup<\/a> for the first time since 1991, Zimbabwe recognised the need to bolster their coaching staff. Former Exeter Chiefs<\/a> skills coach Ricky Pellow (backs\/attack) is another recent addition to the team supporting head coach Pieter Benade.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s match against Namibia serves as a warm-up to the second phase of the World Rugby Nations Cup, which resumes at the start of next month.<\/p>\n

Zimbabwe have two UK-based fixtures, on 7 and 14 November, against Samoa<\/a> at the DIY Kitchens Stadium in Wakefield, the home of the current Super League champions, and against Uruguay<\/a> at Ealing\u2019s Trailfinders ground. The Sables will then head to Angoul\u00eame in France<\/a> to play Chile<\/a> on 21 November.<\/p>\n

Zimbabwe competed well but lost all three of their Nations Cup matches in July, 36-26 to Tonga, 31-15 to USA<\/a> and 23-19 to Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very encouraging Nations Cup competition for us in July,\u201d reflected Zimbabwe High Performance Director Liam Middleton.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of our review afterwards, we identified that the breakdown was an area that we wanted to make some big improvements in the next few months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the help of World Rugby, we were able to get Laurie Fisher here.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a class coach, a breakdown specialist, a font of incredible rugby coaching knowledge and he is here in camp this week as we prepare for our Test match against Namibia.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe will be working with our players and coaches, he will be doing some coach development sessions with local club and schools coaches, and he will make a huge difference to how we play in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher, who has been coaching for 25 years, added: \u201cI\u2019m here short-term trying to help the Zimbabwe Sables around their breakdown and collision work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are a really exciting bunch to work with, they have a lot of power, a lot of energy and we are just trying to put some fundamentals in place that\u2019ll help them in the Test against Namibia and into the Nations Cup that they can carry forward into the World Cup next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published: 5 hours ago | 19 October 2026 05:43 EDT Updated: 5 hours ago | 19 October 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}