The Weekender 02/11/2008

Welcome back, this has been my week!

Sport

With the local rugby season finishing last weekend, you may have been forgiven for thinking we'd had enough of rugby - I guess not with the final Bledisloe Cup game this weekend and a northern tour for the next few weeks. So just to recap, the All Blacks had previously won the tri-nations and done enough to retain the Bledisloe Cup in the four game series, but there was one more meaningless but financially beneficial game in the series. The one off Hong Kong test could earn around $3m for the NZRU so overseas games become more & more likely. Well the All Blacks won the game 19-14 after the Aussies were leading 14-9 (ish) at half time. It wasn't pretty, but it was a win. Once again the Australians did well for the first half but someone (Robbie??) forgot to tell them it was an 80min game - and for the second consecutive Bledisloe Cup match they didn't score in the second half. So yay, that is 3-1 for the series. Bring on the Grand Slam. The only negative was Andrew Hore heading home after picking up an injury in the first 5 minutes.

Last weekend the trans-tasman netball series continued (after a big break) with the Silver Ferns taking on the Diamonds (who knew that was the name of the Australian team?) in Melbourne. At one point the Ferns were eight points down but they pulled it back for a 41-46 win. A couple of interesting points, the Australian team is quite young with an average age of 24, Irene van Dyk had the same number of test caps as the whole Australian team combined. The final game starts in 45 so I'll have the results for you next weekend.

The Rugby League World Cup is currently running in Australia at the moment. I find a couple of things really weird. They had games before the opening ceremony, and the opening game and everyone seemed to expect the Kiwis to beat Australia - there was lots of dispair when the Kangaroos won 30-6. Sure I support the Kiwis and I really hope they win, but expecting them to win is just crazy.
A league world cup is pointless because there is a high chance Australia will win, the interest is really in the other games. Like Tonga beating Ireland 22-20 and Samoa beating Tonga 20-12 in a big hit bonanza. One big upset was Fiji beating France 42-6 to end the idea that France might be returning to a gold era of rugby league. The Kiwis had a good game beating the feisty Papua New Guinea 48-6.

Marina Erakovic hasn't been doing so well in singles tennis recently but has won her third WTA doubles title of the year in Luxembourg this week.

NZ athletes stamped their mark on the sport of triathlon this week with two World Cup victories in Mexico. Sam Warriner won the womans event to finish the year as world No 1, and Kris Gemmel won the mens event.

Possibly one of the worlds top ten sporting events is on right now, in New Zealand. You wouldn't really know it. The inaugural under-17 women's football World Cup. NZ had one of the first games against Canada & were brave but lost 1-0. This weekend they played Denmark and were effectively knocked out of the competition when the Danes came back to win 2-1.

Following up with the final cricket test match for the Black Caps vs Bangladesh. The first three days were rained out, so NZ smashed a few on the fourth day and hoped to get Bangladesh out twice on the final day. It could have happened but it didn't so it was a draw and we won the series 1-0. A tour of Australia is next.

The NZ Breakers continue to do really well, on Thursday they came back from a 18-point deficit to beat the Perth Wildcats 103-99 (I think! although with a lucky/bad call from the ref right at the end!), and then they headed to Townsville where they beat the Crocs 106-97.

NZ News

Politics: Skip this paragraph if you want - there is only a week to go till the elections! After National's declaration that they won't talk with NZ First after the election, this week a couple of the minor-but-potentially-important parties lined up themselves. Peter Dunne has announced they will only be talking with National - dumping their current deal with Labour, citing the Greens as the reason. And ACT leader Rodney Hyde and National's John Key met at a cafe to announce they would be working together, although that is no great surprise.
Winston Peters just can't stay out of the news. This week a timeline came to light of how he strongly pushed for Owen Glenn to be given the honorary consul in Monaco - despite stating he was completely hands off. The lobbying was strong enough to come to the attention of Helen Clark. Both Winston & Owen have both stated the donations had nothing to do with the Monaco role. I've also seen a couple of stories which basically point to how after funding from the wealthy horse racing Vela family, Winston pushed for the horse racing portfolio in parliament and then passed Vela-friendly laws.
Labour went to great lengths this week to derail John Key's election campaign by sending the Labour party president to Australia to dig for dirt - but they got the wrong signature so their huge story fell pretty flat.
National released a redundancy support package to help with the current financial climate worth $42m and aimed at lower & middle incomes.
Labour has 'talked' with the banks and told them to 'be nice' and help anyone having financial problems with their mortgages.

The family of murdered woman Emma Agnew were relieved on Friday when Liam James Reid was found guilty of her rape & murder about 12 months ago.

Former deputy Prime Minister Don McKinnon has been awared the Defender of Democracy Award for 2008. Don was Secretary-General of the Commonwealth from 1999 to April this year.

The Numbers Game

2: years working holiday is now possible in the UK after a new arrangement was made for young New Zealanders
3: road toll for the long Labour weekend last weekend - equalling the lowest on record
100: th marathon for Michael Simons starting the Auckland Marathon today - the richest road race in NZ worth $24,000 & 12,200 entrants
140: km/h winds for Wellington after a couple of days of bad weather around the country
200: years since the last tuatara nest was found - one has just been confirmed at the Karori Sanctuary in Wellington
22,000: $ test drive for a 29 year old Napier man who wrote off a Holden Clubsport while taking it for a drive out of the showroom
743,268: $ golden handshake for Waitakere City Council chief executive Harry O'Rourke after retiring this year - wasn't Labour going to stop this sort of thing?

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.3615 (+0.0113)
EUR 0.4568 (+0.0181)
USD 0.5816 (+0.0243)
AUD 0.8702 (-0.0303)

The Weekender NZer of the week

Alan MacDiarmid
PLASTIC FANTASTIC
"Information Age pioneer," Alan MacDiarmid and his colleagues discovered that plastics could conduct electricity. Application of the research is seen to be the future of information technology. Awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize for chemistry, MacDiarmid lives by the sign in his study: "I am a very lucky person and the harder I work the luckier I seem to be."
http://www.nzedge.co.nz/heroes/macdiarmid.html

Joke of the Weekender

Come and Get Me
My brother dropped off his wife at the hairstylist and she was supposed to call me when she was ready to be picked up. She must have dialed a wrong number, she reported later.
She called, and a man said "Hello," to which she cheerfully said, "Come and get me!"
The man said, "Are you sure? This is Mitchell's funeral home."

Weekender Photos

A bunch of us went for a walk along the river the other week - there are only two photos but here they are:
Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42/RiverWalk#

Darren Harrison: darren@harrison.gen.nz
The Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website: www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
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