It’s time for our Monday wrap of who has their name in lights and who is making headlines for all the wrong reasons after the weekend.
THEY’RE ON FIRE!
All Blacks: You have to go back to 1998 to find the last time the Kiwis lost four Test matches in a row, so their Eden Park shed must have been an interesting place at half-time on Saturday as that prospect had loomed into view for the first time in 28 years. The Wallabies trailed by just three points at the break and had the whiff of an upset in their nostrils, but the reaction from Dave Rennie’s team was suffocatingly sublime.
To come out and win the second half 33-5 on a five-one try count where the lone Aussie score was a 77th-minute consolation was about as emphatic as a rousing response gets and it embellished the stadium’s reputation as a fortress. More importantly, it copper-fastened Jordie Barrett’s importance to this All Blacks team. The 29-year-old was always great value, but his significance has sumptuously grown under Rennie.
Northampton: Their Prem Rugby rivals swooned the previous weekend when Bristol picked off the defending champions at Ashton Gate, so a response was always expected back on home turf at Franklin’s Gardens. However, no one could have predicted they would put 71 points on Bath with a sparkling 11-try performance. This top-notch fixture between two excellent teams is supposed to be about wafer-thin margins.
Look at last April when a two -point loss for Saints in a European quarter-final became a three-point home league win 15 days later. Last Saturday, Saints came out for the second half down by three and they proceeded to comprehensively win the next 40 minutes 45-19 (seven tries to three). It was terrific entertainment and if you’re not a Saints fan, then surely they should be everybody’s second favourite side because of their swashbuckling rugby heaven attack.
Stormers: Upwards of 40,000 were in attendance at DHL Stadium on Saturday, underlining the enduring appeal of John Dobson’s team, and they put on a show for the fans that included a home debut for the re-signed Siya Kolisi. The other South African franchises will beg to differ, but there is something inherently sexy about United Rugby Championship rugby in Cape Town and they have plenty of players to get excited about.
When you excuse his kicking off the tee, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu was just perfect for the hosts in this derby, but the most wounding situation for the visitors was how Stormers bossed the scrum. Remember, this was a Sharks pack that had eaten Leinster at the set-piece the previous week in Durban, but the likes of Wilco Louw and Ntuthuko Mchunu royally feasted on put-in after put-in in a proper show of force to deservedly earn the bragging rights.
Gloucester: Leicester gobbled up the Cherry and Whites on Friday night, bringing an end to their unbeaten start to the English league, but what unfolded in the final minutes suggested George Skivington’s reborn side could at last be the real deal and are a title threat. Tigers were set for a handsome victory, comfortably leading 38-21 in the final regular-time minute.
However, by the time referee Karl Dickson blew the final whistle on 82:46, Gloucester had added 10 points to secure the two bonus points that keep them on top of the Prem. They touched down for a maul try on 79:41 and smartly took the conversion quickly to ensure there was time for a restart. Then, receiving the ball deep in their own half, they brilliantly attacked and were able to add a George Barton penalty kick to their tally to only lose by seven. That was impressive ticker.
Toulon: It was an EastEnders-type week at the Mediterranean club, their latest soap opera drama resulting in Pierre Mignoni quitting as boss and the president Bernard Lemaître lashing out at the French club’s players for not “behaving like competitors”. He had a valid point – they had lost four of their opening five Top 14 matches with the only win coming against Vannes, the sole team below them in 14th and last place on the table.
With shots so publicly fired, a well-remunerated collection of players were under the microscope on Saturday to play as a team with Racing 92 in town. After sleeves-rolled-up tries from two of their front-rowers, the determination to win at all costs was clear in a second half where Tomas Albornoz kicked five penalties to ensure a badly needed 29-15 win was secured to start building a bridge with the club’s exasperated bosses.
Edinburgh: It’s crazy to see the Scots on top of the URC table after three rounds, but they are the only one of 16 teams to have won their opening three matches. That has to be considered a real feather in the cap of Sean Everitt. There was dismay earlier this year when the SRU decided to give the South African a contract extension rather than his P45, but that gobsmacking show of faith has been rewarded by a winning start to the new campaign.
Their latest win arrived at lowly Zebre and while it doesn’t have the same gravitas as defeating Ulster and Stormers in previous weeks, scratching the surface reveals its significance. Edinburgh were held to a draw at Parma in April 2025 and then fell to a damaging three-point loss the following September, igniting criticism that Everitt should be shown the door. Thirteen months later, with new signing James Grayson providing excellent bang for buck, their 17-point bonus-point win encapsulated the summer transformation that has happened.
Shaun Edwards: All the headlines surrounding his recruitment on Friday by Argentina were about how England has missed out again on the opportunity to bring in a defence coach who had a Midas touch when it comes to transforming inconsistent teams into trophy winners. His CV assisting Wales and France is nothing but impressive, but it wasn’t enough to tempt Steve Borthwick into making a play for his fellow Englishman’s services.
As a consequence, it is Ireland who should be worried. Their Rugby World Cup draw has them pitted to play Argentina in the quarter-finals next October, and we all know about the heartbreak the Pumas have previously caused the Irish at the finals. The knockout blow score is 3-1 in their favour (1999, 2007 and 2015 versus 2003) and Edwards will do his damnest to make it 4-1 in Brisbane. To add spice to what is potentially down the tracks, Edwards’ first match with the Argies is in Dublin in just over three weeks. That will be a tasty introduction.
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COLD AS ICE!
Australia: The honeymoon is now well and truly over for new Wallabies boss Les Kiss after his team’s five-match unbeaten run was blown to smithereens in a brutal second half in Auckland. Did the visitors ever truly believe they could win at Eden Park, or was all their gusto all style with zero substance? The All Blacks were there to be frightened, having managed only a 17-14 lead at the break, but the lack of Aussie ambition was deflating.
In that damning second period, the height of their attacking invention was laborious Ryan Lonergan box kicks compared to the clinic that Cam Roigard and some others put on for the All Blacks. Of course, attack is the last thing that is usually perfected by a team in the foothills of its development under a new coach, but what has Kiss looking sullen in the dock is that he is a defence coach by trade, and both he and Scott McLeod deserve the blame for a five-try, 33-point blow-out in the second 40. The Wallabies became far too flaky and paid a very heavy price.
All Blacks v Wallabies, LIVE BLOG: Relive our coverage of the Bledisloe Cup fixture
Bath: It’s rare in their current giddy era of haymaking for The Rec club to feature on the negative side of this column’s ledger, but there was no way they could avoid being included after a sobering 71-point, 11-try wake-up on the road. Not since the awful days of the Stuart Hooper tenure had there been this type of defensive malfunction (an October 2021 hammering from Saracens).
Fingers will be pointed in the direction of Bath assistant JP Ferreira when it comes to reviewing what went wrong in the second half at Franklin’s. There will be kudos for another assistant recruited from Munster, attack coach Mike Prendergast, for the scoring of 48 points and seven tries, but that polish isn’t shining because of all the grubby defensive smudges in a performance with a tackle completion rate of just 76 per cent, the lowest by any team across round three in the Prem.
Lions: There have been plenty of flowers for Ivan van Rooyen’s team this year following their first-time run to the URC play-offs and a proud performance against the touring All Blacks. However, as highlighted when it came to their knockout fixture at Leinster last May, the South African franchise have been horrendous on the road and Saturday’s capitulation was further evidence for the prosecution.
There was no straw for them to clutch from their 57-15, nine tries to two goring by the Bulls who feasted off turnovers, and it means they have won just four away matches in 25 attempts since the start of 2024/25. It’s a glass ceiling the Lions must break through, or their home improvements won’t count for much in the long run. Next up is La Rochelle, Edinburgh and Glasgow on the road overseas. That’s a daunting schedule.
Harlequins: Fit-again Marcus Smith certainly had his name up in lights at the weekend with his determined two-try effort at Sale in his first appearance of 2026/27, but there can be no getting away from his club’s bottom line – another defeat which has them rooted to the foot of the Prem and already nine points behind Leicester in the fourth and final play-off spot.
The idea of their managerial make-up was to bluntly stop the rot, not allow it to worsen into the new campaign. Those figureheads of course will allude to how close they came to winning as they led for 70 minutes, but the painful summation is that they don’t have the strength in depth and that not enough of a squad overhaul took place in summer. Clunky Sale were very much there for the taking and Quins just didn’t have the back-up impetus to make it happen.
Munster: In their defence, Munster can point out how Ulster are very much a streaky in-game team who score lots of points in short bursts, but that can’t excuse how an encouraging 26-5 interval lead became a cling-on 26-all draw. Then again, their surrender of the initiative in Belfast was in keeping with the travails of last season, their first with Clayton McMillan at the helm.
After their ambush of Leinster at Croke Park a year ago, Munster went on to lose nine of the following 11 away games, some by embarrassing margins. From that perspective, a draw on the road in your first away match of this new campaign represents an upturn in fortunes, but it certainly didn’t feel like that with the way the momentum was lost. After next weekend’s European interlude in Cork, their next away assignment is at Leinster. That will very much be a moment of truth.
Bristol: Pat Lam loves talking the talk at the Bears, but there are times when all the swagger is undermined by self-inflicted wounds and Saturday’s surrender at Saracens was another punch-pulling example. Trying to explain his team’s disappointing 7-30 loss, he admitted that some key players, forwards Pedro Rubiolo and Steven Luatua and out-half AJ MacGinty, were all excluded from selection due to the director of rugby’s increased injury risk on an artificial surface compared to a grass pitch.
The Prem certainly has a credibility issue if star players are getting weekends off due to the nature of the playing surface, but what of the success-starved Bristol fans? Having started with two wins, they would have loved to have made it a hat-trick, especially by giving Saracens a bloody nose. However, Lam instead set them up for failure with the way he went about team selection. Bristol fans who travelled to London should be given a ticket refund from their director of rugby.