GOLD DIGGER: The search for Australian rugby

It's the age old question in Australian football, rugby union or rugby league? To help us navigate this we are joined by actor and raconteur Ben Wood whose voice will also be known to Sydney listeners as the Waratahs and Wallabies match day ground announcer. These days he's also one half of the popular podcast series Woody and Slugs Do League, about rugby league and punting. We dig into...

One of Australian rugby's best journalists going around, Geoff Parkes is a weekly contributor for the The Roar sports website and author of "A World in Conflict: The Global Battle for Rugby Supremacy", in which he details the complicated and at times controversial business of rugby union.  We dig into Geoff's deep knowledge of the game, both on and off the field, discussing the...

Rugby union is a game for all and in Australia the rise of the women's game stands out as one of the few positive narratives in recent years. We talk to Wallaroos captain Grace Hamilton about how women's rugby is on the rise and the current challenges faced by the Wallaroos to deal with the pandemic related pause to international rugby with the New Zealand world cup now postponed till 20...

Just what exactly motivates our schoolboys, colts and junior players who are the future of our professional game? Is it for fun, trophies or just all about getting that all important professional contract? We have an exclusive chat with Jonny McMurtry, a lifelong rugby devotee in Queensland who now does research to ask these questions of our youth and has just completed a study of participants fro...

He’s one of the godfathers of Australian rugby podcasts, a fountain of knowledge on all things rugby and a rabid Queensland Reds supporter, the one and only Rugby Reg. We chat with Reg about the current prognosis of Australian rugby in 2021; the upcoming first round of the Super Rugby AU season, the “reset” of 2020, the watershed STAN Sports broadcast deal, the Wallabies prospects, the Wallaroos a...

Do we have enough talent in Australian rugby? It's a question we ask an ensemble of former Wallabies, such as Adam Freier and Ben Alexander, as well as John Eales, Michael Lynagh and a host of others. We examine our player pathways and how they have evolved, looking at whether our rugby participation is broad enough to create a talent pool to choose from.  Do we have enough development at the...

Does rugby need to change? It’s a question we ask of Wallaby #518 Barry Honan who has played at the highest level and devoted his entire life to skills coaching and analysing the modern game of rugby. The creator of the “Honan Drills” that introduced the rugby basics to several generations of Australian players, we talk about the missed opportunities to utilise our intellectual property, the stati...

It’s all just a little bit of history re-repeating, or is it? Classic Wallaby statistician and all around oracle Matthew Alvarez joins us for an exclusive interview about how he collects statistics, data and fascinating stories about every Wallaby game and player since the game began. We look at the exhaustive investigative style of research that goes into compiling this information and along the...

Someone call Doc Brown, because we're going back in time to a point when the Wallabies ruled the world, and we're hearing it from the troika of legendary captain John Eales, the highly successful coach Rod Macqueen and the man in charge of the code for over a decade, former Australian Rugby Union CEO John O'Neill. So strap yourself in and take a walk down memory lane as we hear abou...

First pod for 2021, and it's about us, the fans. Just how hard is it to be a Wallaby supporter at the moment in Australian rugby?  Matt shares the email he sent to Rugby Australia that kicked off this whole quest and then we speak to Wallaby fan and Facebook ranter Jack Quigley about "That Post" and "That Call" he got from Michael Cheika. We also sit down with Matt Rowley,...

Merry Christmas and here's some gold, frankincense and myrrh in the form of interviews with three former Wallabies; Michael Lynagh, Peter Fitzsimons and John Eales. They describe how they started playing the game and how they made the Wallabies. In addition, Michael covers the 1984 Grand Slam and the significance of Australia winning the World Cup in 1991, Peter looks at the changes that prof...

A special episode interview with Michael Lipman, the former England International, Australian Schoolboy and Melbourne Rebel. Michael talks about the current pending legal class action against World Rugby regarding player concussion that he and former internationals Alix Popham and Steve Thompson are part of. He also shares his experiences of coming to terms with his diagnosis of early onset dement...

Matt has a new co-host Majdi Slaibi, the director of photography and co-producer of the Gold Digger film. Matt and Maj talk about how they started making the film, Maj's lack of knowledge about rugby union and why that's important and Matt's inability to deliver a punchline about when the boys first met Gordon Bray. There is rugby talk too, and Matt goes over the recent letter by Ru...

Hot off the press, we’re talking about the new Rugby World Cup 2023 draw and hearing from Gordon Bray, the “voice of Australian rugby”. Gordon talks about how he almost sold coffee in Papua New Guinea instead of sports broadcasting and his favourite Wallaby moments. Matt talks about the importance of “that tackle” and the debate begins: is this a True Crime or Sports podcast?

Does the world need yet another podcast? Well filmmaker and rugby tragic Matt Durrant thinks so and argues his case in this first episode of a series based on the feature length documentary he's made called Gold Digger: The search for Australian rugby, about the rise and fall of Australian rugby union. Matt gives a brief background on why he decided to make this documentary, teases with a qui...