Category: Sports

A Set small text size A Set the default text size A Set large text size The NRL playoffs are in full swing with two sudden-death matches to decide who advances to face Penrith and Melbourne in the prelim finals – here is how each team is shaping up. Finals Week 2 teams All times AEST, fixtures yet to be officially announced Semi-Final: 4 Sharks vs 5 Cowboys at CommBank Stadium: 7.50pm, Friday September 20 Sharks: Jesse Ramien (ankle) is considered a chance of returning, according to coach Craig Fitzgibbon, after the centre missed the loss in Melbourne. Samoan winger Sione ... Read more

A Set small text size A Set the default text size A Set large text size Canterbury Bulldogs star Josh Addo-Carr has returned a second positive drugs reading, following his much-publicised roadside test in Sydney last week and may have played his last game for the club with officials to consider the possibility of tearing up his lucrative contract. The Bulldogs confirmed the positive test on a second sample on Friday. The winger will miss their do-or-die elimination final clash with Manly on Sunday after voluntarily standing himself down from the match, after reports surfaced his roadside test taken in ... Read more

A Set small text size A Set the default text size A Set large text size Canterbury Bulldogs star Josh Addo-Carr has returned a second positive drugs reading, following his much-publicised roadside test in Sydney last week and may have played his last game for the club with officials to consider the possibility of tearing up his lucrative contract. The Bulldogs confirmed the positive test on a second sample on Friday. The winger will miss their do-or-die elimination final clash with Manly on Sunday after voluntarily standing himself down from the match, after reports surfaced his roadside test taken in ... Read more

As Jo Yapp followed Joe Schmidt’s lead of selecting a new captain for their first Test on tour, the first-year coach has been forced to call up a 36-year-old debutant to help solve an injury crisis up front that threatens to derail next year’s World Cup campaign. Indeed, less than a week after touching down in Northern Ireland on their two-Test tour of the United Kingdom, the Wallaroos suffered an injury to one of their most important players with loose-head prop Brianna Hoy doing her ACL at training ahead of Saturday’s night’s Test against the Irish in Belfast. Already short ... Read more

A Set small text size A Set the default text size A Set large text size Five years ago I pitched an idea to the chair of a Sydney-based NRL club designed to generate perspective among NRL players and provide them them with something meaningful to be involved with away from the game. The idea had been nurtured through watching mostly immature men perform dopey act after dopey act and wondering whether very well paid and time rich young NRL players were living in harmful bubbles. Based on the endless stream of unsavory and silly moments that continued to occur, ... Read more

The NRL finals are finally here with eight clubs still in the hunt for the trophy – here is how each team is shaping up. Finals Week 1  teams All times AEST Qualifying Final: 2 Panthers vs 3 Roosters at BlueBet Stadium: 7.50pm, Friday September 13 Panthers: 1. Dylan Edwards 2. Sunia Turuva 3. Izack Tago 4. Paul Alamoti 5. Brian To’o 6. Jarome Luai 7. Nathan Cleary 8. Moses Leota 9. Mitch Kenny 10. James Fisher-Harris 11. Scott Sorensen 12. Liam Martin 13. Isaah Yeo 14. Trent Toelau 15. Lindsay Smith 16. Liam Henry 17. Luke Garner 18. Matt Eisenhuth 19. Brad ... Read more

It’s always difficult to judge a coach from the outside. We have so little knowledge of what goes on behind closed doors, of what the coach is trying to achieve, how he’s trying to achieve it and of what kind of connection he has with the players, that getting a real handle on how he’s performing is no easy task for the external observer. Or at least, that would be the case if we cared about any of that. Given that we don’t, it’s actually extremely easy to judge a coach, especially when you start from the default position that ... Read more

It is that time of year again when the cream of the NRL and the AFL go head-to-head in their respective “best of the best” finals series. In an age when the encouragement of mediocrity is always a good topic for high school debating teams all striving for a participation ribbon, it is worth asking are we really watching the best of the best? The AFL introduced the eight-team finals format in 1994 in a 15-team league. The “best of the best” could finish in the bottom half of the table. In that first year, Collingwood finished eighth, quite literally ... Read more

A Set small text size A Set the default text size A Set large text size Sydney captain Callum Mills will miss next week’s AFL preliminary final at the SCG because of a hamstring injury. Mills tweaked his hamstring at training on Tuesday, the club’s first major session since defeating GWS in an epic qualifying final. Scans on Wednesday confirmed a minor strain for the academy graduate, who had battled through a bout of gastro to tackle the Giants last Saturday. Win a Ziggy BBQ for Grand Final day, thanks to Barbeques Galore! Enter Here. The club confirmed the star ... Read more

A Set small text size A Set the default text size A Set large text size Good grief. The Wallabies find themselves back at square one, squandering a 17-point lead in the 30th minute to lose 67-27 against Los Pumas in Santa Fe, conceding the most number of points EVER in a test match. It was a brutal comedown for Joe Schmidt’s men and the results were well reflected in the votes cast by The Roar‘s audience this week, with SIXTEEN fail marks handed out. Only seven players managed an average score of 5 or higher, all of them in ... Read more