If you go out onto a rugby pitch looking like Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, you better have the skills, and stones, to back it up.
Rene Ranger has been our favourite Super Rugby player of the past decade. There, we've said it.
Sure, Nehe Milner Skudder is scandalously good and Nemani Nadolo in full flight makes us giddy, but nobody mixes jaw-dropping grace with beastly beat-downs like Ranger.
The Auckland Blues winger has returned to New Zealand from a two-year stint with Montpellier in the Top 14.
He produced plenty of highlight reel moments in France but he simply functions better in the wet n' wild Super Rugby. When the game gets loose a crazy, he's there. When a tight contest requires some brutish fizz, he's there.
When you think of retreating from the edge of your seat, Ranger steps up.
So it proved at Eden Park as the Whangeri boy done good defied all sense of gravitational logic for this sweet score in the corner.
https://youtu.be/KDsgDUmEXms
Unfortunately for the Blues, they played like the Blues thereafter and had their docket punched 'L' by the Hurricanes.
Scenes! Campbell College beat out RBAI yesterday to win their first Ulster Senior School’s Cup trophy since 2018. It was their 29th title, but the victory may be remembered for a brawl between the two sides, which broke out after 30 minutes. After an attacking maul, five metres out from Campbell’s line, the RBAI scrum-half […]
They can go the whole way! After selecting our Ireland match-day 23 for the 2027 Rugby World Cup, we have gone one step further and picked our full 33-man squad. Props Tom O’Toole was the big winner from the Six Nations, taking his opportunity with aplomb. Paddy McCarthy and Jack Boyle haven’t seen much game […]
That seems to be that. Away from Ireland’s Triple Crown-winning exploits on the rugby pitch, there has been the ‘slight’ distraction that is Andy Farrell’s contract. Speculation over his post-World Cup plans ramped up when it was reported that Saracens were looking to bring him back. However, the latest comments from Ireland’s head coach suggest […]