Spiro Zavos on Sharks

RUGBY

Win against Brumbies crucial to Tahs' finals chances

Spiro Zavos Last Saturday night at Allianz Stadium, Waratahs supporters stood up and yelled, applauded and roared their team on in the last few dramatic moments of the contest with the Stormers.

Rugby

Hard-nosed packs give Kiwis a wake-up call

Spiro Zavos dinkus

Spiro Zavos AFTER the sensational Highlanders - Chiefs match, the new backs coach of the Waratahs, Daryl Gibson, contacted his former Crusaders teammate Justin Marshall with the claim that the New Zealand...

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Spiro Zavos

McKenzie's blunder raises questions over his tactical nous

Spiro Zavos In the 20th minute of the engrossing qualifying final between the Reds and the Sharks, Ewen McKenzie made a fateful and wrong decision.

Spiro Zavos

Race to the Super finals is reaching fever pitch

Spiro Zavos NOW, where were we, before the June Test series stopped this year's Super Rugby tournament in its tracks …

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A tale of wrong referees and unfair advantage

Spiro Zavos TOM Keneally, wordsmith, describes the hype before big matches as the foreplay. Not unexpectedly, the qualifying finals between the Crusaders and Bulls and the Reds and Sharks have generated intense...

Spiro Zavos

Conference table key to landing Super title

Spiro Zavos THE iron law of winning the 2012 Super Rugby tournament for the Waratahs is: ''Win the Australian conference.'' The Reds did this last year.

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Spiro Zavos

Conference format is a winner - and South Africans cannot be allowed to wreck it

Spiro Zavos THE Australian and New Zealand unions beware, the South Africans are coming to make a mess of the Super Rugby tournament.

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Spiro Zavos

The fine line between winners and losers

Spiro Zavos 'MOST ball games are lost, not won," Casey Stengel, the eccentric, folksy manager of New York's Yankees and Mets once told a gaggle of sports writers.

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Spiro Zavos

Waratahs must drop work-to-rule attitude if they want to win

Spiro Zavos IT was a dispirited and sullen crowd that shuffled from Allianz Stadium after the Waratahs' depressing loss to the Western Force last weekend.

Spiro Zavos

Waratahs prove winning smart beats winning ugly any day

Spiro Zavos THE greatest spectacle in rugby is the ensemble try, especially when it is scored to win the match. This is rugby as a great orchestra in full, soaring voice.

Spiro Zavos

Investment in youth sadly lacking with Australian franchises

Spiro Zavos SOME decades ago Evan Whitton (the ''onlie begetter'' of this rugby column) and myself were at Concord Oval watching the Australian Schoolboys play Ireland.

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Spiro Zavos

Gouge claims leave Bulls open to scorn

Spiro Zavos The ''Gougegate'' affair is becoming murky. There are too many unanswered questions relating to it that need to be resolved by SANZAR if public confidence in the new process is to be maintained.

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Spiro Zavos

Hot air over depth of Australian conference neglects cold hard facts

Spiro Zavos PHIL KEARNS talked about it on the Rugby Club. John Plumtree, the New Zealand-born coach of the Sharks, says the same thing.

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