New Zealand has won the first of today’s tests – the Silver Ferns beat the Australian Diamonds 49 -48.
Please, All Blacks follow their example – though for the sake of the national blood pressure, it would better if it could be by a greater margin.
New Zealand has won the first of today’s tests – the Silver Ferns beat the Australian Diamonds 49 -48.
Please, All Blacks follow their example – though for the sake of the national blood pressure, it would better if it could be by a greater margin.
There is another international game today.
It might not be in our town, but it is our team: the Silver Ferns are playing the Australian Diamonds in Perth.
Go SILVER FERNS!
If Eliza Doolittle was looking back at the last six weeks and the Rugby World Cup, I reckon she’d say it’s been lover-er-ly.
As we wait for tonight’s final it’s timely to look back at some of the people which have made it such a success.
Full credit to:
* The Tongan community who were the first to show their true colours and did it so exuberantly.
* The fans who came from their homelands to follow their teams; the recent immigrants and those who discovered or rediscovered their links to other countries.
* All the supporters who backed a team, their own or not, which added so much to the fun of matches.
* The individuals, businesses and communities who got behind the event to paint the country in the many colours of the 20 teams.
* The volunteers, unfailingly helpful, polite and cheerful, at every venue for every match.
* The people who perservered to build the stadium in Dunedin and had the good sense to put a roof on it.
* Proper choirs singing proper anthems, properly thanks to the New Zealand Choral Federation choirs, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and Anthony Ritchie who did the arrangements.
* The Real New Zealand Festival which showed the World Cup was about so much more than rugby.
* Good sports, on and off the field, who thankfully were the very large majority.
* The minnows and middling fish who played well and won hearts, if not games.
* The special moments – the opening; Jock Hobbs presenting Richie McCaw and Mils Muliaina with their 100th test caps; the singing by the crowds . . .
* The teams, their coaches and entourages.
* Martin Snedden who wrote in an open letter:
We set out to make people happy and proud. I think we’ve achieved that.
It’s been a really tough last 12 months for New Zealand. The magnitude of the
Christchurch disaster and the complexity of the road to recovery have knocked us
all. Pike River added to our sadness. On top of that, the economic recession has
lasted long and bitten deeper than any of us expected. We’ve grieved for those
directly affected by these events and worried about our country’s future.
Rugby World Cup 2011 hasn’t solved the problems but it has given us some
fantastic relief at a time when we needed some form of escape. Our collective
efforts have given us just cause to be proud of who we are and, most
importantly, to start smiling again. The nation’s morale has lifted.
Our thousands of guests have sensed our mood and responded brilliantly,
adding rich colour and flavour to this celebration of our national game and our
country. We owe them heaps. . .
* The All Blacks.
Whatever happens tonight, I hope we can remember the fun and the excitement, agree the tournament has been a success and accept the result with grace or magnanimity as appropriate.
Oh, and GO THE ALL BLACKS, let’s all have a love-er-ly time tonight!
As New Zealand sits on the edge of its collective seat, holding its breath (or not) in nervous anticipation of tonight’s Rugby World Cup final between the All Blacks and Les Blues, Homepaddock brings you exclusive coverage of the considered opinion and advice of international experts.
Jane Austen: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a team in possession of a good record, must be in want of a World Cup.
William Wordsworth: Earth has not anything to show more fair, dull would he be of soul who could pass by a team so stirring in its majesty.
Margaret Mahy: When you are playing, someone has done a lot of work on your
behalf, someone has had ideas and has then coached and corrected and improved
them so that they can be shared.
William Shakespeare: What’s in a game? That which we call the Cup won by any other team would not smell as sweet.
Charlotte Bronte: Let your performance do the thinking.
A.A. Milne: When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.
Jenny Shipley: Too often the desire for the World Cup has been expressed by women while the stewardship of the mechanisms which are used to attempt to secure the Cup in the short and medium term are dominated by male decision-making structures and informal arrangements. This must change.
Winston Churchill: I would say to the team . . . I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us 80 long minutes of toil and struggle.
Margaret Thatcher: If you lead a team like the All Blacks, a strong team, a team which has taken a lead in sporting affairs in good times and in bad, a team that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you.
William Blake: We shall not cease from mental fight, nor will the ball rest in our hands until we have won the World Cup in New Zealand’s green and pleasant land.
The IRB was promised a stadium of 4 million and the country has answered the call.
The way so many people and communities have got behind the Rugby World Cup, turning it into a nationwide celebration has been great.
Flags on vehicles, I even saw a Scottish one flying from the window of the driver’s wagon of a train, fences and buildings; sheep painted in team colours; the giant concrete rugby ball , 40 hours in the making, outside the vets in Oamaru which caught John Key’s eye on Friday . . .
It would be hard to beat this W(h)anganui house for individual effort, and it would be difficult to top Kurow for community contribution to the collective celebration.
This was Richie McCaw’s home town. He was born in Oamaru, grew up on the family farm in the Hakataramea Valley but it was Kurow where he went to primary school and played his first games of rugby.
The town museum is full of Richie memorabilia, cut-outs of sheep painted black and numbered 1 to 15 line the main street and on the green where the Hay family spend summer, is this tribute to the World Cup and the All Black captain:
For rugby trivia enthusiasts, Richie is Kurow’s second All Black. The first was the late Phil Gard.
The Waitaki Valley has produced another All Black, Ian Hurst, who played for New Zealand in the 1970s.
North Otago’s fourth All Black, Jefff Matheson also played in the early 1970s.
Leadership is clear in some areas of New Zealand. Richie McCaw is a great example. He is intelligent, he trains, he practises, he listens and he gets on and does it – he is scanning the field for opportunities and aware of the placing of his team mates. He has an over-arching goal and works with the coaches to reach it. – Jacqueline Rowarth inwhat rugby can teach business.
42 BC Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeated Brutus’s army. Brutus committed suicide.
425 Valentinian III became Roman Emperor, at the age of 6.
502 The Synodus Palmaris, called by Gothic king Theodoric the Great, discharged Pope Symmachus of all charges, ending the schism of Antipope Laurentius.
1086 At the Battle of az-Zallaqah, the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeated the forces of Castilian King Alfonso VI.
1157 The Battle of Grathe Heath ended the civil war in Denmark. King Sweyn III was killed and Valdemar I restored the country.
1295 The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England was signed in Paris.
1503 Isabella of Portugal, queen of Spain and empress of Germany (d. 1539)
1641 Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
1642 Battle of Edgehill: First major battle of the First English Civil War.
1694 British/American colonial forces, led by Sir William Phipps, fail to seize Quebec from the French.
1707 The first Parliament of Great Britain met.
1739 War of Jenkins’ Ear started: British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, reluctantly declared war on Spain.
1812 Claude François de Malet, a French general, began a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming that the Emperor died in Russia and that he was now the commandant of Paris.
1844 Robert Bridges, English poet, was born (d. 1930).
1850 The first National Women’s Rights Convention began in Worcester, Massachusetts.
1861 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
1864 American Civil War: Battle of Westport – Union forced under General Samuel R. Curtis defeated Confederate troops led by General Sterling Price at Westport, near Kansas City.
1867 72 Senators were summoned by Royal Proclamation to serve as the first members of the Canadian Senate.
1870 Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Metz concluded with a decisive Prussian victory.
1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont fliew a plane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris.
1911 First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot took off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.
1912 First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo between the Serbian and Ottoman armies began.
1915 Among the fatalities when the transport Marquette sank in the Aegean Sea were 32 New Zealanders, including ten nurses – making 23 October the deadliest day in the history of this country’s military nursing.
<img src="http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/files/images/hmts-marquette-event.preview.jpg" alt="Ten NZ nurses lost in Marquette sinking” />
1915 In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.
1917 Lenin called for the October Revolution.
1929 Great Depression: After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange began to show signs of panic.
1929 The first North American transcontinental air service began between New York City and Los Angeles, California.
1931 Diana Dors, British actress was bron (d. 1984).
1935 Dutch Schultz, Abe Landau, Otto Berman, and Bernard “Lulu” Rosencrantz were fatally shot at a saloonin Newark, New Jersey in The Chophouse Massacre.
1940 Pelé, Brazilian footballer, was born.
1941 Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov took command of Red Army operations to prevent the further advance into Russia of German forces and to prevent the Wehrmacht from capturing Moscow.
1942 World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein began.
1942 All 12 passengers and crewmen aboard an American Airlines DC-3 airliner were killed when it is struck by a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber near Palm Springs, California. Amongst the victims was award-winning composer and songwriter Ralph Rainger (“Thanks for the Memory”, “Love in Bloom”, “Blue Hawaii”).
1942 Michael Crichton, American writer, was born (d. 2008).
1942 The Battle for Henderson Field began during the Guadalcanal Campaign.
1944 : Battle of Leyte Gulf – The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines.
1946 The United Nations General Assembly convened for the first time.
1948 A plane crash on Mt Ruapehu killed 13 people.
1956 Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation.
1958 The Springhill Mine Bump – An earthquake trapped 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time.
1958 The Smurfs, a fictional race of blue dwarves, appeared for the first time in the story Le flute à six schtroumpfs, a Johan and Peewit adventure by Peyo which was serialized in the weekly comics magazine Spirou.
1972 Operation Linebacker, a US bombing campaign against North Vietnam ended after five months.
1973 A United Nations sanctioned cease-fire officially ended the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Syria.
1983 Lebanon Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut was hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. Marines. A French army barracks in Lebanon was also hit, killing 58 troops.
1989 The Hungarian Republic was officially declared by president Mátyás Szűrös, replacing the communist Hungarian People’s Republic.
1989 Phillips Disaster in Pasadena, Texas killed 23 and injured 314.
1992 Emperor Akihito became the first Emperor of Japan to stand on Chinese soil.
1993 Shankill Road bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb prematurely detonates in the Shankill area of Belfast, killing the bomber and nine civilians.
1998 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reached a “land for peace” agreement.
2001 The Provisional IRA began disarmament after peace talks.
2001 Apple released the iPod.
2002 Moscow Theatre Siege began: Chechen terrorists seized the House of Culture theater in Moscow and took approximately 700 theatre-goers hostage.
2004 A powerful earthquake and its aftershocks hit Niigata prefecture, northern Japan, killing 35 people, injuring 2,200, and leaving 85,000 homeless or evacuated.
2007 A powerful cold front in the Bay of Campeche caused the Usumacinta Jackup rig to collide with Kab 101, leading to the death and drowning of 22 people during rescue operations after evacuation of the rig.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia