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Here are your rugby morning headlines for Saturday, July 25.
Wales stars confused as Sam Warburton pinpoints change
Sam Warburton has pinpointed the change in world rugby that has seemingly left Wales falling behind again.
Despite a win over Fiji in their opening Nations Championship match, their summer ended with disappointing defeats to Argentina and South Africa. In particular, it was Wales’ lack of attacking threat that has some concerned – with Warburton highlighting that the international game has rewarded teams who play confident attacking rugby.
Having looked at the statistics from this summer’s new competition, the former Wales captain realised that winning teams are averaging 15 clean breaks per match.
For context, Wales mustered seven linebreaks in the whole tournament.
“If you go back to the 2019 World Cup and the British & Irish Lions tour to South Africa in 2021, then the game was very kick-heavy and not that entertaining, even if purists like me still enjoyed the physical confrontations and tactical battles,” said Warburton in his Times column. “There were a lot of concerns about where the game was heading, but I said at the time that we should not panic because there was plenty of evidence elsewhere that free-flowing rugby was possible, and thankfully that has borne out now.
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“When I was playing, if the opposition team had done that to Wales and opened us up as much as that, our defence coach, Shaun Edwards, would have been going mad. Sides making more than 20 clean breaks is now quite normal. It is a massive change, and a great thing in terms of entertainment.
“I must congratulate World Rugby on this. It is easy to criticise rugby’s lawmakers, but they have made some subtle tweaks — such as the drop-out from behind the goalline rather than a scrummage when the ball is held up — and it looks as if we are seeing the benefits.”
Warburton’s realisation comes days after ex-Wales fly-half James Hook admitted that Steve Tandy’s side looked like they were trying to “negate the opposition rather than stamp our own authority on the opposition”. The end result was Wales’ attack looking somewhat confused.
“The main probably frustration is our identity at the moment,” said Hook on BBC’s Scrum V podcast. “How, from an attacking point of view, we want to attack and our selection in terms of the way we want to attack.
“We only really had four proper set-piece attacks from scrum and lineout. The first attack, we’re turned over from a maul. We went 9-12, we’re going lateral, Ben Thomas passes it to (Aaron) Wainwright.
“It’s a one-man clean and we’re turned over. That was our first attack of the game. We’ve got a ball-playing 12 who’s hitting breakdowns and carrying.
“The second attack, we went to Ben Thomas off a scrum, he’s carried direct. Our third attack was Ben Thomas carrying off a lineout, which was actually a decent carry, then a second carry from Rhys Carre who knocked it on.
“But what I’m trying to say is we’ve picked a ball-playing 12 who is being direct. I don’t mind if that’s the way you want to play, but surely we have to pick the right personnel to adapt to that attacking strategy.
“We’re playing in a way that’s probably not suited to how he plays for Cardiff. The space is on the outside. So if we’ve got a ball-playing 12, why don’t we chuck everything in terms of attack and get the ball to our best ball-carriers like (Louis) Rees-Zammit and Blair Murray out wide.”
Former Wales hooker Scott Baldwin was in agreement, saying: “Everyone knows how South Africa defend. They’re a line-speed defence, they’re narrow, they give you the edges, they give you that chip space, they call it the lowest percentage play.
“We’ll give you the lowest percentage play and we’ll challenge you to get there. The disappointing thing is it took us 60 minutes before we went for a cross-field kick, before we went for that little dink over the top. It’s out of desperation, and to me that tells me the players are almost worrying about making mistakes because of the scoreboard, then it’s a case of ‘Well, we’ll just play heads-up rugby here’.
“Whereas again, going back to James’ point, if you’re playing a ball-playing 12, then you need to challenge yourself to get to that width. It’s pointless going to a maul for Wales if you’ve got a ball-playing 12, because that allows their backline to come up and get off the line.
“Because South Africa are so strong in their maul, they don’t need to commit as many numbers. So if we were going to a six-man lineout, they’ve only got five in there, so they’ve got more numbers off that lineout to give them the ability to bring their line speed and be dominant in the collision. I just don’t see how we set ourselves up to be successful like that.”
Terminal rugby star opens up on diagnosis
Former Auckland Blues back-row Cameron Suafoa admits he was embarrassed ahead of revealing his cancer diagnosis to his team-mates, having initially kept it hidden.
The former Maori All Black was first diagnosed with sarcoma in November 2023, having stepped away from rugby for a short time to battle the disease. However, after a fresh diagnosis last year, he revealed back in April that the cancer had spread and was terminal.
The 28-year-old retired from the game following his diagnosis, with the Auckland native revealing on the Rugby Direct podcast that he had felt embarrassed to reveal he had cancer to his team-mates.
Despite having surgery to remove a tumour and needing to learn to walk again, he kept the fact he was having radiation therapy from his club colleagues in Auckland.
“During that period, I’d only kept it close to me or my wife and a few of my friends,” he said. “I had this feeling of embarrassment and I didn’t want to tell my family, even some of my other mates, I didn’t want to tell them.
“Training and playing is hard enough when you’re healthy and adding that extra load was definitely tough.
“I was probably stubborn as well, the stubbornness probably helped me to push through things just because I didn’t want to be such a burden to anyone or even towards the team.”
New European competition to launch next month
A new European club competition will launch next month in Frankfurt, which could lead to a similar model including Welsh sides.
Ascent Rugby will aim to fill the gap between Rugby Europe’s Super Cup and the domestic league of five countries involved – with Germany, Netherlands, Czechia, Poland and Belgium all providing clubs.
The initial competition will feature seven teams, according to RugbyPass. German duo SC Frankfurt 1880 and Adler XV, Dutch pair The Dukes and RC Eamland, Czech club RC Tatra Smichov, Poland’s Pogon Siedlce and Belgium’s Boitsfort Rugby Club will contest the first festival-style event on August 22.
Frankfurt will host the first event, which will see six teams compete on a single day, before the second event takes place in Brussels the following week.
One of the men behind Ascent Rugby, Henry Blunk, said: “SC Frankfurt were dominating rugby in Germany and they were desperately looking for new challenges, and after listening to them carefully and trying to understand their needs, I identified there were more clubs like them in neighbouring countries.
“What is being offered by Rugby Europe (the Super Cup) is too far away for them at the moment, so they needed something in between that and their domestic leagues, to enable players to play at a higher level.”
RugbyPass report that talks are set to take place with the United Rugby Championship over a similar model – given the step-up from Super Rygbi Cymru and All-Ireland League.
There is no detail how that would work, though.
New Wallabies coach sends message to players
New Australia coach Les Kiss has sent a message to his overseas players after naming his first squad as Wallabies head coach.
The new boss resisted the urge to rip up Australia’s squad from the recent Nations Championship, yet predicted “there will be change” moving forward. Kiss has replaced Schmidt as Wallabies boss ahead of next year’s World Cup on home soil, with the former rugby league star describing himself as “a different personality in some ways to Joe’s leadership.
“How that manifests, we’ll find out,” he said following the announcement of his first squad.
“I’ll just be me, driving what it is to be a new ‘us’.”
There are restrictions on the number of overseas-based players Wallabies coaches are permitted to select, with priority afforded to those featuring for Australia’s Super Rugby franchises.
However, Kiss still had a message to those plying their trade elsewhere.
“I won’t be afraid to look overseas,” Kiss said, “but respect what we’ve got here.”
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