NEW YORK, NY – There was so much to cover, we literally debated about making this a two-part article. To save time we suspend most of the superlatives as we cover all of the action in Europe’s top three leagues, the #Top14, the Aviva Premiership and the Guinness Pro 12 as the end of the season draws near. In addition to that we also have the completion of the eighth leg of the HSBC World Rugby Org Sevens World Series . Then we must not forget the action in Super Rugby land. Plus there are Junior (U-20) tournaments to discuss along with Tier 3 international rugby championships in Europe, South America, and Asia. However, before we get to all of that we must discuss all of the Transfers, Player Transactions, USA Rugby and World Rugby news. With no more needing to be said, let’s get into the Global Rugby Recap:
Player Transactions:
Guinness Pro12: Scotland and Glasgow Warriors tighthead Euan Murray has announced his international retirement, stepping away from the Test game as Scotland’s most capped prop.
According to the rumor mill, Italian sides Treviso and Zebre might be forced to leave the Pro12 if they do not pay the €1.5m they owe to the league. The Pro 12 would then go to 10 teams and look into the inclusion of English Championship sides, London Welsh and London Scottish.
Super Rugby: The Bulls confirmed reports that assistant coach Pieter Rossouw will leave at the end of the season. Allegedly the former Springbok wing, who has served as assistant coach since 2008, will be pursuing business interests elsewhere when his contract expires at the end of the current season… The Lions announced that full-back Andries Coetzee, wing Ruan Combrinck, center Howard Mnisi and lock MB Lusaseni have agreed new contracts at the in-form franchise. The junior players will join senior players Malcolm Marx, Kwagga Smith, Jaco van der Walt, Lourens Erasmus and Bobby de Wee in re-signing with the franchise.
USA Rugby News/Updates:USA Rugby Trust announced that SportingClass of England will be the official 2015 Rugby World Cup fundraising partner of USA Rugby… There will be announcement at Soldier Field in Chicago on Tuesday, May 12 about potential match opportunity of the USA Eagles facing the Australia Wallabies…Our friends Stars Rugby announced that they have brought on Palmer College of Chiropractic Coach Joe Lippert into their coaching staff.
The USA Rugby College Championships took take place at Fifth Third Bank College at Kennesaw State University in Georgia over the weekend. Notre Dame College scored 11 tries in the comprehensive defeat of University of California-Riverside for the Women’s DII title. Another University of California school, the one in Riverside, had better luck in their match as they upset the consecutive two time champions in D1-AA Central Florida. Penn State crushed Central Washington to win their fourth consecutive Women’s D1 title. In a repeat of last year’s match, St. Mary’s College once again defeated Life University to win D1-A in a title affair that wasn’t decided until the final whistle.
2015 USA Rugby College 15s National Championships – Results
Women’s DII Final: Notre Dame College 69 – 10 U of Cal-Riverside
Men’s D1-AA Final: Central Florida 15 – 18 U of Cal-Davis
Women’s D1 Final: Penn State 61 – 7 Central Washington
Men’s D1-A Final: Life Univ. v St. Mary’s College
World Rugby News: The pools for the final leg of the 2014/2015 HSBC World Rugby Org Sevens World Series in London, have been confirmed. Click Here to take a look. Another World Rugby event in London recently ended. Every four years there is a review of the laws of the game and if they need tweaking. You can see the results of the Laws Review Process by clicking here…Check out the drone coverage from World Rugby of an rugby match played in the Artic by clicking here.
The Oceania Rugby (U-20) Junior Championship 2015 held it final this weekend. It features the U20 teams for Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Samoa. As expected New Zealand faced their old rival Australia and the Kiwis walked away with the title of champions. In the third place game, Samoa made an improbable come back to take down Japan.
Here is the schedule:
Sat – 9th May 15
New Zealand 46 – 29 Australia
Samoa 33 – 30 Japan
Junior World Rugby Trophy – The Junior (Under-20) World Rugby Trophy is a tournament for the second tier nations of rugby at the U-20 level. The winner gets promoted to the Junior World Cup competition which features, the top tier nations in international rugby. It is being held in Portugal this year. The USA failed to qualify this year and lost out to Canada. The teams playing this year are Canada, Uruguay, Portugal, Georgia, Namibia, Fiji, Tonga and Hong Kong. This week will be the start of pool play. Fans can watch live streaming of the tournament around the world. Two venues will be in use on each of the four match days during the tournament in Lisbon with all games being available to view via the Portuguese Rugby Union (FPR) website.
Here is the schedule:
Tue – 9th May 15
Fixtures (local times)
Pool A – CAR Rugby do Jamor
17:00 Uruguay v Georgia (Referee: Paulo Duarte, Portugal)
19:00 Fiji v Portugal (Referee: Damian Schneider, Argentina)
For Pool A matches click here.
Pool B – Estadio Universitario de Lisboa
17:00 Canada v Namibia (Referee: Aminiasi Tadrau, Fiji)
19:00 Tonga v Hong Kong (Referee: Nori Hashimoto, Japan)
For Pool B matches click here.
As for the weekend’s fixtures:
Glasgow 7s : The recap of a thrilling and sold out Glasgow 7s can be found just by clicking here.
Rio 2016 Olympics Qualifying: The main news to comeout of Glasgow was that the top 3 sides of Fiji, South Africa and New Zea land qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Going into the start of the 2014/2015 HSBC World Rugby Org Sevens World Series, it was agreed that the top four teams in the standings at the end of the season would automatically qualify for the 2016 Olympics. With one leg left, the aforementioned trio can not be caught by any of the sides below them so they can start making plans for Rio.
Super Rugby: According to our Super Rugby expert, Kiwi , round 13 was all about home cooking. Every visiting walked away empty handed. Click Here to read his fantastic review.
#Top14: There were big wins, tough losses along with a healthy dose of controversy. Our Top 14 expert, says with playoff dreams, relegation nightmares all on the line and only 3 matches left in the season going into the weekend, it was one hell of a round in the Top 14. Click Here to read his review.
Aviva Premiership: There penultimate round of the 2014/2015 season of the Aviva Premiership. was something to remember. The season will have the most insane finish is the history of the league. The weekend begun with Bath being edged out by Harlequins, hurting their home playoff semi-final chances. Sale outlasted Newcastle, Gloucester battled back to dominant London Irish as the sides played for pride in each match up. Northampton hardly broke a sweat as they pasted London Welsh, Leicester traveled to Coventry and despite playing a man down edged Wasps to secure a place in the top four. Saracens are on the outside looking in as their loss to Exeter meant Exeter leapfrogged them for the fourth and final playoff spot in standing.
Here are the results:
Fri – 8th May 15
Harlequins 26 – 27 Bath
Sat – 9th May 15
Sale 34 – 28 Newcastle
Gloucester 35 – 13 London Irish
Northampton 46 – 0 London Welsh
Wasps 21 – 26 Leicester
Sun – 10th May 15
Saracens 20 – 24 Exeter
Guinness Pro 12: The fight for home field advantage in the Pro12 playoffs continued this weekend as the four teams that will qualify have already been settled. The weekend begun with Edinburgh still hurt from their Challenge Cup lose going down to Newport Gwent Dragons. Leinster managed to squeeze out an ugly victory against Treviso. Meanwhile Ospreys got a huge win against fellow top 4 side Glasgow Warriors. Ulster battled Munster to a standstill in an Irish derby, Connacht trampled Zebre and finally Scarlets did enough to beat Welsh rivals Cardiff.
Here are the results:
Fri – 8th May 15
Newport Gwent Dragons 19 – 5 Edinburgh
Leinster 10 – 0 Benetton Treviso
Ospreys 21 – 10 Glasgow Warriors
Sat – 9th May 15
Ulster 23 – 23 Munster
Zebre 10 – 40 Connacht
Sun – 10th May 15
Scarlets 16 – 6 Cardiff Blues
European Nations Cup:The ENC, or the 6 Nations “B” , is the premier tournament for the second-tier nations of Europe. Believe it or not, the ENC consists of seven divisions, each featuring between four and six teams. The matches played will determine who will get promoted and relegated from groups 1B, 2A – 2D, and 3A over a two-year cycle. Division 1A aka the 6 Nations B is where the six best teams in the rest of Europe reside and there is no promotion to the Europe’s premier international rugby competition, only relegation back to 1B…There were several divisions in action this weekend. In 1b, Poland lost on the road to Ukraine, Denmark were upset by the tiny upstart that is Luxembourg and Norway came up short against Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Here are the results:
Sat – 9th May 15
1B: Ukraine 20 – 17 Poland
2C: Denmark 5 – 13 Luxembourg
2D: Norway 10 – 16 Bosnia & Herzegovina
South American Championships (SAMC) 2015: The SAMC is the same as the ENC – except it’s South America, a minor detail – and that has 4 divisions featuring 15 teams. It is the battle to find the 2nd best team in South America with Argentina the firm number 1. The top division is called the CONSUR division and features Argentina’s B team, Uruguay and Chile. The A division will see Brazil were downed by Paraguy and Uruguay fell out of the top 20 rankings after a shock defeat at home to Chile in the CONSUR division.
Here are the results:
Sat – 9th May 15
Paraguay 20 – 11 Brazil
Uruguay 15 – 30 Chile
The Asian Rugby Championship, which is similar to the ENC (European Nation’s Cup) but with 5 divisions with the 3 most dominant teams, the tri-nations of Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan in the top division. There are 4 teams in division 1 and 2 then division 3 is broken up into East, Central and West with 3 teams each before we finally get to division 4 with 7. Believe it or not this is allegedly streamlined from previous years where it was just 5 divisions and 5 teams in each…As for the weekend’s results, Korea were thumped by Japan in the top division. The D1 final saw Sri Lanka win the title with their defeat of the Phillipines while Kazakhstan were too much for Singapore in the 3rd place match. In D2 the UAE trounced Thailand and Chinese Taipei thoroughly outplayed by Malaysia.
Here are the results:
Sat – 9th May 15
Top: Korea 10 – 66 Japan
D1 Final: Sri Lanka 27 – 14 Philippines
D1 3rd Place: Kazakhstan 32 – 12 Singapore
Sun – 10th May 15
D2: United Arab Emirates 53 – 22 Thailand
D2: Chinese Taipei 13 – 46 Malaysia
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, James Harrington, Jamie Wall, Nick Hall, DJ Eberle, Jake Frechette, Scheenagh Harrington, Jamie Loyd, Cody Kuxmann, Karen Ritter, Audrey Youn, Akweley Okine, Rocky Brown and Declan Yeats, respectively.
And as always, stay low and keep pumping those legs.
