NSW playmaker Bernard Foley has a simple plan for getting the best out of Israel Folau this Super Rugby season: give the game-breaking back the ball as often as possible.

• UPDATED

All Blacks five-eighth Aaron Cruden will pack his bags and head to Montpellier for the 2017-18 Top 14 season after signing a lucrative three-year deal.

• Cameron Mee

The Waratahs are confident that the growing pains experienced during last year's Super Rugby season will lead to sustained success this season.

The All Blacks will return to France in 2017 for a second successive end-of-year tour Test.

• Georgina Robinson

As Olympic champion Pearls claim a first of a different kind, time is running out to catch the women and men in action together after a raid on tickets for day two of the Sydney Sevens next month. 

• Georgina Robinson

Staggering predictions for the growth of women's rugby put Australia's strategy under the microscope.

• Georgina Robinson

The advent of strict new laws to rid rugby of the head-high tackle are already changing Super Rugby.

Torrid encounters with two French packs has taught developing Wallabies prop Tom Robertson that scrummaging is the biggest part of his rugby education.

Wallabies backrower Lopeti Timani has knocked back interest from cashed-up European clubs to remain in Melbourne for another two Super Rugby seasons.

• Georgina Robinson

Australia's gold medal winning women's sevens stars will be coming to a university campus near you this August as the Australian Rugby Union prepares to launch its ambitious new domestic women's sevens competition.

• Georgina Robinson

With few boxes left to tick in Australian rugby, Waratahs coach Daryl Gibson has set his freakishly consistent No.7, Michael Hooper, a fresh challenge.

• Georgina Robinson

Sevens star Ellia Green took her rehab timeline with a grain of salt and is now a good chance to return for the Sydney Sevens next month.

• Georgina Robinson

Less than seven weeks remain until the start of Super Rugby but the Australian Rugby Union have not been able to lock down a major sponsor.

• COMMENT
• Paul Cully

There is not a stakeholder in the English game who does not crave to see the All Blacks at Twickenham.

All Blacks prop Charlie Faumuina will quit New Zealand rugby to join French club Toulouse from the start of the next European season.

England coach Eddie Jones believes the six tour matches the British and Irish Lions will play next year ahead of the first test against the All Blacks on June 24 will give the touring side a significant advantage.

• Chris Barclay

All Black captain Kieran Read has undergone wrist surgery and is expected to join the Crusaders' Super Rugby campaign in April, two months before the British and Irish Lions tour.

Rory Arnold has shunned big-money interest from French glamour club Toulon to pledge his future to Australian rugby, signing a new three-year deal with the ACT Brumbies.

• Myles Houlbrook-Walk

For Michael Hooper, an open road up to Palm Beach, a Harley Davidson and some time away from Rugby are perfect before kicking off his 2017 season.

• Georgina Robinson

Australian rugby's most heated rivalry is gearing up for an encore performance, when Twickenham Stadium hosts Eddie v Cheik, round three, in November next year.

• Liam Napier

New Zealand Rugby has boosted its fund of top-up retainer payments used to discourage its best players from heading overseas to pursue more lucrative contracts as part of a new collective bargaining agreement.

• Myles Houlbrook-Walk

The Australian Women's Rugby Sevens team and the Waratahs are training together to bring the best out of each other.

• Georgina Robinson

Future Wallabies and Pearls might have been running around at the Manly Roos Game On Gala last week, but if the Australian Rugby Union can't realise the error of its ways, those boys and girls won't have a game to play at senior level.

• COMMENT
• Spiro Zavos

This "Russian wrestler" is throwing away his writing boots. I have written millions of words and hundreds of columns on the rugby game for The Sydney Morning Herald since the early 1980s.This is the final edition of my column.

• Georgina Robinson

Western Sydney must have a Super Rugby team, according to the new man in charge of the Shute Shield.

Wallabies star Kurtley Beale will put his seven-month injury hell behind him this weekend when he makes his long-awaited Wasps debut.

• Mick Cleary

Is that a shiver of apprehension under Kiwi bedclothes, the first sign of anxiety at what is coming their way?

• Adrian Warren and Myles Houlbrook-Walk

Wallabies five-eighth Bernard Foley insists the tough times endured by Australia this year have laid the foundation for future success.

• Tom Decent

Wallabies captain Stephen Moore has thrown his support behind a state of origin concept being discussed by the Queensland and NSW rugby unions, saying the more Australian local derbies the better.