Category: Sport

Source: Radio New Zealand

NZ Rugby (NZR) has confirmed today that Dane Coles is the recently retired player on its appointments panel for the next All Black coach.

NZR had previously announced the five-person panel would include Board Chair David Kirk, 132-test All Black Keven Mealamu, interim CEO Steve Lancaster and former Black Sox coach Don Tricker.

Coles comes back into the All Black environment after retiring in 2023, having played 90 tests over 11 seasons.

The panel will find a successor to Scott Robertson, who was sensationally sacked as All Black coach last month.

Robertson guided the team to 20 wins in 27 tests over two seasons, however Kirk said that the NZR board had concerns over the trajectory of the team before next year’s World Cup in Australia.

The leading candidates appear to be Jamie Joseph and Dave Rennie, after the confirmations that Joe Schmidt will stay in his role as Wallaby coach, and Vern Cotter’s move to the Queensland Reds next season.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Freeskiers Lucas Ball and Ruby Star Andrews are thrilled to have just made it to the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.

Ball was a late addition to the New Zealand team and Andrews seriously wondered if she would recover in time for the Games after a tough injury.

After suffering a dislocated hip, the 21-year-old slopestyle and big air freestyle skier was racing the clock to be fit in time and described the last three months as the “craziest of her life”.

Andrews said it will be an emotional moment when she wears the New Zealand uniform during Saturday morning’s opening ceremony.

“It’s really, really cool. I’ve worked really hard to be here,” Andrews said.

“It’s really, really special, and I’m so proud to represent my country and do everyone proud.”

Andrews is one of the first New Zealand athletes in action at the Milan Winter Olympics, and despite being at her first Games, she’s a genuine medal chance.

“Yeah, feeling really good. Got to check out the course today, do a little inspection, just ride through the course and have a look at everything and got some ideas flowing, which was fun,” Andrews said.

“It looked like it was riding pretty good. I mean, we didn’t actually get to hit the course itself. We just got to look. So I’m really excited to hit it tomorrow.”

Andrews is enjoying being part of the New Zealand team and will have her family in Italy cheering her on.

“The team vibe that we have is so good and awesome. To have five people in slopestyle is really exciting. It’s a big team, so yeah, it’s going to be cool. My mum and my dad and my sister are coming, so I’m really excited to have them here and supporting me.”

For 17-year-old Lucas Ball, it was a nervous wait to get confirmation he was going to the Milano Cortina Games and the teenager is loving the Olympic experience so far.

“It’s awesome, really cool environment, sick people, sick venue, everything’s awesome,” Ball said.

He is impressed with the slopestyle course – “It’s super good, pretty big rails and features, but should be a lot of fun, very creative.”

Ball is staying in New Zealand House at the moment and is pretty chuffed with the accommodation.

“Good location. I get to sleep with Ben Barclay, we have a pretty nice little room, double bed. Good food, good people, it’s a sick set up.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Black Caps are set to have a full contingent to choose from as they wrap up final preparations for the T20 World Cup in India.

Batter Finn Allen has joined the squad following his stint in the Big Bash and Lockie Ferguson, Michael Bracewell and Jimmy Neesham are all available for selection following injuries.

Allen hit 80 and Ferguson bowled four overs in Sunday’s loss to India in the fifth and final T20 international.

Allen appears set to join Tim Seifert at the top of the order after he led the batting statistics playing for the Perth Scorchers in the Australian T20 league. He scored the most runs, had the third best strike rate and hit the most sixes (38).

Ferguson’s pace is important following the withdrawal of Adam Milne through injury.

All-rounder Bracewell missed the T20 series against India after picking up a calf injury during the one-day series, while Neesham has been ill.

Coach Rob Walter is happy with where his squad is at.

“Everyone has had enough T20 cricket to be ready for the start of the competition; even Jimmy who has been ill was very much involved in the Bangladesh Premier League right through to the finals,” Walter said.

“The real positive of the group is that they’re grounded and fairly level through most things. There is always an air of excitement when it comes to a World Cup, but the strength of the group is really a level outlook to the games.”

Bracewell will get the opportunity to prove his fitness in the warmup game against the United States in Navi Mumbai on Friday morning.

“It (calf injury) is tracking as it was supposed to, I have the warmup game to tick off the final things and it’s all looking pretty positive,” Bracewell said.

The USA were beaten by India in a warmup game this week, managing 200 as they chased a target of 239.

This will be the USA’s second appearance at a T20 World Cup.

In 2024 they beat Pakistan and qualified for the Super Eight stage of the tournament.

Black Caps T20 World Cup schedule

8 February: 6:30pm v Afghanistan, Chennai

10 February: 10:30pm v UAE, Chennai

15 February: 2:30am v South Africa, Ahmedabad

17 February: 6:30pm v Canada, Chennai.

The top two teams from the four groups advance to the Super 8 stage where they will be placed into two groups of four teams each, and will play three matches against one another. The top two teams in each group will advance to the knockout (semi-final) stage.

The final is scheduled for 9 March.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The husband and wife Olympic duo running a new world-class diving facility in Christchurch believe it’s a game-changer for the sport in New Zealand.

Since the opening of the long-awaited Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre in December, Christchurch now boasts New Zealand’s largest indoor aquatic and sport facility.

It also gave Canterbury a purpose-built diving space for the first time in years. Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, competitive diving in the region effectively disappeared due to the destruction of the city’s main diving facilities, specifically the QEII Park pool.

In partnership with Christchurch City Council, Sport Canterbury, and Sport New Zealand, Steve and Monique Gladding relocated to the city because of the potential of the Parakiore facility.

Steve Gladding coached at multiple Olympic Games with Great Britain, and the pair moved to Aotearoa in 2015 when Steve was appointed performance director for Diving New Zealand.

Together with wife Monique, an Olympic diver, they bring a wealth of global experience and believe Christchurch is now positioned to become a national hub for the sport.

The timing of the facility plays a major part in Diving New Zealand’s ‘DNA 2032’ programme, which focuses on long-term athlete development. The national body is targeting Brisbane 2032 as an Olympics where it can make a real impact.

“The amount of money that is currently going into Australian diving speaks to that as well, so the fact that we do have this facility now, it will definitely play into that and help assist the vision,” Monique said.

New Zealand has only had seven diving Olympians since the sport made its Olympic debut in 1904 but with world-class coaching, now coupled with a world-class facility, it’s hoped the country can develop more.

Anton Down-Jenkins, who competed at Tokyo 2020, was New Zealand’s last Olympic diver.

Born in South Africa, Monique competed in gymnastics before an injury curtailed that path and she started diving comparatively late. Around that time Steve moved to the United Kingdom, and unsurprisingly the pair met through the sport.

Monique was able to compete for Britain through her father’s ancestry.

She just missed out on qualifying for the 2004 and 2008 Olympics and a horrific accident 18 months out from the 2012 London Olympics threatened to derail her last shot.

During a competition in Russia, her head struck the concrete diving board, instantly knocking her unconscious before she plummeted 10 metres into the pool below.

“They had to rescue me from the bottom but all I can remember was when I came out, was thinking ‘okay how do I come back from this? What do I need to do to still make this dream come true?’.

“I’d been pushing after the Olympics, that was my third cycle, and everything had been going so well, I was kind of at the top of my game at that point. It was an awful time but probably made me stronger and I really had to think smart about those last few months before the games of what I could do to really make it count, because I could only train a limited amount so I had to be really smart in my approach,” Monique said.

Perseverance paid off when Monique qualified for the London Olympics where Steve was her coach. She retired soon after and got into coaching herself.

They initially moved to South Africa thinking they would settle there but when that didn’t quite work out, started looking at other options. That’s when Diving New Zealand pursued Steve.

“I had never been to New Zealand, Steve had been there doing a little bit of development work once before. It just sparked our interest and we thought maybe there’s an amazing opportunity to [do] development diving in a country that’s not so big at the moment and that was 12 years ago.”

Monique said there was still so much untapped potential in Aotearoa to develop elite divers.

“When we first got here we were in Auckland and there was really nothing about. Last year we got our first top seven in the world so we had two lads that went out to the World Championships and they got a top eight, which put us on the map. We’ve got some incredible juniors coming through and we’re only just getting started.”

Monique said a lack of a top world-class facility has held the sport back.

“We’ve been able to do what we can do with what we had but now we have this I think it’s just going to take it to the next level. I think it’s really going to open up some doors for people who are interested in other sports like parkour or tumbling or gymnastics, people who like to express themselves through artistic channels. Diving is another sport that they could be good at and I really think there is so much potential and we’ve already done so much and there’s still so much to do.”

Diving New Zealand actively recruits talent, focusing on students with a love for water and gymnastics through one of its school programmes.

The couple and their two children moved from Auckland to Christchurch last October to get the facility organised in the countdown to opening. Monique is the co-performance director of Canterbury Diving, along with Steve, who is still Diving New Zealand’s performance director.

Some of the features of the state-of-the-art space include harnesses above the platforms.

“It’s a system that allows athletes to learn harder dives with assistance, which is such a huge thing – that learning curve is much quicker. We also have very wide platforms, the only ones in the country, which means we can do syncro and hold international events, because we have the minimum requirements.”

Monique said it would put athletes on a level playing field with their international counterparts.

“We’ve also got the dry land facility, which is an essential requirement now if you’re wanting to go on a high performance pathway.

“We have the new fulcrums on the springboards, which are now a requirement at all the world events. We never had them in the country before this so it means divers can practice and train on the actual boards that they compete at internationally.”

The couple are looking forward to holding national camps at Parakiore this year and perhaps some of those divers will be at the Olympics in eight years.

Outside of high-performance development, Monique said Parakiore would be a home for community participation.

“For those who just love water and want to learn how to dive, and flip and be safe in the water, we want to see people build their deep-water confidence, given the role water plays in the Kiwi lifestyle.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Wānaka snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott is about to compete in her third Olympics at the age of just 24.

Sadowski-Synnott is a member of the 17-strong New Zealand team set to compete at the Winter Olympics in Italy, which starts on Friday.

She competed in her first Big Air World Cup in 2016 at the age of 15 and made her mark in 2017 with a World Championship silver medal in slopestyle.

A year later, she competed at the Pyeongchang Olympics, claiming a bronze medal in the big air.

In Beijing 2022, she made history as the first Kiwi to ever win a Winter Olympic gold medal when she won the snowboard slopestyle title. She followed that up just days later with a silver medal in the Big Air.

“It is such a privilege to be coming into these ones having won gold in 2022,” Sadowski-Synnott told RNZ.

“But the way I look at it is that it has been four years and I’m in a sport that the progression over a year changes so much.”

Following her 2022 Olympic Games success, she was named Halberg Supreme winner and went on to impress around the world before an ankle injury kept her off the slopes in 2024.

“The last four years have been a rollercoaster with the highs and lows, [the injury] re-lit the fire in my heart to keep working hard.

“I’m hoping I can carry the momentum of last year so that when we get to the Olympics, I can show off and try my best.”

Since the injury, Sadowski-Synnott worked her way back to the top, winning the 2025 slopestyle world title (her third) and last month winning silver at the Aspen X-Games.

“I’m not going to put too much pressure on it, but I’m really proud and grateful for the level I’m at and just really excited to show all the work and progress that I have made over the past four years. I just want to do my best and if that gets me… it gets me and so yeah just hope for the best.”

With three Olympic Games under her belt, she has been able to share some of her wisdom with her compatriots. The average age of her teammates is just 20.

“I’ve told my younger team-mates who are going to their first Olympics to just have fun and really enjoy the experience because it is really special. Just focus on what matters most, which is putting down the best performance you can because you’ve worked really hard to get here.”

Sadowski-Synnott will get her Olympic campaign underway on Monday 9 February, with qualifying in the women’s snowboard Big Air.

Snowboarding and free ski disciplines

BIG AIR

Involves a single jump of a ramp with competitors producing acrobatic moves which are judged on difficulty, execution, amplitude and landing. A qualification competition is used to find the finalists, who then have three jumps with the two highest scoring jumps combined to determine the rankings.

SLOPESTYLE

Athletes move through an obstacle course as they make their way down the slope. It includes rails, boxes and jumps with judging on progression, amplitude, variety, execution and difficulty. There are three runs in the finals with the highest scores determining the rankings.

HALFPIPE

Athletes ride the walls back and forth as they make their way down the course launching into the air to perform tricks. they are judged on progression, amplitude, variety, execution and difficulty.

There are two runs in qualification and three in the final with the single best run determining the rankings.

Terminology:

Rotation: The number of degrees a rider turns in the air (e.g. 1080, 1440, 1800).

Frontside/Backside: The direction of the spin.

Cork: A spin that flips off the vertical axis. A “triple cork” means the rider flips upside down three times while spinning.

Grab: Holding a specific part of the snowboard while in the air (e.g., Bloody Dracula, Chicken Salad, Indy, Mute, Stalefish).

Switch: Riding in the opposite direction of one’s natural stance.

Stomp: Landing a jump cleanly without sliding out or putting hands down.

Jib/Rail: Metal rails or boxes in the top section of a slopestyle course designed for sliding.

Pretzel: Spinning in one direction onto a rail and landing by spinning in the opposite direction off the rail.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

An alleged culture of sexism, favouritism and bullying has driven a top Kiwi boxer to walk away from an incredibly promising amateur career.

The Sport Integrity Commission has been investigating Boxing NZ, as originally reported by 1News, and its head coach Billy Meehan, who Commonwealth Games medalist Tasmyn Benny said killed her passion for the sport.

Described as a ‘boys club’ rife with verbal abuse, sexually inappropriate behaviour and misogyny, Benny said she was made to feel powerless and without a voice in the environment.

“You can’t really go to Boxing New Zealand because t’s all made of his family and friends. They’re all in the same circle.”

Benny said that as a coach, Meehan showed little interest in women’s boxing.

“We had two worlds, and he didn’t go to either, but he went to the men’s. I don’t think he takes it as seriously as the boys.”

Meehan has not responded to the allegations.

Benny said the level of misogyny was confronting.

“Certain other female athletes have had their ass slapped and certain things like that. It’s a boys club with the coaches joking about certain things. They ask us ‘what type of nipples we like on a guy?’ and just questions that probably shouldn’t be asked.”

Benny said she felt she had no choice but to leave the sport behind but she isn’t doing so without one more fight, saying she felt she had to speak up for future female fighters.

“I don’t want this to happen to any other boxers. I can just see in the future young teenage girls going into the sport and having to deal with this and they shouldn’t have to. I felt like I had to be quiet when I was in there. Like I just had to do what I’m told and be quiet, and I don’t think you should feel that way, you should feel supported.”

Benny said that coaches would indulge in heavy drinking during overseas trips.

“They’d come in drunk. That’s why we’d get asked inappropriate questions. A lot of people were uncomfortable. After dinner, I went to my room because I didn’t want to really be around it.”

She also said suggestive notes were left on doors, written by coaches, pretending to be fellow boxers.

The problematic behaviour was also brought into the gym.

“Every time someone wasn’t at training, they were spoken about behind their backs, he constantly degraded them about how shit they are for not toughening up. “

Benny did try to resolve things with Meehan.

“We sat down with him professionally and said, ‘look what you’re doing isn’t what we need at the moment.’ We tried to explain what we need out of him and our training, and we basically got told that we’re unfit and shit.”

After winning bronze at the Commonwealth Games in 2018, Benny said she noticed a shift at the organisation.

“All the management and coaching changed for New Zealand boxing and that’s when everything went downhill. Billy was in charge the whole time. The people that he sent on certain trips didn’t know how to do things that we need as coaches for women’s worlds. In India, we got sent with someone who wasn’t able to get into the ring, he physically couldn’t get up the stairs and so, we went in the ring with a random coach who hardly spoke English.

She said the “nail in the coffin” came during a trip to the Solomon Islands.

“The whole coaching crew just didn’t speak to me and another girl on the team the whole trip there. They basically just ignored us the whole time. And then right before our fight, because we went and did our own training with our home coach who was there with Fiji, they yelled at us for that right before we were supposed to hop in the ring.

“After I got out of the ring, I had wraps on, I asked them to cut them off and Billy told me to f*** off to Fiji. That was basically all he said to me the whole trip.”

She said she was beaten before stepping into the ring.

“I’m already nervous because this is the fight to make the Olympics and I should be getting told what to do, getting my confidence up rather than shut down.”

Despite her ordeal, Benny is determined to get back in the ring one day.

“I’ve actually started training again now, but I think I’m going to try go pro. I don’t want to be with the Boxing New Zealand Association. I took a few years off because of that. There was no point because I couldn’t go anywhere with them. So it was like, ‘what’s the point in training?'”

Meehan has been contacted for comment while the Integrity Commission has defended the delay in a resolution.

“While we do not believe it is appropriate for us to publicly discuss the investigation involving Boxing NZ, we are comfortable that our investigation team have acted appropriately and as promptly as can be reasonably expected, in all the circumstances that exist in this matter.”

Benny is clear on what that resolution should be.

“I hope that he is banned from being the coach. Basically they need to tear it down and build up the New Zealand boxing because we ain’t going to get any medals with how it’s now.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

An unfortunate training incident sidelined New Zealand Breakers forward Max Darling for weeks, left him with a metal plate in his face and searching for personalised protective gear to get back on court.

After copping a teammate’s elbow in his eye and fracturing his orbital, the 25-year-old Tall Black needed a mask he could wear for the remainder of the ANBL season.

Finding something fit for purpose – and his face – on short notice was not a straightforward task.

That is where MWDesign came to the rescue.

Founder Mike Williams and his team at the Hamilton and Tauranga-based design company were on their end of year break when the request from Breakers physio Rob Knight came through.

Knight had worked with MWDesign previously and knew that the company had the tools, including a laser scanner and a 3D printer, to create what Darling needed. Even though the company was more accustomed to doing work for a diverse range of projects, from playgrounds to geothermal measuring tools to retail items for mass manufacture that get shipped globally.

Williams called the mask a “fun project” that piqued his interest and he spent three days getting it right.

Before the mask, Williams had done two designs for hands for himself and a colleague who had broken digits.

“I broke my thumb a couple of years ago and the cast that got put on meant that I couldn’t use my mouse and I couldn’t do a lot of things. The doctors will probably hate me for this, but I chopped off the fibreglass cast, scanned my hand and made myself a nice little splint that was still supportive, but I could use the mouse and I could have a shower.

“That was as close as I got to mask building for basketballers.”

An injury-hit Breakers side needed Darling on the floor to help cover the minutes that starter Sam Menennga was playing before he suffered a season-ending wrist injury.

Darling is not the first ANBL player to get back on the court wearing a facial accessory after an orbital fracture.

Keanu Pinder wore a similar mask when playing for the Perth Wildcats in 2024 after a similar injury. In the same year in the NBA, Toronto Raptors swingman Scottie Barnes also wore a ‘Batman’ mask for a orbital fracture that did not require surgery.

Williams had seen examples of NBA masks that he said did not look “overly special” and that Darling’s was different and custom-designed from a glass-reinforced 3D print plastic.

After a description from Knight about the injury and the areas of Darling’s face that needed to be protected, Williams used a laser scanner to scan the player’s face.

“It did a really brilliant job of capturing all that detail on his face.

“It’s actually perfectly his face, I put it on and it was uncomfortable as hell for me because I have a different shaped face, but when he puts it on, it’s like nothing’s there.”

Williams spent time trying different thickness and how it was going to sit on Darling’s face “so it didn’t look silly”.

The harness behind the head was another consideration.

“You can imagine if he’s sprinting up and down the court, you don’t want this thing bobbling around on the face. We’ve got a little sweat headband part on the inside of it too. So, when he starts to sweat under heavy load in the game, it doesn’t run down in his eyes. So, there’s quite a lot of different considerations around the design of it but from the outside I suppose it looks pretty simple.

“It’s one of those complicated things that is really straightforward if you know how.

“I hope he keeps wearing it because he looks bad ass in it, it looks real cool, I like it.”

Williams said the company had not looked into doing much work for sports previously, but were now considering it.

“It’s not a big money spinner but at least to offer the service to get people out in the game and playing again that would be pretty cool.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Super Rugby Pacific’s new law tweaks aim to speed up play and reduce stoppages.
• Players will be getting fewer reps in key test-match scenarios like fielding kicks and positional play.
• This could create a disconnect between the style players experience for most of the year and the repetition-driven demands of international rugby.

Analysis – Super Rugby Pacific is back next weekend and will look a bit different, thanks to some new law changes. Designed to reduce stoppages, inspire positive play and – most importantly, simplify the viewing experience, they have been pretty well received by a public keen to see a repeat of last year’s highly entertaining competition.

Probably the most far obvious will be the new sanction for joining a ruck after the referee has called ‘use it’, which should mean the ball is cleared quicker. Accidental offsides and teams delaying playing the ball away from a ruck are now free kicks, so in turn here’s more leeway around taking quick taps.

One that probably won’t be seen often but will certainly have an impact is it will no longer be mandatory for the referee to issue a yellow or red card to a player on the defending team when awarding a penalty try. There seems to be an awful lot of guesswork around this at the moment in open play, with players carded being more unlucky than anything else, but the real positive is that it won’t result in a mess at scrum time.

A dominant attacking scrum on an opponent’s line that results in a penalty try also meant that a defensive side’s prop would get binned, therefore needing to be replaced at the next scrum. That in turn meant that another player would have to go off to reduce their numbers, if this happened late in a game it would mean rolling players back on who have already been subbed.

So not bad at all from the officials who have put all this together in order to get some free flowing rugby going.

The only issue, and it’s not a new one, is that this is all for Super Rugby Pacific only. Once July rolls around, those changes don’t apply for test matches and the effects of that may well be playing a part in why the All Blacks have struggled in the last few seasons.

It’s not that the players can’t snap back into playing a tighter game plan, they are professionals and should be able to do that easily. Beauden Barrett and Damian McKenzie have both shown that they can run the ball out of their 22 from February to June, then kick it more often than not when they’re in a black jersey.

But the problem isn’t at their end. Speeding the game up and presumably reducing kicking means players coming through at the other won’t be exposed to as many repetitions as their foreign counterparts. The average back three player won’t have had to field anywhere near as many bombs, track across the field chasing kicks, or simply position themselves on field as an English or South African of the same age. Meanwhile props won’t have as many scrums, halfbacks won’t box kick as often, and so on.

It’s offset somewhat by the fact that by the business end of Super Rugby is played in colder conditions, with more on the line, so therefore the gameplans will adjust accordingly. One look at last year’s final can attest to that, but the fact still remains that Super Rugby Pacific is the tier below a test rugby landscape that’s moved far closer to repetitive scenarios decided by fine margins than off the cuff play.

Again, that’s not new. It’s just that those fine margins seem to be far more in the favour of who the All Blacks are playing.

One thing is for sure, with Super Rugby Pacific, though; they’ve stayed committed to reducing the role of the TMO in general play, with the man upstairs only allowed to intervene unprompted if the referee has overlooked an act of serious foul play or some other massively obvious error when a team scores a try.

Which is bound to be popular and hopefully catches on in test rugby, because while we should all be mindful of how difficult the officials’ jobs are these days, no one likes watching them talk to each other all that much.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The All Blacks will open their 2027 Rugby World Cup campaign with a Pool A match against Chile in Perth on Saturday 2 October.

The All Blacks then take on hosts the Wallabies in Sydney the following Saturday, with their final pool game against Hong Kong China in Melbourne on Friday 15 October.

The All Blacks have never played Chile or Hong Kong China in a test.

In releasing the schedule, tournament organisers resisted the temptation to open the tournament with a clash between Bledisloe Cup rivals New Zealand and Australia, with the Wallabies kicking off the tournament against Hong Kong China in Perth on Friday 1 October.

The defending champion Springboks begin their World Cup against Italy in Adelaide on Sunday 3 October, before games against Georgia in Brisbane and Romania in Perth.

The Springboks, in Pool B, will be looking for an unprecedented third World Cup win in a row.

The draw also sets up a probable quarter-final between the All Blacks and Springboks.

Other major team match ups have Ireland and Scotland in Pool D, while England and Wales are both in Pool F.

The tournament will be the first in an expanded format, featuring six pools of four teams. The top two teams from each pool plus the four best third-placed teams will qualify for the knockout phase.

Australia will host the World Cup for the second time, after the 2003 edition in which the Wallabies went in as defending champions only to lose to England in the final.

To date, it is the only time a northern hemisphere side has won the World Cup.

The World Cup will take place in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Townsville and Newcastle. Sydney’s Stadium Australia will host the final.

All Blacks pool matches at 2027 Rugby World Cup:

All Blacks vs Chile – Perth – 2 October 2027 – 6:15pm NZT

All Blacks vs Australia – Sydney – 9 October 2027 – 7:10pm NZT

All Blacks vs Hong Kong China – 15 October 2027 – 7:15 NZT

Other match Match schedule highlights:

• 24 teams, 52 matches, 19 match days, 7 cities and 8 venues
• Opening match: Australia v Hong Kong China – 1 October, 2027, Perth Stadium
• Final: 13 November, Stadium Australia, Sydney
• Super Sunday (17 October): five matches played in a single day for the first time ever to deliver an exciting end to the pool phase: Italy v Georgia, Ireland v Uruguay, Scotland v Portugal, France v Samoa, South Africa v Romania.
• Knockout Drama: Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney will host the first-ever round of 16, followed by quarter-finals in Brisbane and Sydney, and then the semi-finals, bronze final, and the RWC Final at Stadium Australia on Saturday 13 November.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

It is no surprise that spin has been the feature of the Black Caps training sessions this week as they prepare for their opening game of the T20 World Cup.

Coming off a 4-1 loss to India in the recent T20 series, the New Zealand team moved to Navi Mumbai to continue their build-up for their World Cup clash with Afghanistan on Sunday.

Leg spinner Ish Sodhi was one of five slow bowling options in the New Zealand squad and he was likely to see action during the tournament.

The 33-year-old had played 137 T20 internationals since making his debut in 2014 and in this tournament he could become New Zealand’s most successful bowler in the format.

He sits on 162 scalps, just two behind Tim Southee.

Sodhi, who was the number one ranked T20 bowler in 2018, said they had taken a number of lessons from the recent India series.

“They (India) were amazing in their own home conditions,” Sodhi said.

“The wickets were really flat and the boundaries small and it might be a similar diet to what we have in this World Cup and so it was great for us to be exposed to those conditions.

“If we can maintain the intensity that we played that series in then hopefully it holds us in good stead for the tournament.”

Ten years ago Sodhi and fellow spinner Mitchell Santner made their T20 World Cup debuts in India. They both featured as two of the tournaments leading wicket-takers by taking ten each with Santner named in the tournament team.

With so much cricket played in India now, all the New Zealand players are familiar with conditions in the sub-continent and what to expect.

“At training today the boys wanted to face spinners and see what their boundary and single options were so it was really cool that everyone is training specifically for that.”

However, Sodhi said it was important that they remain adaptable.

New Zealand play the USA in a World Cup warmup game on Friday morning.

“They’re a niggly team with plenty of experience,” Sodhi said of the USA.

“Because they play in the MLC (Major League Cricket T20 competition) they’re exposed to some really high quality cricket.”

That game will again provide some valuable information on the local conditions ahead of their tournament opener against Afghanistan in Chennai on Sunday.

New Zealand and Afghanistan have only met each other twice in T20’s.

The Black Caps beat Afghanistan at the 2021 T20 World Cup, but were beaten by them at the 2024 tournament in the West Indies.

Afghanistan beat Scotland by 61 runs in a World Cup warmup game on Monday.

Black Caps T20 World Cup schedule

• 8 February: 6.30pm v Afghanistan, Chennai
• 10 February: 10.30pm v UAE, Chennai
• 15 February: 2.30am v South Africa, Ahmedabad
• 17 February: 6.30pm v Canada, Chennai

The top two teams from the four groups advance to the Super 8 stage where they will be placed into two groups of four teams each, and will play three matches against one another. The top two teams in each group will advance to the knockout (semi-final) stage.

The final was scheduled for March 9.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand