The Weekender 04/10/2009

Welcome to another week of New Zealand. It feels a little like winter has come back - ok it's not really cold here, but it has been wet for a few days and the Desert Road is closed right now!

Sport

The biggest sporting event of the weekend was without a doubt the famed "Fight of the Century". Shane Cameron (NZ's latest best boxer) had long wanted a shot at David Tua. David was NZ's great hope (in boxing circles!) about 10 years ago, but he hadn't had any decent fights - or even been in decent shape, for many years. It wasn't an easy fight to watch either, if you had Sky you had to pay $40 for the pay-per-view event & seats at Hamilton's Mystery Creek were quite expensive with one businessman paying $15,000 for a ringside table. To show it in a bar cost $1,500 so there weren't many places to go! But in the end we saw the fight - standing in the entrance of Sky City at Hamilton. Perhaps it was just as well it was short. Officially it was four minutes, with David Tua's lethal left and incredibly quick punching making very short work of Shane Cameron.

On to Air NZ cup rugby. Taranaki came back from last weeks loss to thrash Otago 38-10, Southland lost 27-13 to Auckland & Wellington had a huge 43-15 win over Manawatu. Bay of Plenty got an 80 minute try to beat Hawkes Bay 22-19, Canterbury eventually pulled away to beat Counties-Manukau 28-17 and Waikato beat North Harbour 33-22. Finally Tasman beat Northland 21-16

It has been an amazing week for cricket - go the Black Caps! They continued their improving form in the Champions Trophy pool play beating Sri Lanka by 38 runs with Daryl Tuffy & Kyle Mills staring with the ball. That put NZ through to the quarter final against England, despite a mounting injured list (Jacob Oram, Jesse Ryder & Daryl Tuffey). Elliott starred with 4-31 and England were dismissed for 146, then Brendon McCullum & Martin Guptil smashed 84 runs in 12.3 overs to "rip the guts out of it at the start" & lead NZ to the win. Last night the Black Caps had their semi final match against Pakistan and did well to restrict them to 234 and then did even better to reach the target with 13 balls & five wickets to spare. Ian Butler got 4-44 & Dan Vettori got 3-43. In the chase Grant Elliott was 75 not out with Dan supporting him with 41. Well those results have certainly surprised everyone and now the Black Caps play Australia in the final.
The Black Caps are already winners though, after picking up the "Spirit of Cricket" accolade at the ICC awards in Johannesburg. Fittingly they got the award just after the game vs England, where Daniel Vettori called back English batsman Paul Collingwood after he was given out for leaving the crease before the umpire had called the over. Ironically it was Paul Collingwood who refused to extend the same gesture to an NZ batsman earlier in the year - to the cries of "it's just not cricket".

The NZ Breakers have had back to back loses and people are already doubting their play-off credentials! After losing to the Melbourne Tigers 86-81 they have now been beaten 80-76 by Adelaide.

The Wellington Phoenix drew 0-0 with the A-League leaders Gold Coast, to continue their run of draws.

The NZ men's Surf Lifesaving champs saw the NZ team beat the Australians in Wellington on Friday.

The NRL final is on right now with the Melbourne Storm leading the Parramatta Eels 10-0 at half time. Full time update the Storm have won 23-16. They have an amazing team!

NZ News

The tsunami in Samoa was the biggest story by far last week. There are many tragic stories & with so many Samoan people in New Zealand there are many people affected. There were quite a number of NZers holidaying there at the time & the official count of NZers who have died has reached five, while the government is still trying to contact 50 kiwis who may have been in Samoa. The government donated $1m initially and private donations have totalled more than $350,000.

A four day track along Auckland's West coast is to open next year and it will be named the Hillary trail in honour of Sir Edmund Hillary.

The Numbers Game

1: # supreme award at the Hospitality Association 2009 awards for Auckland's Sale Street Bar & Restaurant
3: c/L increase in tax offsets some of the 8c/L price drops in the past week
3: minutes to sell out the 8,500 tickets to the Wellington rugby sevens
20: years since the incredible story of the Rose-Noelle hit the news - 4 men drifting at sea in an overturned yacht for 119 days
57: murders in NZ in the year to June - up from 52, with all but one solved. Burglary rates have also climbed but so have the numbers being solved
62: % of NZers prefer Wanganui, 23% want Whanganui & 13% were undecided
180: women (1 from NZ) made a world-record freefall jump
5,000: white crosses in an exhibit representing NZers killed at Flanders 92 years ago entitled Passchendaele: The Belgians Have Not Forgotten
5,000: meals served over the five days of Sir Howard Morrison's tangi
200m: $ in tax owed by property investors

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.4493 (-0.0020)
EUR 0.4916 (+0.0015)
USD 0.7163 (-0.0035)
AUD 0.8289 (-0.0007)

The Weekender NZer of the week

William Pickering.

William Pickering was our man of the week not too long ago, and he's back. Douglas Mudgway is taking a series of lectures to talk about William's life after the fellow NZer worked with him at JPL. He's even written a book about it.
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=8461

Joke of the Weekender

Bus Fare
Before boarding a bus, a man asked the driver, "What is the fare to the train station?"
"Sixty cents," said the driver.
The man raced alongside the bus until the next stop and then gasped, "What is the fare now?"
"Ninety cents," said the driver. "You're running the wrong way."

Weekender Photos

This week I have some photos from when I took my niece Carmen to the park.
Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42/CarmenAtThePark#

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