Rugby

RNZI reports the Australian Rugby Union is considering staging a Bledisloe Cup test at Twickenham and at several other venues in Australia and around the world during Sydney's ANZ Stadium rebuild.

The ARU committed to playing a Bledisloe Cup game in Sydney every year until 2021 but with the venue to get a facelift from 2018, those matches between the Wallabies and All Blacks are set to hit the road.

Last year was the first time Fiji had competed outside of the elite Under 20 competition, while Samoa were relegated from Under 20 Championship.

RNZI reports the two pool winners will advance directly to the grand final and Samoa coach Ramsey Tomokino said that means they will probably have to win every game as there will be no second chances.

Brisbane's Courier Mail claims the towering Melbourne Storm sensation is considering a switch to the 15-man game as he looks to fulfil his dream of playing for the All Blacks.

At 201cm and 122kg, Wellington-born Asofa-Solomona is one of the biggest players in the NRL and was earmarked as a star of the future after playing 10 games for the Storm last season.

Samoa Rugby Union's head coach Ieremia is in Fiji for the 2016 World Rugby Pacific Challenge as the manager of the Samoa A team.

Talking about the general standard of rugby on display by the three island nations in the tournament, the once feared backline utility feels improvements are being made.

"The game is actually moving towards suiting Pacific Islanders. The openness and making sure of the ball skills of island forwards is very critical now," he told the Fiji Times.

The Telecom Fiji-sponsored second stream team will tomorrow face the Samoans in their first match of the World Rugby Pacific Challenge.

Head Coach Seruvakula said they had seen the Samoans who were bigger in size compared with the Fiji Warriors.

Contesting their second and last pre-season fixture ahead of next weekend’s Asteron Life Super Rugby season opener against the Western Force, the Rebels dusted off the cobwebs with a clinical performance.

Fielding a near full-strength team, after the late withdrawal of Luke Jones following the birth of his first daughter in the morning, the Rebels scored 13 unanswered tries in front of 6,205 spectators.

"Take it with you, you tend to leave it lying around somewhere else while you are in the field."

It is the end of Alama Ieremia's first week in Apia in his new role as Manu Samoa's head coach.

The next day, to mitigate against the heat, two Samoan development teams will play a match which kicks off at 9.30am. Watching it will be one of Ieremia's first official engagements as he starts the long road to getting the game in this country back where he believes it should be.

The tournament will be played at the ANZ Stadium in Suva, with match days on 8, 12 and 17 March with the final on 21 March.

Four teams will take part in the round-robin competition. Hosts Fiji Warriors will be joined by their island neighbours Tonga A and Samoa A along with Junior Japan.  

World Rugby Chairman Bernard Lapasset said: "The Pacific Challenge is a key developmental tournament, which creates a quality competition pathway for our high performance investment unions.