ACT Brumbies prop James Slipper yesterday became the most-capped Australian in Super Rugby history when he played in his 178th match.
Slipper reached the milestone when the Brumbies kicked off their Round 7 home match against the New South Wales Waratahs, with the 34-year-old having been welcomed warmly onto the field by the Canberra crowd.
The Brumbies won 40-16.
Photo: AP
It lifted the loosehead prop one match ahead of former Wallabies hooker Stephen Moore and into fifth place on the all-time list of Super Rugby’s most enduring players.
Former Canterbury Crusaders prop Wyatt Crockett leads the way on 202 matches, followed by three other All Blacks — Aaron Smith (185), Liam Messam (182) and Sam Whitelock (181).
Slipper told a mid-week news conference that Moore had been in contact to congratulate him.
“Just wishing me all the best. He’s a respected player so you get a text from him, someone I’ve played a lot of rugby with, it’s always nice,” Slipper said of former Wallabies captain Moore, who retired in 2017. “It’s a nice feeling to be up there in the company of players like him.”
Slipper’s career began with the Reds in 2010 and he played 104 matches there until 2018.
He shifted to the Brumbies the following year and said the stint in Canberra had given his career a second wind.
In Hamilton, the Waikato Chiefs cantered over for 10 tries in a 68-12 drubbing of Moana Pasifika — the most lop-sided scoreline in more than a year.
Winger Emoni Narawa bagged a hat-trick of tries, while fly-half Damian McKenzie landed nine of his 10 conversion attempts.
The winning margin was the highest in the competition since the Wellington Hurricanes hammered Moana Pasifika 59-0 in Round 5 last year.
The widest winning margin in Super Rugby history is the Bulls 92-3 thumping of the Queensland Reds on May 5, 2007.
The visitors struggled to contain the creativity of All Blacks playmaker McKenzie, and the athleticism of Narawa and Etene Nanai-Seturo, who produced a sparkling display at fullback in his 50th Super Rugby match.
“Coming off last week’s performance [a loss to the Canterbury Crusaders], the coaches put the hard word on us,” said Nanai-Seturo, who was among the try-scorers. “We had to dominate up front and we did that, so the backs got to do their thing out wide.”
On Friday, the Auckland Blues defeated the Western Force 50-3 and the Melbourne Rebels downed the Fijian Drua 41-20.
Additional reporting by staff writer
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS