A lot of athletes have their parents in the stands for their games, but how many get a haka performed for them? New Zealand rugby union player Te Toiroa Tahuriorangi made his debut for the All Blacks in Saturday’s 46-24 win over Argentina, and his father, father-in-law, and partner treated him to a special version of …
Highlanders, a New Zealand rugby union team competing in the Super Rugby international league, lost a 41-12 game this weekend to their Australian counterparts, the Waratahs, breaking a 40-game losing streak that all Aussie sides have been on against teams from New Zealand. The Waratahs were able to break through…
The late stages of the NFL player draft are for kickers and special-teamers, and for taking fliers on long-shot contributors. Saturday afternoon the Super Bowl-champion Eagles made the long-shot-est of long-shot selections in the 7th round of the 2018 draft when they selected the gigantic and tantalizingly athletic…
Rory Best should have stayed in Carton House with the rest of the Irish national rugby team. Instead, the captain and starting hooker sat in Belfast’s Laganside Crown Court alongside his teammate Iain Henderson, watching the trial of two other teammates for the alleged rape of a 19-year-old woman in June 2016. Paddy…
USA Rugby won this weekend’s World Rugby Sevens Series event in Las Vegas, its first-ever USA Sevens championship, and, fittingly, American player Perry Baker had the highlight of the tournament. Baker was pinned near his own goal line, but he juked his way out of that tight spot, broke an open-field tackle, and…
Georgian Big 10 league rugby sides Kharebi and Armazi met last Friday in Rustavi, Georgia (the central Asian country, not the southeastern state) for a friendly brawl, and also apparently a rugby match. Armazi won the match, 22-17, though it’s a bit more difficult to suss out who won the fight.
A lawsuit filed today says former San Francisco 49ers running back/punt returner and current Australian Rugby League player Jarryd Hayne sexually battered a Santa Clara, Calif., woman in December 2015. The woman claims sexual battery, battery, gender violence, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional…
Yesterday’s Tonga versus Samoa match at the 2017 Rugby League World Cup in New Zealand opened with one hell of a badass scene, as the two teams engaged in a prematch face-off for the ages. This thing rules so hard:
Australia is in the midst of a two-month, mail-in vote to measure public opinion on gay marriage. This Sunday, Macklemore is scheduled to perform “Same Love”—a pro-LGBT song—at the National Rugby League grand final. A lot of Australians who don’t think gay people deserve basic human rights are mad about this.
The haka, performed by the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, is one of the most famous spectacles in sport. The traditional pregame challenge is an exhilarating display that gets the blood pumping through the veins of the Kiwi players as they prepare themselves for the game ahead. The All Blacks’ haka may be the…
Rugby union is the closest sporting equivalent to a demolition derby. Why are they lifting each other up in the air? Why was that not a penalty for straight-up killing someone? Why am I hurting just watching it on TV?
In the matter of just a few clever passes and one extremely bad whiff, the Pro12's Munster helped secure its spot in the upcoming league finals and produced a 78-meter return that rivals anything you’ll see in the NFL this year, taking a clearing kick from Ospreys’ Justin Tipuric to the house from their own 22-meter…
The California Golden Bears have dominated the college rugby scene for decades. They’ve brought 27 of the past 37 national 15s titles back to Berkeley, including this year’s crown. However, the team’s dominant 43-13 victory over Arkansas State was undercut by a tragic injury suffered by sophomore Robert Paylor in the…
Benjamin Casty, the brother of French rugby star Remi, was officiating a French junior cup match between Toulouse and Saint-Esteve last weekend when he sent off an overly fired up Saint-Esteve player. Our man was not ready to leave the field, but he was prepared to pop Casty with a vicious right cross before trying to…
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Italy’s national rugby team has never beaten England. The Italians have played the English 23 times and they’ve lost 23 times. This weekend, England beat Italy, 36-15, in the Six Nations Championship, just as everyone expected they would. However, the unsurprising outcome of the game belies the controversial tactics…
This took place in a Serie A match in Italy yesterday:
When freelance photojournalist Ian Bradshaw went to Twickenham Stadium in the spring of 1974 to cover a rugby union friendly between England and France, he expected to shoot nothing more than another bloodbath between two fierce rivals. He returned instead with an instantly iconic photograph that signaled the start of…
Jarryd Hayne, the rugby league player who briefly played for the San Francisco 49ers last season and now plays for the Gold Coast Titans, took part in a presentation about cyberbullying and cybersecurity at a high school in Australia. The demonstration ended abruptly when a bunch of porn showed up on the screen.
