The ACT Brumbies yesterday turned in an improved second-half performance to beat the Otago Highlanders 27-21 in Super Rugby Pacific for the third win of the season by an Australian team over New Zealand opponents.
The Brumbies trailed 11-7 after a frenetic first half, but took the lead for the first time in the 42nd minute with a try to winger Corey Toole, his fifth of the season.
The Highlanders regained the lead in the 58th minute with a try to Billy Harmon, but the Brumbies rallied to retake the lead with a penalty to Noah Lolesio then a match-winning try to replacement Lachlan Lonergan.
Photo: AFP
Lolesio kicked five goals from five attempts for 12 points as the Brumbies posted their first win in Dunedin in 13 years.
Sam Gilbert kicked an injury-time penalty to give the Highlanders a bonus point.
The Brumbies lost 46-12 to the Waikato Chiefs in Round 2 in the only previous match against a New Zealand team this season. They got their season back on track with a 22-19 win over the Western Force last weekend and reproduced the best aspects of the match in the second half yesterday.
Photo: AP
“We had a good look at ourselves after the Force game,” Brumbies captain Ryan Lonergan said. “We got a win last week, but we still weren’t happy with the physicality in our breakdown.”
“I think in the first 20 minutes here we were still a bit lazy in that area,” he said. “Then we started to muscle up and we started to play a bit of good footy.”
In other games yesterday, the Chiefs beat the Fijian Drua 46-29 and the Auckland Blues downed the NSW Waratahs 12-10.
Photo: AFP
On Friday, the Canterbury Crusaders’ start to the season went from poor to unprecedentedly bad with their fourth straight loss, a 14-10 home defeat by the Wellington Hurricanes.
The 11-time champions had not lost three matches in a row at the start of season since 1996 before they lost to the Fijian Drua last weekend.
They had never previously lost four matches in succession.
“We’re trying really hard but it’s just not sticking,” Crusaders captain David Havili said. “We gave ourselves a chance in the contest tonight, but we couldn’t quite finish it off.”
The Queensland Reds thumped the Melbourne Rebels 53-26 and Moana Pasifika downed the Force 22-14.
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
A goalkeeper with one of Iran’s top soccer clubs has been suspended after he embraced a female supporter during a championship match, sports daily Khabar Varzeshi reported on Monday. Hossein Hosseini, 31, who plays for Tehran team Esteghlal, was suspended after the incident on April 12. The Esteghlal fan rushed onto the pitch where stadium security attempted to detain her. Hosseini approached the woman while security staff were trying to hold her back and briefly took her into his arms. The newspaper said that the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran fined the goalkeeper the equivalent of US$4,700 and gave him a one-match