Explosive Rugby, Cricket Unsteady
The Tri-Nations Rugby Tournament reaches the half way stage and the South African Cricketers pull out of the Tri-Series Cricket Tournament in Colombo
Suite101 introduces its first cricket and rugby union round up mid way through the Southern Hemisphere's premier rugby union tournament, the Tri-Nations.
Rugby News
The World number one ranked New Zealand All Blacks are again on top of their game and after three matches in the 2006 Tri-Nations rugby tournament, two against the Australian Wallabies and one against the South African Springboks, deservedly find themselves on top of the log and unbeaten on thirteen points. In second are the Wallabies with ten points, having dispatched the Springboks twice, but lost to the seemingly invincible All Blacks in Christchurch and Brisbane respectively. The 2004 Champion Springboks are struggling along in third place after failing to record a single victory in this season's tournament so far. After a weeks break, the Wallabies travel to Eden Park in Auckland this Saturday, where they haven't beaten the All Blacks in twenty years.
The Wallabies will be desperate for a win, yet with the All Blacks in such devastating form, thrown in with history's hand and the intimidating partisan crowd, the men in gold will have to produce an outstanding performance if they want to come close to matching one of the most devastating rugby teams in the history of the game.
Moving into the Northern Hemisphere and apart from the news that English hero Johnny Wilkinson has been included in the latest England squad; the other major newsworthy story is that the Canadian Canucks crushed the United States Eagles 56-7 this past weekend in an official 2007 World Cup qualifier in St Johns Newfoundland.
The Canucks took the annual Can-Am contest in front of a 5 000 strong crowd. The star of the show was Canadian winger, James Pritchard, scoring a record 36 points after a hat-trick of tries and nine successful attempts at goal.
The result means that Canada has qualified for next year's world cup in France, behind Argentina. The Eagles will have to await the results of their home series against Uruguay to see if it will be them or the South Americans who make it through to France as the Americas number three seed.
Cricket News
In cricket, the Tri-Series tournament being staged in Sri-Lanka, between the hosts, India and South Africa has been cancelled. The tournament got off to a somewhat rocky start after wet and slippery ground conditions in Colombo forced the cancellation of the limited over's International between the hosts and India. The opening match of the tournament had already been called off due to bad weather conditions. The other team in the competition, South Africa, then completely pulled out of the competition, staged largely in the bomb rocked city of Colombo, for security reasons.
In other cricketing news, England will be looking to boost their keenly awaited Ashes tour to Australia with a series whitewash against Pakistan in the fourth and final test of the series at the Oval over the course of the next five days. At the time of writing, Pakistan were 184 for the loss of two wickets in their first innings on the second day. England was bowled out for a miserable 173 runs in their first innings.
