New Zealand

Wallabies fullback Mat Rogers missed the conversion of Phil Waugh’s last-minute try to allow the Wellington Hurricanes to hang on to a 26-24 win over the New South Wales Waratahs on Sunday. The Waratahs remained without a win in Wellington in the 10 years of the Super 12 but left the match with two bonus points.

The Chiefs left the Sharks floundering in Hamilton on Saturday and hammered the South Africans 40-5 in their Super 12 rugby match. The Chiefs scored six tries and posted their second win of the season to lift themselves off the bottom of the table. While the Sharks shored up their defence after the break, they rarely threatened and were rewarded with just a solitary late try to Jaco Gouws.

The Highlanders continued their winning streak and consigned the ACT Brumbies to a third straight defeat with a nail-biting 19-18 Super 12 rugby win in Dunedin on Friday. A late Brumbies assault on the Highlanders line wasn’t successful and their poor record at Carisbrook continued, as did their faltering season.

All Black and Auckland Blues lock Ali Williams lost his appeal on Thursday against his six-week ban handed down for stomping on Canterbury Crusaders captain Richie McCaw during a Super 12 match on March 19. Blues chief executive David White called the six-week ban against Williams ”excessive”.

The Stormers have made four changes to their Super 12 rugby team to play the Hurricanes at Palmerston North on Friday. Coach Gert Smal on Wednesday announced two changes in the outside backs and two in the forwards as his team chase their first win in the final match of a four-game overseas tour.

The Northern Bulls ripped apart the form book as they scored their first win of the season with an upset 21-12 victory over the previously unbeaten Wellington Hurricanes in New Zealand on Saturday. There were two tries apiece but the difference was with the intensity of the Bulls’ defence.

All Blacks pair Doug Howlett and Tony Woodcock will make their first Super 12 rugby appearances of the season for the Blues against the Chiefs at Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, on Saturday. There are two other changes from the team who sneaked an 18-15 win over the Queensland Reds on Friday.

New Zealand failed to make the most of their good start in the one-day cricket series against Australia, after an 84-run opening stand by Nathan Astle and Stephen Fleming ended with the side all-out for 233 at the Basin Reserve in Wellington on Tuesday.

Australian captain Ricky Ponting and his New Zealand counterpart Stephen Fleming came to the defence of speed bowler Brett Lee on Monday over allegations of dangerous bowling. New Zealand wicketkeeper Brendon McCullum was involved in an angry exchange with Lee during Saturday’s match in Auckland after he was struck on the arm by a waist high full toss from the Australian.

South African teams have yet to break the Australasian lock on the Super 12, and 2005 offers a final chance before the southern hemisphere’s premier provincial rugby championship expands. A year before a fifth African franchise and a fourth from Australia join the competition, South Africa’s outlook on this Super 12 campaign is tinged with optimism.

Former All Blacks manager Andrew Martin on Wednesday claimed New Zealand rugby’s binge-drinking culture threatens to undermine the national team’s physical conditioning. Martin, a former colonel with the Special Air Services, said he was astounded by the amount of drinking among the All Blacks when he was the team’s manager.

The Cook Islands appeared to have escaped the worst of Cyclone Meena despite earlier fears of widespread destruction, the New Zealand high commissioner to Rarotonga said on Monday. The cyclone battered houses on the islands, cut power and brought down trees but there were no reports of injury.

Tourists and citizens on the Cook Islands in the South Pacific headed for emergency centres and high ground on Sunday as Cyclone Meena bore down on them packing winds gusting to 255kph, officials said. An alert from the Fiji weather centre warned of waves up to 11m high striking areas round the main islands.

Veteran Springbok Sevens player Fabien Juries, who missed the first two tournaments of the current IRB Sevens Series because of an ankle injury, scored his 100th try against Scotland in South Africa’s 31-7 victory in the opener at the Wellington tournament on Friday.

Former All Blacks coach John Hart said on Tuesday he has no doubt that giant former All Blacks wing Jonah Lomu can return from a kidney transplant to play at the highest level again. Lomu said on Monday in London he will return to 15-a-side rugby for the first time in three years at Twickenham on June 4.

Opener Nathan Astle’s century provided the backbone in New Zealand’s innings of 256-9 against a World XI in Wellington on Monday in a one-day charity match to raise money for tsunami victims. Astle started aggressively but settled into the anchor role, batting through 44,3 overs of the innings.

Excited archaeologists are sifting through the contents of 150-year-old New Zealand toilets to get a better understanding of the everyday lives of early settlers. Although there is plenty of oral and written history, there are gaps that can only be answered by lifting the lid on the sanitary habits of pioneering families, they say.

Mount Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary says he has met the ghost of eminent British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, who died during an expedition to Antarctica in 1916. In a video promoting conservation work on Shackleton’s hut in Antarctica, New Zealand’s greatest explorer describes how he saw the apparition when he first visited the hut at Ross Island.