The All Blacks have ditched their experimental line-ups and included their big guns to face a resurgent Australia in the opening Tri-Nations Test in Christchurch on Saturday. New Zealand split their best players between two different line-ups in their less than emphatic wins over Ireland and Argentina last month.
All Black coach Graham Henry is wary of a resurgent Australia ahead of their opening Test in the Tri-Nations series and rates his side as underdogs after unconvincing wins over Ireland and Argentina. ”I think we’re a bit behind Australia at the moment,” Henry said on Tuesday after naming a 30-man Tri-Nations squad.
The New Zealand doctor who turned his surgery into a brothel has had so little business he may have to go back to treating patients himself, a newspaper reported on Monday. The girls at Whalers — the only brothel in New Zealand’s Far North — have not exactly been flat out since Dr Neil Benson opened the doors last month.
All Blacks fans saw double on Thursday as one team continued its preparation for the second Test against Ireland on Saturday and another jetted off to Buenos Aires for next week’s one-off Test against Argentina. The team for Saturday’s Auckland Test saw the Argentina side off in true All Blacks fashion with a haka outside their Auckland hotel.
New Zealand were forced to rely on a late charge to mount a come-from-behind 34-23 win over Ireland on Saturday to maintain their unbeaten record in 101 years of rugby internationals between the two countries. In their first outing since their historic Grand Slam at the end of last year, the All Blacks produced a bumbling performance for the first 60 minutes.
Thousands of dollars have been bid on an Internet auction site for the handbag used by former All Black captain Tana Umaga to strike team mate Chris Masoe and reduce him to tears. Last weekend’s incident at a Christchurch bar after Masoe hit another patron has quickly become folklore and late on Friday morning the bidding had reached NZ$4 500 ($2 840).
All Black flanker Chris Masoe took a financial hit on Tuesday to add to his embarrassment after a scuffle in which reportedly he burst into tears when team-mate Tana Umaga hit him with a woman’s handbag. The New Zealand Rugby Union fined Masoe 910 and found him guilty of hitting a man in a Christchurch bar early on Sunday morning.
New Zealand rugby officials have defended the decision to go ahead with the fog-bound Super 14 rugby final in Christchurch on Saturday, but said the match would have been postponed if it was any thicker. The match was reduced to a farce at times in the pea-souper that shrouded Jade Stadium, where the Canterbury Crusaders emerged from the fog as 19-12 victors over the Wellington Hurricanes.
Daniel Carter kicked 14 points, including the conversion of Casey Laulala’s solitary try, to give the Canterbury Crusaders a 19-12 win on Saturday over the Wellington Hurricanes in a Super 14 rugby final marred by dense fog. Fog settled so thickly on Jade Stadium for the inaugural final of the expanded Super 14 competition that most of the 35 000 spectators caught only fleeting glimpses of the match.
The Wellington Hurricanes have sounded the battle cry ”Get McCaw” as they set their plan to target the All Blacks captain in the Super 14 rugby final against the Canterbury Crusaders at Jade Stadium in Christchurch on Saturday. The Crusaders have played in seven of the past eight finals, and won five of them.
A New Zealand man with no arms has pleaded not guilty to dangerous driving after police stopped him for speeding on a major highway. The police officer who stopped the car on March 23 noticed the driver’s seat was reclined and the driver had his foot up on the dashboard. Then he saw Colin Smith (31) had no arms.
All Blacks winger Rico Gear scored two tries as the Canterbury Crusaders beat South Africa’s Bulls 35-15 on Saturday to join the Wellington Hurricanes in the final of rugby union’s Super 14 tournament. Gear touched down twice in the first half as the Crusaders established a 16-8 halftime lead and Chris Jack, Corey Flynn and Aaron Mauger added second-half tries.
The Wellington Hurricanes became the first team to qualify for the Super 14 rugby final when a massive 50m penalty by Jimmy Gopperth secured a tough 16-14 win over the New South Wales Waratahs on Friday. They must now wait for the outcome of Saturday’s match between defending champions the Crusaders and the Bulls to determine who they will play in the final.
The Canterbury Crusaders have gone for speed and the Northern Bulls for height as they finalised their squads on Thursday for this week’s Super 14 rugby semifinal in Christchurch. The only change to the Bulls side which thumped the Stormers 43-10 to scrape into the semifinals sees the return of powerful lock Bakkies Botha.
A magnitude-7,4 earthquake struck in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of the Kermadec Islands, at 10.39am GMT on Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey reported on its website. The quake — which hit at a depth of 148km — was located about 290km south, south-west of Raoul Island, in the Kermadec Islands chain.
Richie McCaw was on Saturday named the new All Blacks rugby captain to succeed the now retired Tana Umaga. McCaw has been the only heir apparent to Umaga for the past year, and his appointment, announced by All Blacks coach Graham Henry, had been expected.
The Canterbury Crusaders scored 21 points in the last nine minutes on Friday to beat the ACT Brumbies 33-3 and keep alive the battle for the last semifinals berth in rugby union’s Super 14. Front-rowers Corey Flynn and Campbell Johnstone, and replacement flanker Tanerau Latimer scored late tries to weaken the Brumbies’ hold on fourth place and bring South Africa’s Sharks and Bulls into renewed semifinals contention.
Peter Jackson, New Zealand Oscar-winning director of The Lord of the Rings, has denied he is working on a remake of the class 1954 World War II movie The Dam Busters. Jackson’s only two confirmed upcoming movies were Halo this year, of which he is executive producer, and The Lovely Bones, which he would direct next year.
The Wellington Hurricanes fanned their weak hopes of a home semifinal in the Super 14 when they beat the Queensland Reds 26-22 on Friday in the opening match of the 13th round. The Reds scored three tries to two and were the better team, but lost for the ninth time this season.
A massive earthquake with a magnitude of 7,8 rocked the island nation of Tonga on Thursday, triggering a panic evacuation in a New Zealand town after tsunami warnings were briefly issued for the South Pacific. Although the warnings were withdrawn within two hours, hundreds of people in the New Zealand coastal town of Gisborne, more than 2 200km from the quake’s epicentre, fled their homes.
The Canterbury Crusaders have surprisingly rested captain and star flanker Richie McCaw for their crunch Super 14 rugby match against the Northern Bulls in Pretoria this weekend, but denied a recurrence of head injuries. McCaw said it was tough watching from the sidelines but the break was a chance to repair niggling injuries.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who fell out of a palm tree and was later involved in a jet-ski crash while vacationing in Fiji, has been airlifted to a hospital in New Zealand, local media reported on Sunday. No further details on the 62-year-old rocker’s condition were immediately available.
The on-fire New South Wales Waratahs will have to overcome rain as well as the notorious ”House of Pain” if they are to beat the Otago Highlanders and hit the front of the Super 14 rugby competition on Friday. But it is the Western Stormers in South Africa who hold the key to how the 11th round will pan out.
John ”Johnny” Checketts, a World War II fighter pilot who crippled at least 14 enemy planes and twice survived being shot down, died last week at his New Zealand home, a newspaper reported on Monday. He was 94. Checketts died in the southern city of Christchurch on Friday.
Stephen Donald and Sitiveni Sivivatu scored tries two minutes apart in the opening five minutes on Friday as the Waikato Chiefs held on for a 33-32 Super 14 rugby win over South Africa’s Cheetahs. The win moved the Chiefs to within a point of the fourth-place ACT Brumbies for the final semifinal play-off spot with three rounds to go.
Super 14 rugby coaches will have their calculators out this weekend as the unbeaten Canterbury Crusaders head a congested pack of 12 teams still in with a chance of making the play-offs with four matches to play. In a battle of former All Black coaches, the Crusaders should be far too powerful for the winless Western Force in Perth.
The Canterbury Crusaders stamped their authority on the Super 14 rugby competition with a record breaking 16th straight win as a bottleneck of teams just outside the top four found themselves running out of time to cement a semifinal spot.
A four-try comeback by the Wellington Hurricanes in the second half turned around a half-time deficit to ensure a 29-13 victory against the Otago Highlanders in Dunedin on Sunday. The Hurricanes cemented their position near the top of the Super 14 table with their seventh win from nine games this season, although the five try to two win was not one of their more memorable performances.
Auckland Blues centre Rua Tipoki was suspended for 16 weeks on Saturday after being found guilty of striking Western Force flyhalf James Hilgendorf in their Super 14 rugby match. The punishment, handed down at a judicial committee hearing, is the heaviest ever imposed on a New Zealand player by a Sanzar panel.
All Blacks flyhalf Daniel Carter became the ninth player to reach 600 points in super rugby, surpassing 150 points for the season, as the Canterbury Crusaders beat South Africa’s Cheetahs 53-17 in a Super 14 match on Saturday. Carter scored two tries, kicked two penalties and converted six of the Crusaders’ seven tries to take 28 points from the match.
Hundreds of rare snails were given their marching orders on Wednesday by the New Zealand government after an eight month battle between conservationists and a mining company. Up to 250 powelliphanta augustus snails — only discovered in 1996 — live on a mountainous ridge containing five million tonnes of coal worth about NZ$400-million.
A South African grandmother was jailed for nearly eight and a half years on Tuesday after being caught trying to smuggle cocaine hidden in garden gnomes into New Zealand. Linda Martin (52) was sentenced in the Auckland High Court, after being caught with more than three kilograms of cocaine at Auckland Airport two years ago.