World Rugby Tour's Darkest Hour

As you are no doubt aware the World Rugby Tour site is in troubled waters. We thought it best to outline the obstacles that have mounted against the tremendously popular blogsite and publish it as our final post.

Pressure on the site has been mounting ever since Stephen Hoiles spelt Millennium with only one L. Viewers were calling for heads right from the first post. Rightly or wrongly we the editors decided to ignore the countless emails and stick with the semi-literate former Waverly College student. We thought that time would heal the damage done by Hoiles, but as the grammatical errors piled up we were proven wrong. We urged Stephen to pen a response to the ever-growing list of detractors, but he said he didn’t know what "detractors" meant, also he didn’t understand what we were saying because we spoke to quickly. This is not the reason for the termination of the blog, but merely one of many challenges we faced.

The ARU’s unreasonable stance of not endorsing full frontal nudity was the most disappointing revelation over this past week. It seems that times have truly changed. As a public site we are prevented from using any footage from the Copa Mundial 2007. I won’t bore you with the details but pretty much everything we do as a team or in team kit or at a match venue cannot be published without authorisation. You may have noticed that we refrained from using the words Corld Wup in any of the posts; this was a measure the legal team thought necessary in the current climate. Needless to say the blocking of our attempt to air footage of players not in tournament kit(aka nude)was a fatal blow to the site. This event was the catalyst for the brains trust at the world rugby tour to decide to reach a settlement for conflicts and abstain from adding any more articles, videos, photos or polls to the site.


On the bright side we have had some great moments over the last month. The polls were extremely popular and provided some interesting results. One that immediately comes to mind is the overwhelming majority of polers who thought John Muggleton, the great ball playing backrower and now longest serving wallaby coach, had broken his nose more than 37 times. This is apparently not true, but what is true is that 0% of voters thought he had broken his nose less than 5 times. Another poll worth mentioning is the “Who would you like to date your sister?” poll, where Stephen Larkham was a clear winner with nearly 50% of the votes. David Lyons however didn’t fair so well with less than 8%. Surprise Surprise, people didn’t want a 120 Kilo Number 8 who strangely resembles Ed Kemper, going out with their sister. What is still the most contentious poll to date was the “Which Wallaby sent Eddie the treason text” Matt Dunning beat Rocky Elsom 125 to 117 of 376 votes. All I can say about this one is that despite the fact Eddie and Rocky are mates, Rocky does not have his phone number or access to it.

Undoubtedly, the greatest interest has been associated with the rise of Al “The Fuse” Baxter. Matt Giteau’s version of events, the 50th cap article and Al Baxter – Out of control were all extremely popular posts. Al had complained to the editors that this was unwanted attention, but it has become apparent that he brings the spotlight on himself. Not only did he have in his own words a “storming” game against Canada, he also carried on like he’d won the world cup after but he also scored his maiden 1st class try. Embarrassing? yes but not surprising, because as we have come to realise, with the Fuse you never know what your gonna get and that’s the way people like it. As one emailer put it, “I had no idea that Baxter’s life could bring me such entertainment.” Which is why we at the world rugby tour were so happy to bring you this service over the last few weeks. And that is exactly what it is, a service to the rugby loving public of Australia (and anyone else with the internet). It is also worth mentioning that no player has received any financial benefit from this project. Except for Stephen Larkham, who got $500 for his geekishly titled first post Episode One. Which we though was fair enough considering his deal with Edinburgh fell through two weeks back.

So in conclusion we hope you enjoyed the world rugby tour and we thank you for your support of the Wallabies.

Rocky Elsom Read more!