Scott Barrett bounces back as the Crusaders go top in Super Rugby

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Scott Barrett bounces back as the Crusaders go top in Super Rugby

2025-04-13 10:08 Last Updated At：10:20

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — All Blacks captain Scott Barrett returned to form and helped the Crusaders to their accustomed station atop the standings after the weekend’s ninth round of Super Rugby.

Both events would have come as a relief to New Zealand coach Scott Robertson who will lean heavily on Barrett and the Crusaders when he chooses his All Blacks squad to play France in three tests in July.

Barrett’s lack of form had become an issue prior to Friday’s match against the Hurricanes which the Crusaders won 31-24, holding on at the end with only 13 players.

Barrett produced a strong all-round performance as a reliable target at lineouts, a tenacious defender and offering a key try assist in a tight match.

Crusaders coach Rob Penney was quick to defend Barrett from critics who'd suggested the All Blacks captaincy was up for grabs.

“I don’t know what they expect,” Penney said after Friday's win. “For us he’s been awesome and today he had those moments which he’s really capable of doing. He put one out there today and it was a game-changer.”

Another eye-catching performances for the Crusaders came from former Wallabies flyhalf James O’Connor in a brief cameo off the bench. O’Connor pounced on an over-throw at a lineout, split two defenders and scored under the posts.

His form for the Crusaders may have piqued the interest of Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt, who is preparing to select an Australia squad to face the British and Irish Lions.

“I do want to play for the Wallabies in that Lions series,” O’Connor said on the ‘Good, the Bad and the Rugby’ podcast. “If I’m playing well enough and I’m doing a job, why can’t I be in the question still?

“I know where I went wrong last time I was in the gold jersey. But I didn’t know how to play the game until I was 30. If my body is fast enough to do what my mind wants to do, let’s see what can happen.”

The Crusaders lead the competition with 28 points, one clear of the second-place Chiefs and four clear of the third-place Brumbies and Queensland Reds on 23. The Blues beat Moana Pasifika to move into seventh spot and the Highlanders beat Fijian Drua 43-20 to move to ninth.

Queensland dropped a 14-point lead before losing 39-26 to the Canberra-based Brumbies on Saturday but Reds coach Les Kiss remains the top candidate to succeed Schmidt as Wallabies head coach.

Schmidt will step down after the Rugby Championship in August and September and Kiss currently leads a dwindling field of candidates to replace him.

New South Wales Waratahs coach Dan McKellar is the latest prospective candidate to rule out any interest in the test job.

“How many times have I got to answer this? No, no I’m not in the mix for the Wallabies gig,” he told reporters prior to the Waratahs 21-14 win over the Chiefs on Friday.

One of the sticking points around Kiss’s candidacy has been the Reds’ reluctance to lose a coach who has turned around the franchise this season. Kiss is contracted to the Reds through 2026.

Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh has indicated he's prepared to consider an accommodation which would allow Schmidt’s successor to also coach at Super Rugby level.

“We’re going to get to the best possible outcome and if that includes a shared services, job share kind of thing, then we’ll do that,” Waugh said.

Waugh said the new Wallabies coach could be decided within the next fortnight.

Super Rugby might be pay-walled on Australian television from next year under the new, 215 million Australian dollar (US$135 million) deal signed by Rugby Australia with broadcaster Nine Entertainment.

The existing deal allows for one Super Rugby match per round to be shown on free-to-air TV, usually on Saturday nights.

Subscription TV provider Stan Sport will show all matches under the new five-year deal which makes no mention of a free-to-air component. But it has been reported Nine will have flexibility to show Super Rugby matches free if it chooses.

“We’ll work with our partners to work out what’s best for both the audiences as well as for the relationship with Nine,” Waugh told reporters. “The future of Australian rugby is bright and our growth trajectory is strong.”

AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby

Jury is picked for Karen Read's retrial over death of police boyfriend, opening statements next week

2025-04-16 19:28 Last Updated At：19:30

The jury has been picked in Karen Read’s second murder trial over the death of her police officer boyfriend, with opening statements scheduled for next week.

An 18-member panel — nine men and nine women — was chosen by Tuesday. There will be 12 jurors and six alternates.

Opening statements are scheduled for April 22.

Read’s attorneys had filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court for a delay in the trial, contending that trying her again on second-degree murder and leaving the scene would be double jeopardy. The high court denied the delay and is expected to consider her appeal April 25.

Read, who lives in Mansfield, Massachusetts, is accused of striking her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, with her SUV and leaving him to die in a snowstorm in 2022 outside a house party in nearby Canton. Her attorneys have said O’Keefe was actually killed by someone else, possibly another law enforcement agent who was at the party, and that she was framed.

Last year, the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were at an impasse and deliberating further would be futile.

After the trial, several jurors came forward to say the group was unanimous in finding Read not guilty of the most serious charge, second-degree murder, and a lesser charge. Despite attempts by Read’s lawyers to get those charges dismissed, she will face the same counts as she did at her first trial. They also failed to have the entire case tossed, arguing governmental misconduct.

Read, who worked as a financial analyst and as a Bentley College adjunct professor before she was charged, faces second-degree murder and other charges in the death of John O’Keefe, who was 46 when he died. The 16-year police veteran was found unresponsive outside the home of a fellow Boston police officer.

After a night out drinking, prosecutors say Read, who is 45, dropped off O’Keefe at the house party just after midnight. As she made a three-point turn, prosecutors say, she struck O’Keefe before driving away. She returned hours later to find him in a snowbank.

As they did at the first trial, prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Read’s actions were intentional. They are expected to call witnesses who will describe how the couple's relationship had begun to sour before O'Keefe's death. Among them will be his brother, who testified during the first trial that the couple regularly argued over such matters as what Read fed O’Keefe’s children, and that he witnessed a 2021 fight the couple had in Cape Cod over how his brother treated her. The brother's wife testified that Read told her the couple had argued in Aruba after she caught O’Keefe kissing another woman.

The defense is expected to portray the investigation into O’Keefe’s death as shoddy and undermined by the close relationship investigators had with the police officers and other law enforcement agents who were at the house party.

Among the key witnesses they will call is former State Trooper Michael Proctor, who led the investigation but has since been fired after a disciplinary board found he sent sexist and crude texts about Read to his family and colleagues. He is also on the prosecution's witness list.

A key moment in the first trial was Proctor’s testimony, in which the defense suggested his texts about Read and the case showed he was biased, and had singled her out early in the investigation and ignored other potential suspects.

They also are expected to suggest Read was framed, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside the home during a fight with another partygoer and then dragged outside. In the first trial, defense attorneys suggested investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

Ahead of the second trial, the two sides sparred over whether Read's lawyers will be allowed to argue that someone else killed O'Keefe. Judge Beverly Cannone ruled Monday that attorneys can't mention potential third-party culprits in their opening statements but will be allowed to develop evidence against Brian Albert, a retired police officer who owned the Canton home, and his friend Brian Higgins. Lawyers cannot implicate Albert's nephew, Colin Albert, the judge said.

A town-commissioned Canton Police Department audit following O'Keefe's death was released March 30. While not reinvestigating any cases, its top suggestions regarding Read's were that first responders should have photographed O'Keefe where he was found before he was moved; that all interviews of “critical witnesses” should have been done at the department after O'Keefe was taken to a hospital; and that agreed-to recordings of witness interviews be conducted.

Soon after the mistrial, Read's lawyers set out to get the main charges dropped.

They argued Judge Cannone declared a mistrial without polling the jurors to confirm their conclusions. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg said five jurors indicated after the trial that they were only deadlocked on the manslaughter count and had unanimously agreed that she wasn’t guilty of second-degree murder and leaving the scene, but that they hadn’t told the judge.

The defense said that because jurors had agreed Read wasn't guilty of murder and leaving the scene, retrying her on those counts would amount to double jeopardy. But Cannone rejected that argument, as did the state's highest court, a federal court judge, and an appeals court.

Prosecutors had urged Cannone to dismiss the double jeopardy claim, saying it amounted to "hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.” Assistant District Attorney Adam Lally argued that the jurors never indicated they had reached a verdict on any of the charges, were given clear instructions on how to reach a verdict, and that the defense had ample opportunity to object to the mistrial declaration.

The second trial will likely look similar to the first. It will be held in the same courthouse before the same judge, and dozens of Read's passionate supporters are again expected to rally outside. The charges, primary defense lawyers and many of the nearly 200 witnesses will also be the same.

The biggest difference will be the lead prosecutor, Hank Brennan. A former prosecutor and defense attorney who was brought in as a special prosecutor after the mistrial, Brennan has represented several prominent clients, including notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and experts think he might be more forceful than Lally was in arguing the case.