The Weekender 01/03/2009

Welcome back, I hope the week has gone well for you!

Sport

I have this feeling that the NZ teams often get a bad start to the Super competitions, they always seem to recover though. The Crusaders are likely to be without Corey Flynn for the rest of the season after he broke an arm in the game against the Brumbies last weekend.
The Hurricanes won the battle of NZ's top two teams, beating the Crusaders 30-24, the Highlanders remained winless, losing 34-16 to the Waratahs. The Chiefs continue their poor start despite the odds, losing to the Sharks 15-22 in Hamilton (with two likely tries disallowed). There were two upsets this weekend, firstly the Force beat the Brumbies 25-16, and Blues bounced back from last weekend to beat the Stormers 8-14. Finally, the Bulls held out the Lions winning 16-9.
Luke McAlister is heading back to NZ after announcing he has re-signed with the NZRU.

The Indians have been in town for a couple of Twenty20 games & NZ won both of them! In the first game India set 162 for eight and with Jacob Oram & Brendon McCullum on fire NZ made it safely with 24 sixes in the game. In the second game India got a modest 149-6 and NZ won off the last ball as Brendon McCullum scored the winning runs to finish 69 not out.
The 'extras' stats from the recent cricket games has often intrigued me. NZ would bowl maybe 3 extras. Australia would typically get close to 20. Well this week there was an article with some more information. In the last 11 ODIs & Twenty20 games NZ bowled 1 wide per 16.1 overs. Our opposition combined for 1 wide per 5 overs. In the past 404 overs, NZ has bowled just three no balls - half that of the opposition.

The biggest fight for NZ (since the hey days of David Tua) is heading to Hamilton. There is huge interested in the David Tua vs Shane Cameron fight, but after Auckland lost so much money with the David Beckham game, Auckland didn't want to put anything in for the fight, and Wellington wasn't interested either, so Hamilton (where it's increasingly happening) will host the fight in a fully covered Waikato Stadium. Apparently "Waikato - it's an O for Awesome place".

The Australia bookmakers have put the Warriors third equal to win the NRL premiership. The Warriors have finished their pre-season successfully winning all three games, the final was a 34-12 win over the Gold Coast Titans.
In other league news, Australia has appointed Tim Sheens as their new rugby league coach after the sour grapes from Ricky (Bobby) Stuart led to his sacking after the Rugby League World Cup.

The NZ Breakers season has ended after losing the first two semi final games against the Melbourne Tigers. The first was a 117-99 hammering, and in the second the Tigers came from behind to win 103-97 to seal an all Melbourne ANBL final.

NZ News

Mitre 10 has been running a series of adverts where young kids are having adult-like conversations about things like putting a deck up. In that ad one kid (dressed & talking like an Aussie) is asked to help, and he replies "Mate, you're dreamin", the response is "Aussies, no surprise there". It's a funny ad, but someone took it seriously and complained that it was "racist towards Australians". Luckily common sense prevailed at the Advertising Standards Authority and the complaint was rejected.

The French aviation investigators who have been looking into the Air NZ A320 Airbus crash off the coast of France last November have released a report blaming the low altitude test for the crash. However things aren't quite so cut & dried, with firstly the investigators not giving the families & Air NZ the curtesy of telling them privately before making the findings public, and secondly (& more importantly) not involving Air NZ's experts in the investigation at all. It seems Air NZ were surprised since the planes don't let themselves stall in normal flying operation.

The Maari oil field 80km off the coast of Taranaki has started producing oil and is expected to produce 50 million barrels of oil over the next 10 to 15 years.

It's been a long time since the government has 'believed in the people'. This week has been a well publicised job summit & while in general the public would view those sorts of things as a waste of time, deputy Prime Minister Bill English said it would ultimately be up to the taxpayers to decide whether it was all a "talk-fest or a do-fest". That is the sort of attitude that all politicians should have.
Two big ideas to come out of the summit is a nine day working fortnight (with the tenth day being a training day) and a co-fund between the banks and the government (to support struggling businesses).
The government's 100 day plan has run out of days with the 100th day in power coming up this week, and everyone seems to be fairly happy with what they've done. The support for National has risen, sitting at 56% and 60% in two recent polls, Labour was at 27%. The poll put John Key having 52% preferred Prime Minister but with 85% conceding that he was a capable leader.

The Numbers Game

4.9: % price rises for some Mercury energy customers
8: % increase in Auckland public transport patronage - including a 86% rise for the Northern Express
8: c/L drop in petrol prices - I wonder if they are just trying to create cool petrol price graphs?
120: kph winds expected in a huge storm to hit the north island this weekend - everyone was told to stay home! there was water water everywhere (180mm in Coromandel), but few other problems
158: in the world for NZ amateur golfer Danny Lee - jumping 404 spots after the win at the Johnnie Walker Classic in Perth
2.6m: $ expected to be saved by the NZRU with a wage freeze
3.75m: $ grant to Plunket from the Health ministry to keep it's 24 hr helpline going
1.5b: $ election promise from the government for super-fast broadband is going ahead

Finance NZ Dollar

Who spotted the mistake last week? That's right, I didn't update the finance section, oops.
GBP 0.3494 (-0.0144)
EUR 0.3948 (-0.0112)
USD 0.5004 (-0.0220)
AUD 0.7828 (-0.0122)

The Weekender NZer of the week

William Atack
REFEREE WITH A FLASH OF INSPIRATION
William Harrington Atack of Canterbury was the first sports' referee in the world to use a whistle to stop a game.
http://www.nzedge.co.nz/heroes/atack.html

Joke of the Weekender

Roughing It
A friend and his wife were considering traveling to Alaska for a trip that the husband had long dreamed of taking. He kept talking about how great it would be to stay in a log cabin without electricity, to hunt moose, and drive a dog team instead of a car.
"If we decided to live there permanently, away from civilization, what would you miss the most?" he asked his wife.
She replied, "You."

Weekender Photos

Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42

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