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Table:

Fixtures:

13/09:

• Southland v Canterbury

14/09:

• BoP v Taranaki
• North Harbour v Manawatū
• Waikato v Hawke's Bay

15/09:

• Counties-Manukau v Otago
• Tasman v Wellington
• Northland v Auckland

18/09:

• Manawatū v Southland

Predictions: Canterbury 9- BoP 5+ North Harbour 25+ Hawke's Bay 5- Otago 5- Wellington 3+ Auckland 9- Southland 5-

Notes: Well, after the absolute tragedy that befell Hawke's Bay in their Shield defense against the Mako, i'm hoping Wellington will visit Nelson and at least ensure that Tasman only get to celebrate for a week.

That should be a hell of a game with all of the squad ABs being released to play for their provinces and Wellington have been very good so far this season.

Last weekend saw a lot of movement in the bottom half of the table - with lots of drama as well. See if you can find clip of wet-ball-gate from the Battle of the Bridge. Absolute dastardly shithousery robbed North Harbour.

There's plenty of other good matches ahead this weekend too - BoP v Taranaki should settle who's in 4th place, and the mid-week home game for the Turbos could be their only chance of picking up a win this season.

I'm glad the tests are over for this weekend, hopefully the rugby pundits down here will pay some attention to the NPC in their shows. But likely it'll get a passing mention while they spend 45 minutes talking up the Wobblies and then at the end of the season they'll have another moan about how nobody cares about the NPC.

Table:

Fixtures: Friday 06/09: BoP v Manawatū

Saturday 07/09: Auckland v North Harbour Wellington v Southland Otago v Canterbury Hawke's Bay v Tasman (Ranfurly Shield)

Sunday 08/09: Taranaki v Waikato Counties-Manukau v Northland

Wednesday 11/09: Otago v Wellington

Notes: The biggest game this round is the Ranfurly Shield match on Saturday night, Tasman have never one it as the combined union of Marlborough/Nelson Bays so they'll be up for it; and of course Hawke's Bay will be desperate to keep their winning record. Whoever wins gets both the log o' wood and top of the table.

Other than that, there's a couple of other usually fierce derbies. The Battle of the Bridge on Satuurday, then Otago v Canterbury. Most of the rest of the matches aren't especially exciting.

My Predictions: BoP 24+ North Harbour 9- Wellington 18+ Otago 3- Hawke's Bay 3- Taranaki 9+ Northland 9- Wellington 6+

Unfortunately that's behind a paywall, but there's ways and means of reading it, eg via RSS subscription to NZ Herald.

A couple of notes for the benefit of those that can't read it. Two lecturers in maths education have pointed out that Luxon's claim that there is a crisis is misleading as the achievement data is "based on a new draft curriculum, with a higher benchmark compared to previous years."

ie, the standard for achievement is higher, not the level of maths knowledge declining suddenly. In fact "We’ve been tracking student achievement in mathematics at Year 8 for more than 10 years, and in that time, there has been no evidence for improvement or decline."

More alarmingly for me, a ministerial advisory group was setup which has recommended a new curriculum even while acknowledging there is a lack of evidence for teaching maths the way it proscribes.

That advisory group is chaired by an NZ Initiative idealogue, Dr Michael Johnston and the article almost infers he is basically pushing his own manifesto on how education should be conducted into the curriculum - again, despite evidence it has application to maths education.

For anyone that doesn't know, the NZ Initiative was formed by merging the Business Roundtable and the NZ Institute. They are far right neoliberal idealogues and you'll see people cycle through the organisation before going into political reporting or lobbying, or in Nicola Willis case being placed into political party roles.

Table:

Fixtures:

Friday 30/08:

• Northland v Southland

Saturday 31/08:

• North Harbour v Counties-Manukau
• Taranaki v Otago
• Waikato v Auckland
• Tasman v BoP

Sunday 01/09:

• Canterbury v Wellington
• Manawatū v Hawke's Bay

Wednesday 04/09:

• Waikato v Northland

My Predictions:

• Northland 9+
• North Habour 18+
• Taranaki 6+
• Waikato 9+
• Tasman 6+
• Wellington 9-
• Hawke's Bay 15+
• Northland 6-

1/3 of Round Robin Notes: With Round 3/9 complete now (the fixtures list I refer to has the playoffs as Rounds 10-12 which is a bit random) I figured i'd entertain myself by doing a bit of a stock-take of where we are at.

The defending champs Taranaki are progressing ok with their 1 loss so far coming away to one of the top 4 teams Wellington, are sitting ok, but the draw is a little unkind to them in that their easier games are mostly at home but they still have to play BoP, Tasman & Hawke's Bay on the road.

The comp progresses through quarter-finals, semis to the final so they'll make the playoffs but will need to work hard to get the home advantage they had last year.

The beaten finalists Hawke's Bay are looking quite good especially this week picking up a win away in Canterbury during the storm week. Time will tell though as its all tough games from now, even this Sunday's match against cellar dwellers Manawatū could be banana peel being the 3rd match in 9 days.

Probably the biggest surprise so far is how average Waikato, and how poor Auckland have been. You know you're having a bad season when Southland are ahead of you on the table.

The current top 5 look likely to make the playoffs, of the rest Canterbury will surely make it in though are battling a lot of injuries. The table feels a bit similar to Super Rugby this year. The top 4-5 are clear but places 6-12 are still probably anyone's to take and really only Manawatū & Counties-Manukau are looking completely out of the running.

Crowd wise - its the usual story. The over-saturated Super Rugby markets that struggled to get people to turn up unless it was a big game struggle to get people to show to the NPC. But the provinces that get one or no Super Rugby matches are having pretty good crowds in attendance from what i've seen so far.

This is my editorialising, but I struggle to see how its not yet more Crusaders bias selecting Bower over Numia.

I get that the latter is uncapped and coming off an injury but Numia was probably the form prop in Super Rugby this year and is going to be 3rd choice prop, not playing in either game unless there's an injury anyway.

Bower's only come back from even more serious injury this year and while he's had some tests under his belt i'd say there's just as many question marks over his international game with answers as unanswered questions about Numia.

Table:

Fixtures:

Friday 23/08:

• Hawke's Bay v Northland (Ranfurly Shield Challenge)

Saturday 24/08:

• Counties-Manukau v Tasman
• Auckland v Canterbury
• Southland v Taranaki

Sunday 25/08:

• Otago v BoP
• Wellington v Manawatū
• North Harbour v Waikato

Wednesday 28/08:

• Canterbury v Hawke's Bay

My Predictions:

• Hawkes-Bay 6+ (I'm on call this week so won't be at McLean Park :( )
• Tasman 18+
• Auckland 6-
• Taranaki 6+
• BoP 6+
• Wellington 27+
• North Harbour 6+
• Canterbury 10-

• Australia v South Africa in Perth
• New Zealand v Argentina in Auckland

Table:

Fixtures:

Friday 16/08:

• Otago v Auckland

Saturday 17/08:

• Northland v Manawatū
• Tasman v Canterbury
• Hawke's Bay v Southland (Ranfurly Shield Challenge)

Sunday 18/08:

• BoP v North Harbour
• Wellington v Taranaki
• Counties-Manukau v Waikato

My Predictions:

• Auckland 13+
• Northland 21+
• Tasman 6-
• Hawkes-Bay 6+ (Hoping to make it to McLean Park for this one)
• BoP 13+
• Taranaki 6-
• Waikato 13-

Seeing as I care more about the NPC than any other Rugby I feel like I ought to start a thread for this too, even though i'm the only person here that probably has any interest :)

Round 1 Fixtures:

• Taranaki v Counties-Manukau
• Auckland v Wellington
• Canterbury v Northland
• Southland v Otago
• Waikato v Bay of Plenty
• North Harbour v Hawkes Bay
• Manawatū v Tasman
• Bay of Plenty v Counties-Manukau*

*Due to the compressed nature of the competition every team has what's called a storm week where they end up playing 3 times in about 10 days which is why this match is marked as the 2nd game in round 1 for these two teams

• Australia v South Africa in Brisbane
• New Zealand v Argentina in Wellington

Massive news for Moana Pasifika, probably the biggest signing announcement in the entire history of Super Rugby.

No idea how they can afford him, but I've seen some people suggest they picked up some new finance from somewhere. It'll be interesting to see where he plays, possibly at 7 given Inisi had such a huge season at 8 for them this year.

Decided to tweak it from Summer Internationals bc its been freezing & frosty down here in my part of New Zealand!

• Tonga vs Italy
• Samoa vs Spain
• USA vs Scotland
• Canada vs Romania
• New Zealand vs England
• Australia vs Wales
• Japan vs Georgia
• Namibia vs Portugal
• South Africa vs Ireland
• Argentina vs France