The Weekender 11/12/2000

On Saturday just a few kms from home at Turangawaewae, Michael Campbell took out the top Maori sports award. And so he should, he's been doing spectacularly in the last year. In the four-day World Cup tournament, Frank Nobilo and Greg Turner who had previously been in the lead, had a shocker of a final round to finish 6th.

In Rugby the Super 12 squads have been named (I'll put the Chiefs below).

Claudia Riegler is 12th on the World Cup rankings (skiing/women). She won the first race but crashed out on the second. The next event is Dec 20, so she is looking good for a win this year!

Ahh the cricket! NZ was steam-rolled by South Africa again! We did manage to get 200 runs though. South Africa were 18 for one in reply. The NZers said they thought a result was still possible (... was that a good or a bad result???) with the first and third days washed out. In an interesting point, newcomer to the game, Hamish Marshall took 60mins to get a run. That sounds bad but the really bad thing is that it took a beginner to get 40 runs (out of NZ's 200). Perhaps the middle order should take some lessons!

In the womens cricket world cup, the Australians are heading to a finals berth although it looks like they may have lost a couple of key players. NZ takes on South Africa today in an important match, so hopefully they do well.

Mark Todd finished up his International career on Sunday taking a first and a third, and the NZ team won in the International class at the Auckland airport Qantas three-day event.

The Football Kingz came out with a 2-2 draw against Melbourne Knights. The Kingz hit the lead at full time and were looking for a very unlikely win but the Knights equalised in injury time.

Ok enough sport, there was a really cool looking twister in the Waikato on Saturday. We had a really beautiful fine sunny morning (I went to Tga in the afternoon) but there was a 'flash storm' out at Whatawhata at 5PM.

More people are complaining about the wash from the Tranz Rail's new fast ferry. I'm surprised that Tranz Rail haven't already dumped Picton as their wharf but it can't be far away with all these complaints!

A NZer picked up a Nobel award. Alan McDiarmid won the award for Chemistry.

There are a bunch of people that are pushing the NZ Stock Exchange to join with the Australian Stock Exchange. I of course wouldn't support it but there is a Wellington Merchant banker that suggests we should instead form closer ties with USA. The 'alternative' time zone would be favourable and it would help NZ businesses rather than just encouraging them to shift their head offices to Australia.

In money news the NZ dollar has been creeping up, it is now 42.3 US cents. I think it's a mute point joining with Australia. The NZ dollar value depends on the US dollar not ours. If our dollar goes down so does everyone elses! The problem is that it looks bad from our point of view and that is all the "knockers" see. A good example of that is that when we were in Germany the DM was about 1NZD, during the recent crisis I checked and it was still about 1NZD.

With more good news, was the Petrol Companies. They gave us a 10c drop in petrol costs and 91 is back down to about $1.09/l.

The Lord of the Rings finishes filming next week. The actors appeared in public for the last time at a charity show in Wellington. Just to point out the incredible computer graphics, the Australian actor John Noble arrived 4 weeks ago to play Denethor. A scene in which Denethor throws himself on to a pyre had already been shot!

Ahh yes, to finish off with Telecom's mobile network was down for most of Friday morning. I think it was just landline to mobile calls but it was pretty serious!

Anyway, thats it for this week.
Have a good one.

Chiefs: Forwards: Deon Muir, Marty Holah, Duncan Blaikie, Koula Tukino, Jonno Gibbes, Royce Willis, Keith Robinson, Mark Cooksley, David Briggs, Deacon Manu, Daniel Godbold, Denis Hazelton, Guy Coleman, Paul Mitchell.

Backs: Grant McQuoid,Todd Miller, Loki Crichton, Bruce Reihana, Roger Randle, Scott McLeod, Keith Lowen, Mark Ranby, Glen Jackson, David Hill, Danny Lee, Rhys Duggan.