Feeling Sorry For The Aussies – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

Started with having to avoid rubbing in the Bledisloe and assuring the Aussies that the Wallabies had been a bit unlucky. Kiwi John Smith, on humouring fellow staff at the Melbourne college where he works

Not a great run of sporting results

By Roger Childs

Beauden Barrett on his way to scoring the decisive try.

In fact it’s be a lousy ten days for sports fans across the Tasman. It started with the Wallabies snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the Dunedin test.

Leading 29-28 late in the game, they lost their focus and let the All Blacks run in the winning try in the 77^th minute.

Then the Aussie cricketers lost the first test to Bangladesh by 20 runs.

Worse was to follow. Australia’s tennis number one, Nick Kygios, who was a finalist in the recent Cincinnati tournament, crashed out of the US Open being beaten in the second round, by the unseeded John Millman 6-3, 1-6, 6-4, 6-1.

How about football in Japan? No joy: the Socceroos lost 2-0 in their bid to qualify for the World Cup.

Well at least the netballers would save the day.

A certainty?

The Diamonds are ranked number one in world netball. Surely cleaning up the quad series tournament would be a formality. They were set to meet the Silver Ferns in the final game having disposed of South Africa and England earlier. The Kiwi had lost to the Roses.

An Australian victory was as sure a bet as the All Blacks beating the Wallabies.

But, as in Dunedin, the expected winners under-estimated the opposition. The Australians never recovered from a poor start and the Silver Ferns got home comfortably 57-47. They won the quad tournament as well.

Good times for Kiwi Sports teams

On this side of the Tasman the results have been pretty good.

As well as the rugby and netball victories, the All Whites beat the Solomon Island 6-1 and the canoeists, led by legend Lisa Carrington, picked up a hat-full of medals at the World Championships in the Czech Republic.

However we mustn’t rub it in!

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti Coast councillors have toured of one of Aotearoa's unique buildings, the heritage - listed Rotunda at the former Otaki Health Camp, the country’s first.

Jeremy Smith reports that the 105-year-old, eight-sided rotunda predates the Health Camp.

It wasn't actually built in Otaki, but was one of two built in Rotorua in 1915 as part of a military hospital, on the site of Rotorua’s present public hospital.

Later they were taken to Otaki for the opening of the health camp in 1931.

Full story in the main column (December 19).

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.