Above: Marist St Pat's and Northern United shared the 2008 Jubilee Cup after drawing 10-10 in the final. Both teams won their first round Jubilee Cup matches, as most Wellington club championship winners do.  Will this year’s Jubilee Cup champion be one of the four teams that won their first round matches on Saturday? Yes, suggest the statistics. A key factor in the early rounds of the Jubilee Cup has always been that teams must win their early games if they want to be championship contenders at the business end of the season...More

Above: Marist St Pat's No. 8 Victor Vito holds his opposite, Tawa's Peniasi Tokakece, up over the line in MSP's 12-8 win in today's Jubilee Cup opener at Lyndhurst Park.  UPDATED: Strap yourselves in, rugby fans. If the opening weekend of the Jubilee Cup is any indication, supporters of the eight sides will have shredded nerves even before the playoffs are reached. Today's opening round of matches saw both tense and thrilling finishes, with no more than four points the solitary margin on a fine but blustery afternoon...More

Above: A host of leading players are set to play club rugby on Saturday, with Shaun Treeby's Tawa taking on Marist St Pat's featuring Victor Vito, and other Hurricanes such as Reg Goodes and Brad Shields and Jason Woodward all named to play.  And so it begins again. The seven-week battle to just make the Jubilee Cup playoffs, then to win two more intense, high pressure, matches to earn the right to lift Wellington rugby’s ultimate prize. The six Premier sides that didn’t make the top flight, plus Marist St Pats’ and Old Boys-University’s ‘B’ sides, will contest the Hardham Cup ,and with the Premier Reserve sides also starting their second rounds we’re now well into the back half of the season with all championship rounds underway...More

Loyalty is something that is becoming harder and harder to find these days around Wellington Club Rugby and when Avalon rugby club went through a tough period some of its better players moved on. But not Akuila Alatini.    Despite numerous offers to change clubs during Avalon's tougher times from 2011-2014 Alatini has stayed loyal to Avalon. This weekend he is rewarded by playing his 100th Premier game when Avalon take on Hutt Old Boys Marist at home at Fraser Park in round one of the Hardham Cup...More

It’s Wellington club rugby Women’s Gala Day this Saturday with all four matches being played together on the Petone Recreation Ground, and fittingly one of the legends of the local game, Hiria McRae, will be playing her 100th game for the OBU Impalas against Northern United. Perhaps fittingly too that she’ll be playing at Petone, having also played well over 50 combined games for the Avalon and Petone clubs before  joining OBU in 2009. Prior to that, Hiria, who plays prop and can cover all three front row positions,  played several seasons of club rugby from the late 1990s to early 2000s in both Waikato and Bay of Plenty and played Women’s NPC for those two unions as well as the Wellington Pride...More

Above: MSP first five-eighth Fa'atonu Fili getting a kick away in a recent Swindale Shield match, with halfback Peter Sciascia looking on in support.  This Saturday Marist St Pat’s first five-eighth Fa’atonu Fili plays his 200th Wellington Premier club rugby match when he runs out on to Lyndhurst Park to face Tawa in round one of the Jubilee Cup. Heading into Saturday’s match, he has played 181 matches for MSP and 18 for Oriental-Rongotai, whom he played for in 2013. He made his Premier debut for MSP at the tail-end of 2001, famously coming off the bench in that year’s Jubilee Cup semi-final against Poneke at Westpac Stadium and potting the first of many dropped goals of his career in a winning effort...More

They’ve been on Jubilee Cup qualification life support for at least two weeks, but the Upper Hutt Rams have stormed through the pack to take their place in the championship round, starting this Saturday. The Rams got up to finish seventh – the highest they’ve been in the standings all season – after winning their second consecutive nail-biter on Saturday. Up against Petone, the Rams found themselves down with the scoreboard clock fast counting down, but snatched the lead with a try to the competition’s top points scorer, Joyner Key...More

Wellington College: 29 (Reece Plumtree 2, Mellenniumma Leota, Adrian Seumanufagai tries; Plumtree 3 con, 1 pen) St. Patrick's College, Silverstream: 26 (Albert Polu, Luke Mannix, Todd Svenson tries; Riley Forbes 3 con) For the first time since 2012 Wellington College have won the Ken Gray Memorial Trophy, twice recovering from an 11-point deficit to defeat St. Pat’s Silverstream. The turning point was in the 46th minute when Wellington was trailing 21-10. Halfback Adrian Seumanufagai charged down a Silverstream clearance, snatched the ball and dashed 22m for a try...More

As one who wandered the lonely streets of Cardiff in 2007, I know how lovingly the Taffs treat a humiliated All Blacks fan. Which is to say – not very lovingly at all. That’s understandable I guess if you haven’t managed to win yourself since 1953, so that even a proxy win - and they don’t come any more proxy than by Les Bleus – is reason for celebration and general rubbing of black noses in the coal-dust. But there’s a big part of me that wishes Wales were just that bit better, just that bit more of the old foe...More

The curtain has closed on the first round Swindale Shield competition, with the top eight finishing sides now progressing to the coveted Jubilee Cup and the bottom six teams joined by the leading two qualifiers from the Premier Reserve competition to play in the Hardham Cup. This time last year the Old Boys University Goats were one of seven teams hoping to knock then defending Jubilee Cup champions Hutt Old Boys Marist off their perch. Now the hunter is the hunted, with OBU in possession of both the Jubilee Cup and the first round Swindale Shield...More