Crusaders

We take a look at Round 8 of Super Rugby and round up the action from all the weekend's fixtures, with Israel Dagg's impressive game for the Crusaders.

The 2016 Super Rugby season may still be in its infancy, but already a number of players have started to make a big impression in the tournament.

Saturday's Super Rugby action saw wins for Melbourne Rebels, and the Crusaders whilst the Blues and Reds battled to a 25-25 draw.

The legendary duo of Dan Carter and Richie McCaw have moved on and there is a fresh look to the Crusaders in the opening two rounds of the 2016 Super Rugby season.

The Crusaders responded to their opening-round defeat with a 28-13 win over the Blues on Friday.

Following on from our look at the two South African conferences last week, we now turn our attentions to Super Rugby’s Australasian conferences, starting with New Zealand.

Fiji international Nemani Nadolo has paid tribute to current side Crusaders after announcing he will leave the New Zealand outfit at the end of next year's Super Rugby season - with France his likely destination.

New Zealand head coach Steve Hansen led the tributes for Richie McCaw after the history-making New Zealand captain announced his retirement from rugby.

New Zealand have made a great start to The Rugby Championship, seeing off the challenges of Argentina and South Africa, and now only Australia stand between them and lifting the southern hemisphere’s grandest prize.

The Super Rugby team of the week has got to be one of the easiest I have had to compile.

Fly-halves are seemingly in the news every day. The wonderful creative folk at Guinness have produced a fitting tribute to Mr. J Wilkinson, which captures what he means to English rugby and now the French rugby public.

The RaboDirect Rebels have begun their 2015 Asteron Life Super Rugby campaign with a 20-10 victory over the Crusaders in Christchurch, their first win on foreign soil.

As we reported yesterday, it was a one point win for the Waratahs in the Super 15 Rugby Final. With insights from TalkingRugbyUnion's NZ based reporter, Scott Donaldson we have tracked this season closely.

Centres Adam Ashley-Cooper and Kurtley Beale inspired the Waratahs to victory over the Crusaders in a thrilling Super Rugby final.

In the end our serial tipster, Scott Donaldson got it right as he told us yesterday that it would be the Waratahs. He explained it would be close but did we really think it would be a Foley kick for 3 points that would give them an extraordinary one point win?

In the world of business, the stretch of water between New Zealand and Australia is one of the most expensive to transport goods. This weekend it is rugby union that has the highest stakes.

Super Rugby 2014 semi-finals showed us that there is now little doubt that the best two teams will line up in the Super Rugby final next weekend with solid wins in the semi-finals.

After beating the Brumbies, the Waratahs have joined the final with the Crusaders, who crushed the Sharks in Christchurch.

After much rugby debate about the quality of Super 15 rugby last week on the pages of Talking Rugby Union, we are approaching the business end of the season.

We have all heard of home field advantage, but a South African sports scientist has attempted to quantify just how much difference factors like travel and home advantage have on a game.