baba’s Blog

On Sunday, the 26^th of July, 2009, the All Blacks were in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to play in the Tri Nations second test against South Africa. The All Black selectors made a big mistake in giving the under-played Brendon Leonard some game time against the world champion Springboks.

The All Blacks did not get off to a good start, losing the ball at kick off. Their defence held, though, and they withstood the pounding attack of the Springbok’s forwards, to score the first points of the match with a penalty goal to Stephen Donald. But then François Steyn struck right back with a penalty goal of his own from 53 metres out. Then, ten minutes later, Ruan Pienarre got a shot at goal from pretty much right out in front, but it hit the post. He did the same thing three minutes later. The rest of the first half was very scrappy and there wasn’t much tidy ball from both teams. When finally the siren went for half time the score was 16-3 to the Springboks.

The second half was even scrappier and the All Blacks needed to score first if they wanted a chance at winning. After about 13 minutes the All Blacks finally scored. At the end of a scrappy second half the Springboks put the final nail in the coffin for the All Blacks hopes of winning the game with a try in the corner Converted by Morné Steyn making the final score 28-19.

On Saturday 18^th July 2009, the All Blacks ran out on to the half construction site, Eden Park to play the Wallabies in the first test of the Tri Nations and Bledisloe Cup. After the national anthems and the haka, it was finally time for the Wallabies to kick off. It didn’t take long for the first points to be scored. With just 4 ½ minutes gone in the game, Wallabies inside centre (second five), Berrick Barnes, stepped through a hole and ran another seven metres to score the first try of the game. A Matt Giteau penalty 3 minutes later put the Wallabies 10-nil up with less than ten minutes gone. Stephen Donald brought it back to seven points with a penalty in around about the 17^th minute, and then Richie McCaw went over to score in the 32^nd. At half time it was 13-10 to the Wallabies.

In the opening minutes of the second half, both teams traded penalties to make it 16-13 in the Wallabies favour. Then, in the 53^rd minute Stephen Donald kicked a penalty goal to bring it to 16 all. Two more penalty goals to the All Blacks in the final twenty minutes put them in front for the first time in the game. At that point it was 22-16 in the All Blacks favor, and it stayed that way for the rest of the game.

On Saturday the 20th of June (I didn’t finish last week) I had my 3rd soccer game of the preliminary round and my 7th of the season. We were playing Southwell. On Southwell’s team was a former team mate of mine, James. I really wanted to play his team. But honestly, expect the unexpected this time. That doesn’t mean not to expect the expected. We didn’t lose but we didn’t win either.
We had a good kick off and played a very good first half. Our goalie didn’t get much action though because our defence was too good (especially Robert, Nathan and I). As usual, I played as the left back. The defence didn’t get much action either. The half time score was 0-0.
Our second half was the best of the season so far. We played well, we defended well and Southwell only scored from a fluke goal. When they did score it meant that we were 1-0 down, for the 7th time this season. We did come back though. In the final 10 minutes we scored a goal for ourselves and levelled the score to 1-1. That was the final result.

On Saturday 13^th of June 2009 the New Zealand rugby team, known as the All Blacks, ran out onto Carisbrooke, Dunedin, to play France in the first test of the All Blacks international season. The Haka was led by Piri Weepu, while French lock, Sebastian Chabel, aka, The Caveman, made caveman faces at the All Blacks.

In the first 5 minutes the All Blacks conceded four turnovers (when the other team steals the ball off your team at the breakdown), but I think three of them were illegally done. I thought the first one had the player stealing the ball when he wasn’t supporting his own bodyweight and in the third and fourth the player didn’t enter the breakdown from the hind most foot.

It was the French who ended up scoring the first try of the game. The halfback picked up the ball from a scrum, passed it to the first-five, who ran and got out of three tackles, beating seven players in the process and going over the line to score.

It was the 23rd minute before the French scored again. It was a fairly weak try in the end, with the French hooker steamrolling the defence for the try. At that point France led 17-3. The All Blacks needed to hit back fast.

A try after the half time hooter brought hope to the All Blacks. Halfback Jimmy Cowan kicked the ball from the base of the ruck; the bounce was perfect for the All Black left winger who normally plays at fullback, Cory Jane, who ran twenty metres before drawing the defence, leaving no.8, Liam Messam unmarked. Jane passed the ball to Messam and Messam crossed the line for a try in the corner.

The All Blacks played a much better second half, although a game winning try to the French with seven minutes to go ended the All Backs’ hopes of a win. Luke McAlister got the ball and tried to pass it on but the French fullback intercepted it and scored under the posts, although I could have sworn he was offside.

The final score was 27-22 to France, but if the referee made the right decisions, it would have been 22-20 to the All Blacks. I will finish this post with a true thought of mine: The ref was a bunch of baloni.

On Saturday I had my second soccer game of the preliminary round and my sixth of the season. Expect the expected. We lost. We were playing Westland United. We played quite well in the second half only conceding two goals. Then came the glory moment. At long last, we scored a goal!!! Joshua took a shot, but it came off the goalie’s leg and back to Joshua. He passed the ball to Caleb and he scored. That gave us determination to score again and boosted our confidence that we could win.

At half time we were down 2-1. We tried a little experiment. We wanted to see if snake lollies were as, if not more effective than oranges. It didn’t really work because we kind of fell asleep in the second half (figuratively, not literally).

In the second half we just slipped off of our pace and conceded another 4 goals to the other team conceding none. It was a disappointing second half and we are not going to use lollies again. Nah-ah.

At full time the score was a disappointing 6-1, though it wasn’t as disappointing as previous weeks when we didn’t score at all or even lose by 14 goals. In all it was our best first half yet (not a good second half though).

1. To be able to talk to animals because that would be really awesome.
2. To run with an Ocelot because they are like a cheetah, only smaller, not as fast and a lot tamer, although they are still wild.
3. Ride a Whale Shark because although it is the biggest fish in the sea, it is completely harmless and lets scuba divers gently grab its dorsal fin and ride them.
4. Discover a new species of deep sea creature because when you discover a new type of something you get to name it.
5. Fly with a Harpy Eagle because Harpy chicks are very cute when they learn to fly and fly very gracefully when they are adults.
6. Swim with a Harp Seal pup because they are very cute and very rare.
7. Play with a Spider Monkey because monkeys are very playful as it is essential for their survival later on in life because it teaches them to get on with other monkeys and it helps them learn to fight.
8. Ride a Siberian Tiger because they are very rare.
9. Film a Grizzly bear catching salmon during their annual upstream migration.
10. Travel across Tasmania looking for a Tasmanian Devil because I want to see how they act in the wild myself.

On Sunday the 31st May, at 3:15 in the morning, me and my dad got up to watch the Super 14 final at my cousin’s place as the previous owner of our new house stole the sky TV system and we couldn’t watch rugby.

The final was between the Waikato Chiefs and the Pretoria Bulls. It was the first time the Chiefs had ever been to the final. The Bulls however, were in their second. In the semi final the Bulls beat the Crusaders. It was just the second semi final defeat for the Crusaders, who had previously lost to the Bulls, and just the second semi final victory for the Bulls, who had previously beaten the crusaders. ¾ of the way through the game, I saw a sign that said “the Bulls are VICTORious” which is clever because the captain of the Bulls is Victor Matfield.

The Bulls were first to kick off. Mornē Steyn kicked it deep into the Chiefs 22, so the Chiefs got first possession. The first try of 2 for the Chiefs was also the first try of the game and it was scored by fulback Mils Muliaina in the 9th minute. First five Stephen Donald faked to pass the ball one way and passed the other, creating a gap that Muliaina went straight through and scored.

The first try of 6 for the Bulls was scored by halfback Furee DuPreev, when Sione Lauaki deliberately blocked a pass and was penalized. DuPreev took the tap and scored.

The Bulls second try went to flying left winger, Brian Habana. DuPreev put a little grubber kick behind the defenders, Habana picked it up and ran the rest of the way to score the try.

At that point it was 14-7 in favor of the Bulls, which was bad enough for the Chiefs. Star hooker, Aled DeMalemanche got dumped and had to leave the field, while DuPreev picked up the ball and scored a double.

An intercept try to Habana on half time brought the score to 34-7. The start of the second half brought hope to the Chiefs, as a kick from Bulls fulback, Zane Kirchner went straight to Stephen Donald, who got away from the chaser (Kirchner), ran up and passed the ball to right winger, Lelia Masaga, who, in turn ran and scored.

Apart from a penalty, that was the only points the Chiefs got in the second half. The Bulls did more than twice as good as that, scoring 27 points in the second half. At full time the score was 61-17 to the Bulls, who scored the most amount of points in a Super 14 final ever.

On Saturday I had my first soccer game of the preliminary round and my fifth of the season. With no wins under our belt we were determined to play better than in other weeks. My team is in division 3A as we lost all of our games. This game was our best chance of winning because other teams on our division would have had either 1 or no wins.

We played well in the first half, despite being down 4-nil at half time. We passed more, we tackled better and we got the ball out of our own half more often. The defense needed to play extremely well in the first half, as did the goalie, which we did.

In the second half I was supposed to start off on the sideline, but we accidentally put 10 players on instead of 11. One of the subs had a sore hip while me and the other sub, Reed, had both been run naked in the first half, so Reed didn’t want to go back on. So, despite not having much gas left in the tank, I went back on to play out of position. I played midfield instead of defense.

Over all we were happy with the result, even though we lost by 5-nil.

Last Friday, our very own Waikato Chiefs hosted their first ever home Super 14 semi final and just their second semi final over all. It was against the Wellington Hurricanes at Waikato Stadium in Hamilton.

Kick off time. The Hurricanes kicked off and straight away Stephen Donald kicked the ball down field. The kick was an easy take for Tamiti Ellison but he missed it. Straight away the Chiefs got possession. The Chiefs hammered away at the Hurricanes defence, but still it held tight.

The first try of the game went to Ma‘a Nonu of the Hurricanes. it was set up by the man with the super glue hands, the man I call super glue man, Victor Vito making a big break and off loading at just the right time to put Nonu over the line and score. It was converted by half back Piri Weepu.

Then it was the Chiefs turn to score and they did it through No. 8, Sione Lauaki‘s solo effort down the side line.

At half time it was 7-7 in a very fast pace game with a lot of line breaks. The teams came out ready for the second half.

This time it was the Chiefs turn to score first and they did it by left winger, Sitivini Sivivatu making a break and passing to Toby Moorland, who passed it to the captain, Mils Muliaina who scored under the posts. After that it was pretty even, even when the fog started to settle in. At full time the final score was 14-10 in favor of the Chiefs, who went through to the final.

On Saturday I had my fourth and last grading game of the season in soccer against Hamilton North. We were as ready as we would ever have been for a win, which we had been denied in our last three matches. So we took to the field and went to our positions, well most of us did. I had to remind one of my team mates that I was on the left-hand side of the field because he was going towards the left. We started well, and for just the third time this year we didn’t lose possession of the ball at kick-off time. We spent most of the first twenty minutes of the first half down Ham North’s end of the field and were hot on the track of scoring our first goal of the season, when one of our players slipped and lost the ball. One of Ham North’s midfielders got the ball and passed it to the striker that was waiting. Then, for the first of many times, I was left with two people on one, in Ham North’s favor. That, unfortunately, led to the first goal of the game. Then, for the final few minutes of the first half , we were camped down our own end of the field. Despite our goalie making a very good performance at stopping goals, we still conceded another for a half-time score of 2 to nil. Then the second half. Our first half goalie had wanted to play on the field, so we had a goalie with no experience in the goal and to make matters worse, he was one of our best defenders and to rub some salt in the wound, another of our best defenders had gone to a wedding or something like that. We ended up with our best result of the season, even though we didn’t score any goals. we lost seven nil. So far this season we have conceded 46 goals(12-nil in week one, 14-nil in week two, 9-nil in week three and 7-nil this week) and scored a big fat zero. We need a win, fast!