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September 18, 2025 • 10 mins

Nick is joined for the Friday Sport Kickoff by Jason Pine and Adam Cooper, who look ahead to the Black Ferns' Rugby World Cup semifinal against Canada on Saturday.

They also discussed the fallout from last week's All Blacks loss to South Africa, and whether the return of some top players will salvage the Wellington Lions' NPC season.

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Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talk said B getting you set for your
sporting weekend. It's the Wellington Mornings Friday Sport Kickoff on
news Talk seed B.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's time for Friday sports kickoff with weekends sports hosts
Jason Pine.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Good morning, Jason, Good morning, Nick. Hey you doing good?

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Thank you very good?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Are you looking well? All Sports Breakfast hosts Adam Cooper,
who's also been working for the last month, last day
to Day, no, last Friday to Day, got a couple
more days putting our show together.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Well neck or a little bit stress? Do I look
well too?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Oh? You look fantastic. Well have you been working with
someone that doesn't take a lot of stress? So you'll
be right, it, says Pidy, laughing. Blackford's take on Canada
tomorrow piety in the World Cup semi finals. I've been
following this a little bit. The times aren't great for me,
but I'm now starting to get excited.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah, six o'clock tomorrow morning's actually quite a friendly time
compared to some of the one thirty in the mornings.
They have been hard to get up for. But yeah,
tomorrow morning, but a breakfast time semi final Rugby. Black
Ferns have looked good across the tournament, but this is
where it actually starts. Canada are a good team. We
drew with them earlier this year, they beat us last year.
I'd say we would be slight favorites going in a

(01:31):
couple of little niggly injuries for the Black Ferns. Georgia Miller,
who's been a bit of a star since coming across
from the seven's program, won't play in this game. Her
injury is unspecified, so hopefully it might' be sometime.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
It was all a bit weird. Yeah, I mean, I
don't this is an age of professional sport. I've never
ever ever seen that before. Not talking about it, yeah,
I won't say anything about it.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Which I guess leads you to fill a vacuum with
things that aren't actually there, which they could have just said, hey,
she's spoiled a hamstring or whatever it was. Maybe they
want to maybe they feel like she's going to be
out for the final. We don't want to say that yet.
I don't know. Oh okay, but what I hope is
that it's something that will not rule her out of
the final. She's not there tomorrow morning. Canada, like I say,
are a good team, but New Zealand are too, and

(02:13):
I've enjoyed watching them with their very exciting outside backs. Look,
I feel like we're on a collision course for a
repeat of the last final, which is blackfann Z England.
We all know what a massive occasion that was at
Eden Park back into twenty twenty two. So I think
we're headed for the same thing next weekend and twicken
and when. Because England are in the other semi final
against France, they should win that. Okay, So yeah, New

(02:35):
Zealand England maybe next week, but let's get past Canada
first coops.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Listening to Tooey, which I have been, she's been my
correspondent over there, she's been saying that we've had a
pretty light, easy run through, have we.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Well, that's just the nature of women's rugby, right, And
I guess when you look at that, you know, when
you think of all Blacks World Cup campaigns as well,
you would generally say, unless you get quite an unlucky
drawer of the pool, Generally, pool games are the ones
where the heavyweights of rugby aren't tested. I mean, there's
always that chance you can be rexed buck. As we know,
it was a pretty convince quarter final win. So you'd

(03:08):
have to say, looking Canada, who are ranked very well
in the world rankings, right behind New Zealand, this is
undoubtedly their biggest test probably of this rugby year, to
be honest, even even leading up to the World Cup too.
So yeah, it's going to be a really interesting game.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Canada is just one of these countries that, on the
back of putting money into sevens over the last ten
years since it's been an Olympic sport, that has culminated
in a very strong fifteens campaign. They've now got players
who female players have been playing rugby since they were
at school and gone up through a system that's had
a lot of money put into it. And do you
know what this Canada Canadian team did. They did crowdfunding.

(03:44):
They said to the Canadian people, they said, we want
to make ourselves World rugby champions, can you help us out?
And they raised over a million dollars from public crowdfunding
to help fund this campaign. So they've got a really
good story behind them and I think it's going to
be a very tight game tomorrow. But New Zealand probably
just with the edge.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
On the score. Just on Canada too, sorry that their
scores on the tournament. They beat Fiji sixty five seven,
Wales forty two nil, Scotland forty points to nineteen, and
beat Australia forty six points to five in their quarter finals.
A good team. It's good team.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
So dollar sixty six for the for the girls, isn't
that great? I thought I was. I thought it was
a good little money in it for me.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
Well, I suppose we'll find out about eight o'clock tomorrow morning.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, you're the guy that tells me the good bets.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Is that a good bet?

Speaker 2 (04:27):
A dollar sixty six?

Speaker 4 (04:28):
Well, I think it is.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, I think it is.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
It's a dollar riach way. That's a dollar riach way
at Trenton. That one is all right, let's talk about
the All Blacks. We can't. I can't even tho ite
no game this weekend. I mean, I was not listening
to your show on Sunday, Piney, but I would have
thought that you would have had soorry is by the
time you did you three hours?

Speaker 4 (04:50):
Yeah, plenty of feedback. You know, when you suffer your
biggest ever test defeat. There is going to be a reaction,
and I guess the reaction now we're most interested in
is what reaction we get from the All Blacks next
Saturday and their Blood Slow Cup test up at Eden
Park against Australia. Look, we're guaranteed a reac action of
some sort. And I get the feeling that you know that,

(05:11):
given that they just took that massive hiding, plus the
ed and Park records on the line, that the All
Blacks will get up for next Saturday. But then you
think to yourself, do they need an occasion to get
up for it? Shouldn't playing for the All Blacks be
an occasion every time. Look, I don't think we need
to relitigate what happened last Saturday anymore. There's been, you know,
millions of words spoken written about it. But our response

(05:33):
is what we're after and I think we will get
one next Saturday.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
And Coeps me and you have talked privately about this.
I'm not going to suggest that I tell you say
what you think, but I mean, this is almost like
a must win game. If there is such a thing
as a must win game for the All Blacks, this
is it.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, totally, And they have rebounded before I mean, you
look at look at some of the results this year.
They came back from that Argentina defeat and Buenos Aires
and you know, just absolutely smashed South Africa for the
best part of eden Park and produce one of their
best performances, and then that was backed up by one
of the worst performances. So I mean, yes, a lost
next week at eden Park would be thoroughly disappointing and
I think put a lot of pressure on not just

(06:13):
Scott Robertson, but I think the coaching team. You know,
who's around him, who is you know, are these players
getting proper, proper advice, proper motivation, because you know, I
was sitting in the stands there last Saturday and it
genuinely look when you look around the park and there's
a bit of a menum went in the favor of
the spring Box, it looks like they just gave up
and shrugged, shrugged their shoulders and didn't feel like they
wanted to or needed to put in any effort when

(06:35):
maybe the scoreline was not in their favor. So I
think that's what we need, and Eden Park's going to
go a long way as to whether you know, the
status quo is okay or whether there needs to be
some tingering?

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Can I just tell you both? And I'm happy for
you to respond to my comment that I had a
lot of feedback over the this week about the assistance.
You know, they said the previous week Wayne Smith was
in the in the box and like, there's no the professor.
We can't argue, we can't doubt that. But there's questions
now over whether the team Scott Robinson is the right

(07:09):
coaching team.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
See, I'm not sure how you tell. How do you
tell what is something that is the responsibility of Scott Hansen,
Jason Ryan, Tamothy Ellison, Jason holland Bryn Evans and what
is the responsibility of Scott Robertson. For people to say, oh, well,
it's the assistance, I feel like I feel like after
a loss people use a scattergun approach to try and

(07:31):
find where they should place their blame. Everybody is in
the gun, from the coaches, the assistants, the players, the
captain jeep as I held. People say it's because they
practice the harker too much. You know, every single.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Archie mccaugh, every time Richie McCaw turns up, they lose.
Apparently it was another one that came up.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
Yeah, So look, I what is what is fact? What
is fact is that this is an inexperienced international coaching
team TEA. It is and that's that's just fact. Because
they haven't They've only been together since the beginning of
last year. So they are still finding their feet. It's
just how long we allow them to because we know
Igan Foster went through that bad twenty twenty two, got

(08:11):
rid of two of his assistants and it made a difference.
So look, I don't think we're throwing the baby out
with the bath water just yet, but scrutiny is on
everybody in that environment.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Lions are playing Southland at Jerry Collins Park this weekend.
There's something that really frustrates me about this team COEPS.
I mean, come on, there's enough talent there. There's enough
couple of all black guys come back at every week.
There's got to be more talent than we see now.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Of the results should have been better, there's no doubt
about that. They should have had a better season than
they've had. They've they've blown some games, and you know,
I think back to some of the games that I've
sat down and watched in their entirety this year, like
Hawk's Bay for example, just very disappointing. And they have
had these all Blacks coming and out and are disruptive.
Well that's the thing. It does make you wonder does
that cause more harm than good because you've got players

(08:59):
shuffling in and out making way for them, you know,
clearly under instruction from all Blacks coaches in terms of
minutes and other positional decisions around the team as well.
So yeah, it might be a bit disruptive, but you
can't say that bringing Kyle Preston, Reuben Love, Peter Larkeye
back into the team tomorrow is a bad thing because
I think if if there was going to be a
way that the Wellington team can get back into the
playoff zone, they will win outside to that top eight

(09:20):
playoff roum. At the moment, it's with those guys. So yeah,
disappointing overall, especially on the back of coming in as
reigning champions this year. They should have backed up a
little bit better than tenth where they are now.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Piney, I just want to quickly ask you, because we
talked about it during the weekend, I will come to
you on this coops. I've only got a minute. But
will we see in Wellington over the next couple of
years big Test matches here? Because with the christ Church
Stadium and Eden Park? Will we see South Africa or
Australia here next year or the year after?

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Well, we won't see South Africa here next year because
they're not coming because we're going there on tour. But no,
the point stands will we in the years moving forward?
I think it's a contestable process, absolute contestable process. I
feel like christ Church will get a Test match every
year now for probably the next decade or more, and
they deserve it, they've been without it for so long.
I feel like Dunedin's a great test city for July

(10:09):
Test matches because it's cold and it's got a roof.
So Wellington is up against the likes of Hamilton, Den
Partsler was going to get a test right. We only
have four or five home tests every year, so Eden
Park might get two, christ Jach might want a couple,
Hamilton or want one other places like New Plymouth, Nelson
o the hats in the Ring. Wellington's in a contestable process.
I think we will still have Test matches here, but Yeah.

(10:32):
What I'm hearing is, I'll give you a little tip
that I heard as we had a blendslow cup test
in October next year here here in Wellington.

Speaker 5 (10:39):
Whoa, you heard it first? You heard it first, Piety,
I love you, thank you, thank you. October here we
heard it first. On well Inton Mornings Jason Piede, I
beat my House on Jason Pine.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills. Listen live
to news talks It'd Be Wellington from nine to am
wee days, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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