Subject: [NT] News

Got through the week without anymore injuries. :)

Form update was mixed. Bodger and Taylor were winners. Hird back down to tragic, Kelly slipped a little more. All in all, team form is not very impressive at the moment.

The real Watts is in divine form - put him up front instead of that lousy Bodger.

Well it wont be very hard to beat his performance on saturday :P

I'm happy to see Bodger's form improvement for my crucial matches against annoying little brother :D

I'm not obsessed with rankings, but am certainly cognizant of them. A good ranking can make WC life alot easier.

Thanks to some easy competition, the squad is up 100 rank points and 7 positions in the past 3 weeks - now #34.

I think a reasonable, two pronged goal for the season would be:
- crack the top 30
- close the gap on Australia (currently #27)

i dont like Australia's way of gaining rankings, they were picking on teams weaker than them almost every match. Even against poland they played a weaker team and managed to beat them (a good accomplishment though) so gained a lot of points from that..

I'm not really obsessed with ranking points myself, but increased ranking is a sign of a good manager (beating teams) ;)

I know what you are saying. :) When I managed Canada, I always tried to play friendlies with the team(s) directly ahead in the rankings (didn't always work out, but that was the plan). Gave a sense of where the team stood, and some satisfaction in "earning" the position.

I tried to take a similar approach arranging friendlies for New Zealand, though I will admit there is the odd "soft" match mixed in.

One knock on the weekend - Robert Smith. Wasn't in the plans the next couple of weeks. Won't miss much training.

Nothing really note-worthy from the form update.

:( yes, 16 days out. I'll do stamina so he won't miss training.

He won't get any training at all unless he is slightly injured, even with stamina.

i know but what I want to say is that I have a planning and I will modify it doing stamina till he got recovered so instead of losing one week of pace he will lose a week of stamina (next week i'll see if he can recover and if not maybe I'll do another one of stamina...were in my plans to do two weeks because I've got to much young players with not good stamina).

But thanks crack...

Alves took a knock today - out 25 days. Not sure he was the best back up anyway given where his form was.

If Barhilo's theory holds, his form will jump while he lies on his back - if that's the case, the knock could be a good thing. :)

i dunno whether it only applies to my team or not :P Hird went down a ton after he was injured, as i'm pretty sure you know. ;)

Seems to be working - Alves was up 3 levels of form today. :)

Not a great update - a number of players slipped. Kelly and Richards were a couple that went the right direction. It would help a great deal if these two would return to positive form.

We've reached the halfway point. Thought a few stats were in order. Week 0 - Week 7

Caps
(first number is the total, number in brackets is Q-matches only, leaders italicized)

Atkinson 4 (4)
Bodger 7 (5)
D. Chadwick 4 (2)
J. Chadwick 6 (4)
Dabner 1 (0)
Dawkins 6 (4)
Edwards 5 (3)
B. Gilbert 6 (4)
M. Gilbert 1 (0)
Harris 6 (5)
Hawkey 1 (0)
Herbert 1 (0)
Hird 5 (5)
Kelly 7 (5)
Kilkenny 5 (3)
Matthews 2 (2)
Morcombe 1 (0)
Pereto 1 (0)
Pollock 1 (0)
Pritchett 3 (1)
Richards 6 (3)
Robben 3 (3)
Root 3 (2)
Roza 5 (5)
Sansom 1 (0)
R. Smith 1 (0)
Taylor 8 (5)
Tomlinson 1 (1)
Watts 5 (2)

Scoring
Goals ... Shots ... %

Bodger 7 ... 29 ... 24%
Hird 6 ... 17 ... 29%
Roza 6 ... 13 ... 46%
Gilbert 2 ... 19 ... 10%
D. Chadwick 2 ... 19 ... 10%
Hawkey 2 ... 3 ... 66%
Dawkins 1 ... 1 ... 100%
Kelly 1 ... 1 ... 100%

Assists

Atkinson 3
B. Gilbert 3
Hird 3
Bodger 1
D. Chadwick 1
Kelly 1
Tomlinson 1
Matthews 1
Herbert 1

Cards
Yellow ... Red

Bodger 2
Kelly 1
D. Chadwick 1
Root 1
Edwards 1
(edited)

Impressive :)

You've missed out NZs best player from that list!