Three indigenous players will create a rugby milestone when they turn out for the Wallabies against New Zealand today, the Australian Rugby Union said yesterday.
Fullback Kurtley Beale, center Anthony Faingaa and his twin brother, hooker Saia Faingaa, have been named in the starting 15 for the Tri-Nations’ Test against the All Blacks in Christchurch.
A fourth indigenous player, flanker Matt Hodgson, has been selected among the reserves.
It will be a record indigenous representation in an Australian national rugby team.
The three Ella brothers — twins Mark and Glen, and their younger sibling Gary — all played at international level in the 1980s, along with former schoolmate Lloyd Walker, but only two of the quartet ever played together in the same Test, the ARU said.
“This is a first,” Gary Ella said in a statement. “It’s a great achievement for the individuals involved and it’s a great achievement for Aboriginal people who will be watching this Test with great interest.”
“To have three players with indigenous heritage in the starting team, four in the squad, and an Aboriginal in Jim Williams on the coaching staff, it’s big news,” he said.
“I know the Ella family is very excited, and so is Lloyd McDermott, the first Aboriginal Test player, who has also been a driving force behind the development of young Aboriginal rugby players,” Ella said.
Anthony Faingaa, starting a Test for the first time against the All Blacks, said he was proud to be involved in the milestone achievement for Australia’s indigenous community.
“Saia and I are proud of our Aboriginal bloodline on mum’s side of the family,” he said. “We’re also humbled to know the Ella brothers have taken time out to wish us the best for this Test, which means so much not only to us but our family.”
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s final preparations were mildly upset yesterday when replacement scrumhalf Alby Mathewson left to attend the birth of his first child.
An All Blacks’ spokesman told reporters ahead of the team’s final training session at Lancaster Park that Mathewson had left the squad to fly to Wellington where his partner Cara had gone into labor.
“He’ll be flying back first thing in the morning [on Saturday],” the spokesman said.
Coincidentally Mathewson was drafted into the All Blacks’ squad ahead of last week’s match in Melbourne to cover for Piri Weepu, who had stayed behind in New Zealand while his partner gave birth to their first child.
Weepu rejoined the side in Melbourne after the birth of his daughter and came off the bench to replace Jimmy Cowan, who suffered a rib injury in the 49-28 victory and was ruled out of today’s clash.
Weepu will start the match with the uncapped Mathewson, who had an outstanding Super 14 season for the Auckland Blues and was considered unlucky not to be named in the original All Blacks squad earlier this year, on the bench.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier