What’d We Learn This Weekend – The Nothing Edition

Maybe I'm in the midst of the October doldrums, but I don't feel like we learned much last week.  So, let's look forward to next weekend and the European Champions Cup.  Here's a snapshot preview of some of what we'll see: Have Wasps been huffing bug spray? Make whatever excuse for them you like, nobody …

What’d We Learn This Weekend? The Back in Black Edition

All Blacks Break out the Steamroller - For weeks, if not months, many have speculated that the All Blacks were coming back to the rest of the pack in World Rugby.  They were all wrong.  The machine that is the All Blacks stampeded all over the Springboks on Saturday in New Zealand, to the tune of …

What’d We Learn This Weekend? – The US TV Crisis Highlights Week 1 in Europe

At a time where rugby has supposedly become the fastest-growing team sport in America, it is troubling indeed that we have fewer and fewer viewing options for international rugby in this country. Just a couple of short years ago, if you had a reasonably deep cable package, you had access to the following competitions on …

Time to Harass ESPN for Mitre 10 Cup, and Other Tuesday Notes

I noted yesterday that ESPN3 would be showing The Rugby Championship again this year.  The fact that ESPN continues to show TRC means they continue to have the SANZAAR broadcast license in the US, which also means they have the rights to the Mitre 10 Cup. Since ESPN has offered no indication that they will …

Rugby Championship on US TV; Other Rugby Notes

The Rugby Championship will be broadcast in the US on ESPN3, as it was last year.  The first game on the streaming platform will be New Zealand v. Australia at 3am PST on Saturday morning, followed by Argentina and South Africa at 8am. Alas, despite my repeated pleas, no indicated as of yet that ESPN3 …