Australia captain James Horwill will tell his team to trust their instincts and “have a dig” when they face world champions New Zealand in their opening match of the Rugby Championship this weekend.
Horwill and the Wallabies are desperate to put the disappointment of last month’s British and Irish Lions series defeat behind them and get new coach Ewen McKenzie off to a winning start at the Olympic Stadium today. McKenzie has named five uncapped players in his matchday squad and Horwill, who played under the former Test prop for four years at the Queensland Reds, said his final words of advice would be for the rookies to back themselves.
“I’ll tell the new guys it’s just another game of football, as big as it is,” the lock told reporters yesterday.
Photo: AFP
“You got yourself here because you’re good footballers so you’ve got to go out there and back yourself,” Horwill said. “Don’t think twice and if you think something’s on, have a dig because I’ll never criticize you for having a go and having a crack, and neither will Ewen.”
“We’ve got to make sure that whatever we do, we don’t do it half-hearted, and go out full bore and make sure we enjoy it,” he added.
Horwill has played New Zealand 10 times and ended up a winner only twice, the first time in previous coach Robbie Deans’s first match in charge in 2008.
McKenzie has said he will encourage his side to play “the Australian way” with ball in hand and has picked a potent if inexperienced back three of Israel Folau, James O’Connor and Jesse Mogg.
“We need to make sure as a forward pack that we get as much ball to our backs as possible, because we’ve got a very dangerous backline that can really do damage when they get clean ball,” Horwill said.
“[Israel]’s a guy you want to get the ball because he makes things happen,” he said. “He’s got free rein to make sure he gets the ball as much as he wants.”
Winger Folau is to play his fourth Test today after exploding onto the international scene in the Lions series, highlighted by his two-try debut in the opener.
Scrumhalf Will Genia said he had been highly impressed in training by fullback Jesse Mogg, who made his debut as a replacement winger in the third Lions Test.
“We didn’t get to see much of his ability to run the ball and attack, and just to see him in training, he’s incredibly quick,” Genia said.
“He’s got great pace and he just adds a different dimension to our attack, especially with a left boot as well. So if we can create space and momentum, those guys can definitely find space and plenty of opportunities for the team,” he added.
Today’s match is the first of three against the All Blacks over the next few months, with another Rugby Championship match in Wellington next week and a third Bledisloe Cup Test in Dunedin in October.
New Zealand have held the trophy since 2003.
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