NEW YORK, NY – This week’s addition of the Weekend Rugby Recap is like a baguette fresh out of the oven; it needs to be gotten to! Let’s serve it up…
The main news surrounds the Women’s Rugby World Cup. The WRWC began on Friday in Marconnes, France. Our has a tournament preview and had a scathing review of the French media coverage.
For in-depth coverage, check out Scrum Queens or Your Scrumhalf Connection – or even check out the live blog from the IRB.
As for the matches, France shutout Wales and England steamrolled Samoa… Australia made light work of South Africa as did Canada against Spain… Reigning Champions New Zealand destroyed Kazakhstan… The USA came up short against Ireland – due to penalties and poor set-piece play.
Here are the results:
FRI– 1ST AUG 14
WRWC France 26 – 0 Wales
WRWC England 65 – 3 Samoa
WRWC USA 17 – 23 Ireland
WRWC Australia 26 – 3 South Africa
WRWC Canada 31 – 5 Spain
WRWC New Zealand 79 – 5 Kazakhstan
USA v Ireland Highlights: Click This.
The next matches are set for Tuesday. The USA will take on Kazakhstan, Australia face Wales, England takes on Spain, Canada battles Samoa and New Zealand goes up against Ireland in the match of the round. Finally, host France will have at it versus South Africa.
Here is the Midweek schedule:
TUE– 5TH AUG 14
WRWC USA – Kazakhstan
WRWC Australia – Wales
WRWC England – Spain
WRWC Canada – Samoa
WRWC New Zealand – Ireland
WRWC France – South Africa
Super Rugby: The RWU Super Rugby Superman, Jamie Wall, has a great review of the final for the Super Rugby title. Please CLICK HERE.
Premiership 7s: The Premiership Rugby Sevens Series is a 7s competition for the 12 Aviva Premiership Clubs that will play the following season. From this, loads of young talent are discovered. The premiership 7s is now followed by a World Club 7s tournament, which is the brainchild of the Premiership 7s branding team. This weekend saw play to determine which sides will join the 2 Welsh sides in the final. The Harlequins, Cardiff Blues, Gloucester, Leicester Tigers, London Irish, Newcastle Falcons, the Dragons and Northampton Saints will compete in the Premiership Rugby 7s Final.
RWC2015: The repechage round began this weekend with winner take all one-off first round matches. Zimbabwe put up a brave fight but the travel to unknown foreign climate to take on Russia proved to be too much as they came up short. Meanwhile the Hong Kong national trip was smooth but more than 36 hours in the air they couldn’t overcome the fatigue, altitude and two yellow cards as they lost to Uruguay. Uruguay and Russia will play a home and home series to determine who gets the final spot for the RWC2015. If Russia wins that will mean that every team that made the world cup in 2011 returned in 2015.
Here are the results:
SAT– 2ND AUG 14
RWCQ Russia 23-15 Zimbabwe
RWCQ Uruguay 28-3 Hong Kong
Conversion Kick:
Transactions: According to reports in Australia, Will Genia looks set to head to the Premiership after the 2015 World Cup to join Bath. The off-season is silly season so let’s all remain calm until it is official.
The Newport-Gwent Dragons have announced the signing of Super Rugby Stormers tighthead prop Brok Harris… Ulster confirmed Ireland hooker Rory Best will take over as captain from the retired Johann Muller.
Former New Zealand Rugby League international Krisnan Inu has signed with Top 14 club Stade Français as an injury replacement for France full-back Hugo Bonneval‘s long-term knee injury…Toulon have backed away from signing South African World Cup winning Prop CJ Van der Linde. He failed to impress in his trail with the club and instead former Pau tighthead Karim Bougherara, 25, is set to join the European champions to reinforce a weakened front row.
As many noted, there appear to be a flood of ex All-Blacks ready to switch their allegiance back to their Pacific Island place of heritage. According to this article, it could a wave of players that have be discarded or moved abroad.
USA Rugby News and Updates: The USA Rugby AIG Women’s Junior All-Americans will assemble in Buffalo, N.Y., 0n August 17 to prepare for the U20 Can-Am Series in Ontario. Click HERE for the full team list and tour schedule.
Here is USA Womens Head Coach Pete Steinberg regarding the loss to Ireland at the WRWC
That’s it for now. Feel free to comment below, look for and “Like” our Facebook Rugby Wrap Up Page and follow us on Twitter@: RugbyWrapUp,Junoir Blaber, DJ Eberle, Nick Hall, James Harrington, Cody Kuxmann, Jaime Loyd, Karen Ritter , Jamie Wall, Jake Frechette and Declan Yeats, respectively.
