Lord have mercy on the All Blacks if they turn up in Dublin expecting that they simply can't lose to Ireland twice in a row. One suspects that isn't the case, and that we'll see a very different beast on Sunday, no doubt fortified by wanting to deliver for the quake-hit folk back home.However the Irish have plenty of positives on their side of the ledger:- They're playing at home where they often push the All Blacks hard - and they're aware of the danger of falling off the pace around the 60 minute mark...More

Less than a year ago Salesi Rayasi’s rugby dreams were over. A stint in the Canterbury Rugby Academy saw Rayasi lose his passion for the game as basketball became his calling. Rayasi told Canterbury Rugby that he had done his time with rugby and that he would be returning to Wellington to chase a US college basketball scholarship. However, Rayasi’s father Filipe - an accomplished professional rugby player himself - and mother convinced the young winger to give rugby one more try. That he did, joining the Upper Hutt Rams Premier side late in their Swindale Shield run with immediate impact, scoring a hat-trick, including the game-winning try in the dying minutes...More

The representative sevens season kicks into gear this weekend with several leading provincial unions competing in both the men’s and women’s divisions of the sixth annual Auckland 7s tournament at the Northcote/Birkenhead Rugby Football Club on the North Shore. Provincial union teams from the Northern and Central regions are entered in both the Men’s and Women’s sections of this weekend’s Auckland 7s tournament, as part of their build-ups to the regional 7s qualifiers for the National Sevens tournament coming up in December...More

Following the 2016 Hurricanes Under 16 Tournament, a group of 56 players have been selected to attend the annual Hurricanes Under 17 Development Camp to be held at the Hurricanes Training Base on 11 December. The one day Camp provides an insight to the world of professional rugby, with sessions focused on nutrition, mental skills and physical training. New Zealand Rugby’s Convenor of Selectors, Darren Larsen, sees the Camp as an excellent opportunity for aspiring players to learn what it takes to embark on a potential career as a professional player...More

UPDATED: The tournament has been cancelled on Friday afternoon, owing to ground restrictions. The tournament will not be rescheduled. The re-scheduled WRFU Satellite 7s Tournament is set to orbit the top fields at Porirua Park tomorrow as the sevens season continues in earnest. Eight teams are entered in the Men’s event, which has been re-scheduled following an earlier morning cancellation in October. The Women’s section was replayed two weeks ago at Ian Galloway Park. However, the weather might not be on the side of tournament organisers tomorrow, with heavy rain in the morning giving way to rain in the afternoon in the Porirua area, according to this always-accurate forecasting website here  Should the tournament be cancelled, then the call will be made at 7...More

Of all the positives to come out of the defeat by the Irish, I'd say the biggest is that this All Blacks team can safely not claim to be the greatest ever.They're an extremely good side. They've set a world mark, and produced some great attacking rugby.But the greatest? That's a burden they should never have had slung around their necks so early. Would Richie McCaw's All Blacks have finished the comeback job on Sunday? Probably. They were pretty used to digging themselves out of holes, so the self- belief was fierce...More

The St Mary’s College rugby team is on a roll. Fresh from retaining the Wellington Condor 7s Secondary School title, St Mary’s entered last Saturday’s Wellington club championship American Ambassador’s 7s tournament with the goal of testing themselves against the best local senior club teams as preparation for the National Condors in Auckland at the start of the December. Five games later the schoolgirls lifted the Eleanor Roosevelt Trophy after beating two-time defending champions Oriental-Rongotai in the final, a side laced with experienced Wellington Pride players such as Amanda Rasch, Joanah Ngan-Woo, Fa’ausa Makisi, Lizzie Goulden and Porirua College contemporary Ayesha Leti’Liga...More

The Upper Hutt Rams have successfully defended the American Ambassador's Wellington club 7s title beating hosts Wainuiomata 29-21 in the Cup final at Mary Crowther Park this afternoon. The Rams will represent Wellington at the Nationals in Hamilton in February. The Cup final was keenly contested with Wainuiomata snatching an early lead, Upper Hutt surging ahead by 10, Wainuiomata pegging it back to one, before Salesi Rayasi scored the winning try. Down 22-21, Wainuiomata launched a last-ditch attack inside their 22...More

The Wellington club rugby sevens season resumes in earnest tomorrow, with the 2016 WRFU American Ambassador’s Club Championship 7s tournament being staged at Mary Crowther Park in Wainuiomata. The one-day tournament has attracted 28 teams representing 13 clubs and three school teams who will be competing for Cup glory across three divisions. This is down on the record 35 teams last year, but with 68 matches there’s no shortage of action. There’s 16 Men’s teams playing for the American Ambassador’s Cup itself, eight teams, including a re-formed Petone side and the Condor-Sevens bound St Mary’s College team, contesting the Women’s Eleanor Roosevelt Cup and a four-team Colts division that includes recent Wellington Condor boys champions St Pat’s Town and runners-up St Pat’s Silverstream...More

I hope you're not blase about the All Blacks being in Chicago. It's a brilliant location to stage the Ireland game, with I guess Boston being the only venue that could top it for that particular opposition. I find the way America does sport, as opposed to elections,pretty awesome to watch. Doesn't mean it all makes sense,or is great, but heck, they sure know how to put on the spectacle. You would of course forgive the locals for being underwhelmed. They have been praying their Cubs can stay alive in baseball's world series, and along the way, end the mother of all curses - the curse of the goat...More