Latest - All Black Beauden Barrett will captain the Blues in their first Super Rugby Pacific game in Australia on Saturday.
Beauden Barrett. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
The Blues play Fijian Drua in Melbourne and coach Leon MacDonald said the team has drawn a line under the results in the New Zealand round, taken on board all of the positives from their efforts, and now looking forward to the challenge ahead.
All Black Nepo Laulala returns to the squad after serving his three week ban for dangerous play, as a replacement for Alex Hodgman who misses the match for a concussion assessment.
All Blacks Ofa Tuungafasi and captain Dalton Papalii are rested and replaced by another All Black in Karl Tu'inukuafe making his return after injury.
In a largely unchanged backline Roger Tuivasa-Sheck gets his second start and Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens, who played in the Pasifika Youth Cup for Fiji, gets his second start.
Covid hits Super Rugby again
The inaugural 'Super Round' of Super Rugby in Melbourne this weekend has been dealt a blow with the match between Western Force and Moana Pasifika called off because of an outbreak of COVID-19.
Photo: Photosport Ltd 2022
All six of the round 10 matches in the competition are scheduled to take place at Melbourne's Rectangular Stadium over the weekend, but a rash of COVID-19 cases in the Force squad has led to the postponement of Friday's second fixture.
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc with the southern hemisphere provincial competition, effectively bringing an end to the transcontinental Super Rugby competition which also involved South Africa and Argentina.
Plans for a fully integrated competition this season between New Zealand and Australian teams, as well as two new franchises representing the Pacific islands, were also impacted by travel restrictions arising from the pandemic.
Round 10 will be the first time this season when the New Zealand teams and Australia-based sides will compete against each other in trans-Tasman Sea clashes.
Moana Pasifika have already had a heavily disrupted inaugural season with three of their previous matches also postponed because of COVID-19 outbreaks, initially in their squad and then in that of the Wellington Hurricanes.
The match against the Force will be rescheduled at a later date, SANZAAR said.
-Reuters
Seifert hit by Covid again
Black Cap Tim Seifert has contracted Covid for the second time while playing in the Indian Premier League.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Seifert became Delhi Capitals' second overseas player to test positive prompting the organisers of the IPL to shift Friday's match from Pune to Mumbai.
Delhi had reported five positive cases on Tuesday and there was uncertainty around their game against Punjab Kings overnight.
However it was played with Delhi winning by nine wickets.
Delhi's Australian all-rounder Mitch Marsh has been admitted in a hospital in Mumbai and four members of their support staff are isolating at a facility outside the team hotel.
Seifert was stranded in India in May last year when the IPL was postponed.
Just hours before he was due to return home with other New Zealanders involved in the tournament he was told he had tested positive and had to stay until he was cleared to fly back.
-Reuters
Adams benched by Grizzlies
New Zealand basketball player Steven Adams can expect to spend more time on the bench in the Memphis Grizzlies NBA play-off series against Minnesota.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Adams failed to score in their opening game loss and yesterday played just three minutes as Memphis scored an emphatic 124-96 win in game two to level the series.
Again Adams failed to score or pull down any rebounds.
Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins says with Adams getting into foul trouble early and the way their bench was performing he decided to leave the centre on the bench.
Jenkins says Adams was fully supportive of the move with the Kiwi saying "whatever needs to be done to win."
Pollard retires
West Indies white-ball captain Kieron Pollard has announced his retirement from international cricket, calling time on a career which saw him feature more than 200 times across one-day and Twenty20 internationals.
Pollard, 34, played 123 ODIs and 101 T20s for West Indies since making his debut in 2007, scoring 4,275 runs and taking 97 wickets in total.
The Trinidadian all-rounder was part of the team that won the T20 World Cup in 2012. He led West Indies 61 times in the two formats, of which they won 25.
Pollard is currently playing for Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League and will feature for London Spirit in The Hundred later this year after being the first men's pick of the 2022 draft.
-Reuters
Man U sack scouts
Manchester United's chief scout, Jim Lawlor, and Marcel Bout, their head of global scouting, have both left the Premier League club.
Lawlor was promoted to United's chief scout in 2014 having initially been an analyst since 2005, while Bout was part of Louis van Gaal's setup at the club from 2014 and stayed on following the Dutch manager's departure.
United's recruitment record has come under much scrutiny of late, with the club languishing down in sixth in the Premier League standings, 22 points off leaders Liverpool, despite hundreds of millions of pounds spent on the current squad.
The club, who are yet to appoint a permanent head coach as successor to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer following the Norwegian's departure last November, are not only trailing in the top-four race this season, they are out of all cup competitions.
The 20-time English top-flight champions will finish this season trophyless for the fifth successive campaign, while it will be nine years since their last league triumph.
-Reuters
All Whites date set
New Zealand will face Costa Rica in an intercontinental World Cup qualifier in Doha, Qatar on June 14.
Liberato Cacace Photo: PHOTOSPORT
That will be Wednesday June 15th in New Zealand.
The All Whites took a big step towards qualifying for the World Cup finals for the first time since 2010 after progressing through Oceania's qualification with a 100% record.
They will face Costa Rica, who finished fourth in the CONCACAF qualifying standings and are 31st in the FIFA rankings to New Zealand's 101st.
The winner of the playoff will enter Group E, which features four-times champions Germany, 2010 winners Spain and Japan.
The other intercontinental play-off has either Australia or the UAE from Asia playing Peru from South America.
-Reuters
