I may not had the chance to watch the Australian Club Championship Final the other day (Saturday) featuring the best of club rugby involving two current champions taking centre stage from their respective Queensland’s Premier Rugby & New South Wales’s Shute Shield competitions – Wests Bulldogs (Toowong) v Sydney University (Camperdown).
However, it’s great to see Sydney Uni aka the Students who were too good all along as the visitors v Wests, 19-45 at Sci-Fleet Stadium in Toowong, QLD. Yes, it has been such a close one between the two sides for the majority at 19-19 until the Students took cruise control later in the 2nd half where Wests couldn’t respond ever since.
Wonderful moment to start of the new year as the best Australian Club Rugby team from the Students despite a change of Head coach lately, while it’s tough to see Wests lose out in front of their home ground even though they were almost there at one point to go all in & lock Sydney Uni out towards the homestretch.
For the Students, let’s see if they can stay on top as said above going into the new Shute Shield season as reigning champions. And speaking of other current champs over in QLD, there’s always the next 12 months for the Wests if they can not only defend their Hospital Cup crown but then also go one better in the 2024 Australian Club crown v whichever next season’s Shute Shield champ would be.
We now turn our attention to a series of pre-season club trial games over the next couple of weeks before the new Hospital Cup season kicks off on Saturday March 25 followed by Shute Shield here in NSW a week later on April 1.
As always, you can go to Stan Sport to look back from Saturday’s Australian Club Rugby Final at anytime on-demand including every game LIVE this upcoming club rugby season without ads including replays from the weekend’s games & also from previous years too.
If you haven’t got Stan, make sure you see it for yourself during a week’s long free-trial by selecting the Sport option on top of the basic subscription package. And if you love their commitment to the sport then $25 a month is worth the money to grant you that similar access of Australian Club, Domestic & International Rugby content.
Otherwise, there will be a couple of Free-to-air matches including Finals on 9Gem later this year once the Super Rugby season is over & around the same time of the Wallabies’ annual Rugby Championship & Bledisloe Cup seasons.