rugby league

On March 10th 1995 a New Zealand rugby league legacy was born. The Warriors make history running through a lit Mount Smart Stadium tunnel for the very first time.

Among those who ran out on that historic day was a 23-year-old Stephen Kearney.

Now 23 years on, the team he now coaches will begin their season on the exact same date in Perth with an objective to get the club back to winning ways.

"Certainly the hard work that the boys have put in during the preseason is about putting it all together for round one." says Stephen Kearney.

This isn’t your typical rugby league bad boy story. Suli never breached the NRL’s code of conduct. There was no wild bender. No off-field misdemeanour. He’s a good kid.

But to put it simply, his heart just wasn’t in it. He lacked the desire to uphold standards required to play in the NRL and now finds himself on the brink of being lost to the game for good despite enormous talent.

When he was sent packing from the Wests Tigers just a month ago, the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs did their due diligence. They had heard the stories.

New Zealand Rugby League has received a draft copy of the review which will be presented to the board at the end of the month.

The Kiwis failed to make the semi finals of the tournament, beaten by Tonga in pool play and then eliminated by Fiji in the quarterfinals.

In a statement New Zealand Rugby League chair Reon Edwards said the panel's findings will be made public early in March 2018, however the Board has agreed to make two immediate changes.

Wing Savea appeared in the final Test against the British and Irish Lions on July 8 but was omitted by Steve Hansen for the Rugby Championship and the November internationals.

The 27-year-old has scored 46 tries in 54 Test appearances for the All Blacks – just four away from surpassing Douglas Howlett as the country's most prolific player.

Savea is contracted with New Zealand Rugby until the end of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, though he is seemingly open to switching codes with his place in the national team uncertain.

Damon Salesa, an associate professor of Pacific Studies at Auckland University, said rugby should have more Pacific people involved in its decision-making.

Fifty years ago there were 56,000 people described as Pacific living in New Zealand but by 2013 that figure had increased to almost 300,000.

In Auckland, more than one in four babies is Pasifika.

During the recent Rugby League World Cup, two Pacific nations, Tonga and Fiji, made the semi-finals, while the Kiwis missed out.

Six nations will compete during a three-match festival at Campbelltown Stadium on June 23. Tonga, Samoa, Lebanon and Papua New Guinea will be joined by two further teams to be confirmed in the coming weeks.

Tonga sealed their second win in the tournament against Samoa on Saturday night at a packed-out FMG Stadium in Hamilton.

The stadium was a sea of colours as fans showed up to sing, cheer and dance for their Pacific teams. 

Woolf says the experience was one of a kind and it proves that Pacific teams are worth the investment.

"The first step I think is putting on more games. We'd love to play Samoa every year and I know they'd love to play us every year and I'm sure the fans would love to see that as well."

In an otherwise closely contested encounter, Samoa's sloppy ball control inside their own 20-metre zone gave Tonga a free pass to set up camp in attacking territory on a number of occasions, while four of their five tries came directly after Samoan handling errors deep in their own territory.

It contributed to Samoa finishing the match on the wrong end of a lopsided possession count, and post-match coach Matt Parish was fuming at his side's self-capitulation.  

With a 32-18 win over Samoa on Saturday night, Tonga made it two wins from two at the tournament and assured themselves of advancing beyond the group stage for the first time in five attempts dating back to 1995.

The victory in front of over 18,000 fans at Waikato Stadium was also just the second time Tonga have tasted victory over their Pacific neighbours in a rugby league Test match, with coach Kristian Woolf happy for his men to celebrate before re-focussing for their final pool game against New Zealand.

"To be fair, that's not a bad crowd in Ireland," says captain Liam Finn.

Finn may or may not surpass Bob Beswick – absent from this tour as his wife is expecting – as Ireland's most capped player during this World Cup tour, with the uncertainty due to the fact that he believes he has more than Beswick's 25 Irish caps already.

"Who's got more? Bob Beswick? I'm sure I've got more," says Finn, who on a number of websites is credited with 24 international caps.