Geoff Townsend
Geoff Townsend (born 1964) is an Australian professional rugby union football coach. He is currently head coach of Sydney club Gordon RFC, and he was appointed as head coach of the North Harbour Rays for the inaugural season of Australia's National Rugby Championship in 2014. Townsend began his professional rugby coaching career in 1997 with three undefeated seasons as co-head coach of the New South Wales Under 19 team. He was the co-head coach of the Manly first grade team in the Shute Shield in 1999 and 2000. Townsend spent several seasons in Japan – as a coaching consultant to Top League team Kobelco Steelers in 2001, and as coach and technical advisor to Tokyo University from 2002 to 2004. Returning home to Australia, he was head coach of the Southern Districts first grade team in the Shute Shield from 2004 to 2006. He joined the Western Force as head coach of the club's academy in 2007, and was assistant coach to the Force's Super Rugby Super Rugby is a men's pr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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North Harbour Rays
Sydney is an Australian rugby union team that competes in the National Rugby Championship (NRC). Formerly known as Sydney Rays, the team is one of two sides from New South Wales in the competition; the other being the NSW Country Eagles. The current team plays as the all-of-Sydney side in the NRC and wears the traditional blue and yellow colours of Sydney's representative rugby teams. It draws on the metropolitan sides that have represented the city for more than a century. In 2019 the NRC side adopted as its logo the anchor insignia of the Sydney Rugby Union, which dates back to at least 1970. The team was known as the North Harbour Rays before 2016. It was renamed Sydney during a consolidation which reduced the number of NRC teams in the city from three in 2014 to eventually just one by 2018. The North Harbour Rays had been formed as consortium of four Sydney clubs; Gordon, Manly, Northern Suburbs, and Warringah in 2014. North Harbour took its identity from the Central ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gordon RFC
Gordon Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club based on the North Shore of Sydney. The club, known as the Gordon Highlanders, plays out of Chatswood Oval and competes in the New South Wales Rugby Union grade competition. Club information * Premiership Titles – Shute Shield: 9 (1952, 1954, 1956, 1958, 1976, 1993, 1995, 1998 & 2020) * Club Championships: 13 * President: Matthew Glascott * 1st Grade Head Coach: Brian Melrose * 1st Colts Head Coach: Andy Connors * General Manager Grant Pisani The original Gordon Rugby Football Club was founded in 1927 on Sydney's North Shore, playing in the Metropolitan Junior Competitions and its home games on Roseville Chase Oval. The club was disbanded in 1930 and the following year, many of its players transferred to the newly formed Roseville Junior Rugby Union Football Club, whose home ground was Chatswood Oval. In the 1935 season, the club won the Metropolitan Junior Club Championship, the Kentwell Cup and its second grade, the Bourk ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Southern Districts Rugby Club
Southern Districts Rugby Club is a rugby union club based in southern Sydney. The club currently competes in the New South Wales Rugby Union competition the Shute Shield. The club was formed by the amalgamation of the St George and Port Hacking clubs. History Formed in 1989 by the amalgamation of St George and Port Hacking rugby clubs, with headquarters at Forshaw Park, Sylvania Waters, south of Sydney. The new club played in red, sky blue, white and black jumpers and fielded 6 grade teams, 3 colts' sides, and an under-19XV. Accommodation is limited at Forshaw Park to 2000 but the club has enjoyed splendid support since the amalgamation. St George, founded in 1906, brought to the mix a long record of figuring prominently in 1st grade finals, but not in living memory and with only one premiership win – in 1957, when St George beat Gordon 21–3 in the Grand Final. St George showed promise of great success when it first came into the Sydney competition but was one of the club ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Manly RUFC
Manly Rugby Union Football Club is a rugby union club based in Manly, a suburb of Sydney. The club was formed in 1883 and competes in the New South Wales Rugby Union competitions, the Charter Hall Shute Shield. Manly, known as the Marlins, play their home games at Manly Oval and train at Keirle Park. Manly Beaches and Manly Districts merged to form Manly RUFC. The District team's colours were chosen to represent to new club, whilst Beach's homeground, Manly Oval, was used for the merged club. Manly joined the first grade in 1906, but have roots back to 1883. The current club colours of red and blue came into being in the late 1900s. The club were a great force in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1950 Manly won both the first grade and reserve grade titles in the same season. However, there were no titles for over 30 years, until 1983, under coach Alan Jones, though the club, while playing entertaining running rugby, could not produce consistent results. In 1997 the club again won th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Australians
Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Australian. Australian law does not provide for a racial or ethnic component of nationality, instead relying on citizenship as a legal status. Since the postwar period, Australia has pursued an official policy of multiculturalism and has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30 percent of the population in 2019. Between European colonisation in 1788 and the Second World War, the vast majority of settlers and immigrants came from the British Isles (principally England, Ireland and Scotland), although there was significant immigration from China and Germany during the 19th century. Many early settlements were initially pen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rugby Union
Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players each, using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends. Rugby union is a popular sport around the world, played by people of all genders, ages and sizes. In 2014, there were more than 6 million people playing worldwide, of whom 2.36 million were registered players. World Rugby, previously called the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) and the International Rugby Board (IRB), has been the governing body for rugby union since 1886, and currently has 101 countries as full members and 18 associate members. In 1845, the first laws were written by students attending Rugby School; other significant even ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Rugby Championship
The National Rugby Championship, known as NRC, was an Australian rugby union competition. It was contested by eight teams, seven from Australia and one from Fiji. The tournament ran from 2014 until 2019 before being disbanded in 2020 following the change of the Australian rugby TV broadcasting deal from Fox Sports, who had funded the competition, to Stan Sport. The 2020 competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Format The National Rugby Championship was usually held between late August and early November. A round-robin tournament was scheduled first where each team played all others once. The top four teams progressed to the championship playoffs consisting of two semi-final knockout matches and a grand final to determine the champion team and winner of the NRC Trophy, nicknamed 'The Toast Rack'. During the round-robin section of the tournament, teams would also play for the Horan-Little Shield, a challenge trophy put on the line by the holders when a challe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shute Shield
The Shute Shield is a semi-professional rugby union competition in Sydney, Australia. It is the premier club competition in New South Wales. The Shute Shield is awarded to the winning team from the Sydney premiership grand final held at the end of the club rugby season. History Club-based rugby football began some time before 1865. The Sydney University Football Club began in 1863 (although this date is questioned by some historians) and is the oldest existing football club outside the British Isles. The first recorded rugby season in Australia was in 1865 with Sydney University, Sydney Football Club and the Australian Club reported as playing games. On 24 June 1874, a meeting was held between ten prominent football clubs to create a governing body to administer the game within New South Wales. The Southern Rugby Football Union was formed. The first task of the Union was to decide on a set of rules for all clubs to adhere to. Clubs were given "senior" or "junior" status which ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Top League
Japan Rugby League One (formerly the Top League) is a rugby union competition in Japan. It is the highest level of professional rugby competition in the country. The Japan Rugby Football Union created the competition in 2003, by absorbing the Japan Company Rugby Football Championship, to drive up the overall standard and popularity of the sport and improve the results of the Japan national rugby union team. The chief architect of the league was Hiroaki Shukuzawa who strongly felt the urgency of improving Japanese domestic company rugby to a professional level which would allow Japan to compete more convincingly at Rugby World Cups. Until 2022, it was an industrial league, where many players were employees of their company and the teams were all owned by major companies. While the competition was known for paying high salaries, only world-class foreign players and a small number of Japanese players played fully professionally, which meant most of the players still played in an a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kobelco Steelers
The Kobelco Kobe Steelers are a Japanese rugby union team owned by Kobe Steel, and based in Kobe. They were the first ever Top League champions when the League started in the 2003-2004 season. The team rebranded as Kobelco Kobe Steelers ahead of the rebranding of the Top League to the Japan Rugby League One in 2022. Honours * Top League: ** Champions: 2003–04, 2018-19 Personnel Current management team Current squad The current Kobelco Kobe Steelers squad for the 2023 season is: * * denotes players qualified to play for the Japan national rugby union team, Japan on dual nationality or residency grounds. Past players Japanese players * Toshiyuki Hayashi * Ian Williams (rugby union), Ian Williams * Seiji Hirao * Yuya Saito * Kensuke Iwabuchi * Daisuke Ohata * Andrew Miller (rugby player), Andrew Miller Foreign players * Brodie Retallick * Andy Ellis (rugby union), Andy Ellis * Dan Carter * Adam Ashley-Cooper * Aaron Cruden * Andries Bekker * Jacque Fourie * Ron Cribb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Western Force
The Western Force is an Australian professional rugby union team based in Perth, Western Australia, currently competing in Super Rugby Pacific. They previously played in Super Rugby from 2006 until they were axed from the competition in 2017. Following their axing they played in the National Rugby Championship in 2018 and 2019, replacing the Perth Spirit, and Global Rapid Rugby from 2018 to 2020, an Indo-Pacific competition organised by Andrew Forrest. Following the cancellation of both the 2020 Super Rugby season and 2020 Global Rapid Rugby season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Western Force were invited to compete in the 2020 Super Rugby AU season, a domestic competition organised by Rugby Australia to replace the cancelled Super Rugby season. The Force competed in the 2021 Super Rugby AU season and Super Rugby Trans-Tasman, before being confirmed that their return to Super Rugby will be permanent in the revamped 2022 Super Rugby Pacific season. History The bid The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Super Rugby
Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Building on various Southern Hemisphere competitions dating back to the South Pacific Championship in 1986, with teams from a number of southern nations, the Super Rugby started as the Super 12 in the 1996 season with 12 teams from 3 countries: Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The Super 12 was established by SANZAR after the sport became professional in 1995. At its peak the tournament featured the top players from nations representing 16 of the 24 top-three finishes in the history of the Rugby World Cup. After the COVID-19 pandemic forced the competition to split into three, the reformed competition in 2021 and beyond will only include Oceanian clubs representing Australia, New Zealand and from the Pacific islands (specifically a Fijian team, and a New Zealand ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |