The Air New Zealand Cup will come to a close on Saturday with Wellington and Caterbury battling out for the prestigious trophy.

Both teams did not meet in the latter stages of the tournament but most agree the two top teams have reached the final.

Auckland, who are the reigning champions left the tournament early thus we will see a new team crowned; though with Wellington who have lost 4 times in the last 5 finals they will want to make this match count in front of their home fans.

Wellington have a strong team with many of the All Black squad within though often in recent history turn out second best to Canterbury and Auckland.

There is much promise with Jane, Gear and Nonu on the back line all expecting to be picked for the New Zealand end of season tour.

The prediction for the final will be Canterbury winning by a small margin of no less than 8 points after some poor early performances for Wellington and though they had outstanding individual performances , unfortunately that will not win the final against such a strong contender.

Munster bounce back beating the Sharks 24-16 at Edgely Park on Sunday in the Heineken Cup.

With a crowd of over ten thousand, the European Champions were unable to deliver in the final quarter. Early on, the visitors conceded a penalty which unfortunately swerved off to the right of the posts.

Only a minute later, another penalty was laid out for the All Black McAllister who proved his substance scoring and making amends for the previous.
Earls and Dowling both realised that running was the only option feeding the ball to Mafi to prove his strength.

Munster, once again on the attack and with Warwick on the attack scored the first try of the game with a converted try from O’Gara.

The locals soon had to defend from a heavy attack though a decent pass from Mafi made room for Wallace to score an unconverted try.

The Sharks were left high and dry with a drop goal from O’gara after the the visitors showed their real strength of mind and lost the game.

The scorers:

For Sale Sharks:
Try: Schofield
Con: McAlister
Pens: McAlister 3

For Munster:
Tries: Warwick, Wallace
Cons: O’Gara
Pens: O’Gara 2
Drops: Warwick, O’Gara

The next Air New Zealand Cup Final will see Wellington vs Canterbury with Canterbury beating Hawke’s Bay 31-21 in the semi finals.

At half time the scores were level on 14-14 until the magpies threw in everything they had in the second half to claim victory. 

A couple of powerful tries for Canterbury in the last quarter finished any chances Hawke’s Bay had left.

Being the hot favourites, Canterbury stepped up the tempo where the visitors could not respond in time to save their title chances.

Unfortunately for the Hawke’s Bay backs, they were unable to produce any of the magical footing that was present in their last meeting and instead had Canterbury run all over them.

Berquist finished the game with a 100 per cent kicking record and now have Canterbury a chance to win their first piece of silverware for 4 years.

For Canterbury:
Tries: Ellis, Slade, Paterson, Read
Cons: Slade 4
Pen: Slade

For Hawke’s Bay:
Tries: Lowe 2, Evans
Cons: Berquist 3

Ryan Lamb, the Fly-Half for Gloucester is backing Glaucester to beat Cardiff at the Millenium Stadium on the weekend.

Lamb, who has played both excellently and abysmally this season is confident that the sixth pool will be a pivotal moment in the competition.

Kicking off the campaign, Gloucester were victorious over Biarritz, however realise they will need another strong display for the game this weekend.

Biarritz seem to have a stronger defece than Cardiff and with Gloucester’s styrength of play, Lamb believes they can break down the Cardiff defence.

The game will prove crucial and will determine the outcome of the group.

Both teams have a high level of players who are confident and creative and mostly Internationals themselves.

With a 30,000 crowd expected at the Millenium Stadium, Gloucester believe their will be a fair share of supporters.

The Heineken Cup matxh with Wasps and Magners League champions Leinsterand has been moved to the 17th January and will now be played at twickenham. 

This will prove crucial when determining who will qualify for the top position in the quarter finals. This will essentially give Wasp’s players a chance to make it the biggest game of the season.

With only 8,800 fans at Adams Park at the last Heineken Cup game, a larger stadium is needed particularly with Wasp’s High Wycombe only having a capacity of 10,000.

The Heineken Cup has been won by Wasps at England’s home stadium in 2004 and 2007 and even moving forward to win the Guinness premiership the same year.

This announcement is following on from the Stade Francais when they switched
the Heineken Cup match with Harlequins in December to the Stadium in Paris. Officials are confident they will attract a crowd of 80,000. 

Assistant Coach for the All Blacks, Wayne Smith is expecting both Ali Williams and Stephen Donald be included in the end of season tour for New Zealand - though McDonald will be left out of the squad due to injury.

After suffering concussion during new Zealands loss to the Springboks in Dunedin in July, missing the  Tri-Nations struggling with symptoms of fatigue and light headedness.

After being closely monitored by both the New Zealand doctor Deb Robinson and medical staff at Canterbury he has been in light training over the past few weeks. Although making decent progress, the Full Back will not be attending trips to Ireland, England or Hong Kong.

A contender who has impressed the Lions this season is Cory Jane; a commonwealth games gold medal winner from 2006 who could take up the number 15 slot.

The full squad for the All Blacks will be named on 26th October  after the Air New Zealand Cup final.

With fly-half Butch James kicking 18 points for Bath, they have their first Premiership victory under their belts at the Memorial Stadium for 10 years scoring three tries to two in the Derby.

The same year Bristol were relegated and beginning the campaign where they left the last having another defeat inturn, their seventh in a row.

With Lipman out due to a clash of heads in an earlier friendly and Crockett missing a fitness test with a broken ankle, Bath were force to have a couple of late changes the the starting line up.

Scoring the first try, Bristol opened the game within 3 minutes with Flanker Blowers taking a close range try after Arscott being tackled.

For Bath’s second try, Cheeseman went for a dash for the line though converted by James though Bristol still trying to come back.

Bristol defended heavily ruling out a bonus point for the visitors in the closing minutes though the campaign was now fully underway.

The Scorers:

For Bristol:
Tries: Blowers, Lemi
Cons: Jarvis 2
Pens: Jarvis 2

For Bath:
Tries: Maddock, Chessman, Faamatuainu
Cons: James 3
Pens: James 4

Also kicking off the Guinness Premiership, Harlequins could only just hang on to win 24-21 against the Saracens on Saturday at Twickenham.

Nick Evans who recently signed scored 11 of the 24 points to secure victory in the opening match with Strettle taking only 53 seconds to score his first try proving to Martin Johnson his strength on the field.

After being dropped from England’s Elite Player Squad on New Zealand’s tour, he needed less than a minute to show his prowess with the first try of the game kicking off the season with a bang.

The points kept coming from Evans and Monye from a try in the 2nd half holding off Saracens efforts.

A poor attempt to a late drop goal cost Saracens the game at Twickenham with Strettle being warned by the RFU being included in a kiss and tell story in New Zealand in the Sunday papers.

Unfortunately the Saracens could not manufacture a drop goal and settled for losing by just 3 points.

The scorers:

For Saracens:
Tries: Powell, De Kock
Cons: Jackson
Pens: Jackson 3
Drops:

For Harlequins:
Tries: Strettle, Monye
Cons: Evans
Pens: Evans 2, Luveniyali
Drop: Evans

Wasps bury the week’s interesting events to kick off the Heineken Cup beating Castres 25 - 10.

Both England first team players Josh Lewsey and Danny Cipriani provided a strong combination smashing the French visitors. Especially after coming to blows earlier that week when some punches were thrown at a training session.

Sending Lewsey over the line for the 3rd of Wasps tries, both celebrated with a spot of play fighting entertaining the crowd. the game was pretty much at a close at the 22 minute mark with Sackey and Voice scoring tries as well as Cipriani who scored a total of 10 points.

The incident from the week before became front page news as both Wasps coaches both knew what a flare up in training meant and saw that Cipriani would deliver.

Losing a man to the Sin bin Cipriani and Lewsey delivered a commanding performance seeing the french visitors to a heavy loss.

Scorers:

For London Wasps:
Tries: Sackey, Voyce, Lewsey
Cons: Cipriani 2
Pens: Cipriani 2

For Castres:
Try: Nallet
Pen: McIntyre 2

It has been confirmed that head coach for the Leicester Tigers, Heyneke Meyer has signed up Winger Scott Hamilton from New Zealand for an astonishing 2 year deal.

Hamilton, who himself has won the Ranfurly Shield twice as well as a super Rugby title with the Crusaders is cannot wait to show off the kiwi’s skills once he has arrived at Welford Road.

Stating that he is both an amazing player who often eases in the position of Full back is known as a very proffessional player, a ‘great guy’ and a major asset to any team he plays for.

Once reunited with a former team mate from the Crusaders Aaron Mauger, Hamilton will be missed as he was thought of as a backbone to the team and yet had to move on.

Leicester Tigers begin a campaign this weekend with the Ospreys.