Thanks For All Your Support

Hi all,

Thanks from the NZ Paddle Ferns for all your support. Unfortunately it has been a very disappointing day here in Canada. We had a very strong game against GB being the first to score. GB came back quickly to score the equalizer. We pushed through again with great attack to be up once more. A foul on us saw GB again equalize with a free shot. With about 5 seconds to go the scores were tied at 2 all, GB got the ball back and on a fast break shot a long shot which put them one up at half time. The second half remained scoreless and on the full time whistle GB won 3-2. An extremely disappointing result for the NZ girls who played their hearts out on the water. The match could easily have gone either way.

The bronze playoff was between NZ and France. NZ went out strong scoring the first goal. Unfortuately the French quickly scored an equaliser. The French made the most of their fast break opportunities and scored several goals. Half time score was 5-1. NZ fought back in the second half scoring two more goals, but it wasn't quite enough with the final score 7-3.

A rather sad and disappointing day for the Paddle Ferns, but what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. The girls have qualified a team for the World Games which is being held in Chinese Taipei in July 2009. The six teams that have qualified are Great Britain, Germany, France, New Zealand, Australia and Chinese Taipei. New Zealand will return with a vengence in 2009 and again make their mark on the world. Kia Kaha!

Thanks again to everyone for all your support, we really appreciated it!

Day Three Results

Day Three has been a cracker here in Canada with both the weather and the polo.

The Paddle Ferns played against the Netherlands this morning winning 3-2 and then Spain in the afternoon winning 5-1. After a loss 3-0 to France yesterday this put us 2nd in our pool. We now play Great Britain tomorrow morning in the semi final! Exciting stuff!

Day One Results

Both teams have had a good day at the office today.

Paddle Ferns v Iran 5-3 WIN
Paddle Ferns v Italy 2-1 WIN

Paddle Ferns >


Paddle Blacks v Belgium 6-2 WIN
Paddle Blacks v Japan 6-3 WIN
Paddle Blacks v Great Britain 3-3 DRAW

Carl Duncan (NZ) charging against Nick Archer (GB) >
NZ Paddle Ferns and Paddle Blacks >
Tomorrow the Paddle Ferns meet Canada in final pool play in the morning. In the afternoon the girls depending on their pool placing will play off the 2nd placed team in one of the other pools.

Opening Ceremony

The pitches are up, the teams are here, and the worlds is ready to begin!

Last night we attended the official World Championships opening ceremony. All the teams accumulated in the athletes area before marching team by team into the amphitheater for the opening. James Mitchell (Flag Bearer) and Tania Perrett lead the New Zealand teams in the march. The athletes were welcomed by the International Canoe Federation (ICF) members and entertained by the Yellow Ribbon Dancers. The dancers were an aboriginal group performing cultural dances.

Both teams are feeling pumped and ready for today's first round of games. The Paddle Ferns meet Iran (12.30pm) and Italy (3.30pm) today while the Paddle Blacks meet Belgium (12pm), Japan (3pm) and Great Britain (6pm). (Canadian Time).

We will post results for both teams tonight!

A big shout out to all our Great Britain supporters!

Edmonton

For our rest days while waiting for our boats to arrive from Europe we were able to explore the West Edmonton Mall. One word sums it up.... ENORMOUS! It has a complete theme park, a water park with a beach and hydro slides, a couple of mini golf parks and an underwater world with submarines. And on top of that there's the shops!

Rundle Park >

We've had some entertaining moments since arriving in Canada, with the big one being Becks bringing the Thury Harcourt Club key with her from France to Canada! The boys also showed their excellent sense of smell for the shopping mall by taking us in completely the wrong direction. Apparently the GPS told them to go that way! Also we've had some fun times navigating around the underground University tunnels. The tunnels connect all the buildings together because it gets so cold here in winter you don't want to go outside. Try -50 degrees Celsius for a cold winters day!

Our boats arrived Friday morning, a little later than planned but they arrived nonetheless and all intact. Firstly we must say that there has definitely been a change in the weather! We have finally been able to train in the sun, and boy is it nice! We have been training at the practice pitches at Rundle Park. Today we had some excellent training games against the Germans and the USA. Tonight we hope to head to a real live baseball game! Very exciting!

NZ Boys at Rundle Park >

The hire vehicles have been a point of entertainment so far. The GMC truck we have is massive and sooo grunty. Both Gibbo and Tam just love putting their foot down! Looking at all the vehicles on the road just proves that Canadian's/American's love everything on a grand scale. All the cars and trucks are huge. We even saw a stretch ute today! Crazy!

Tam has been doing a great job of feeding us here in Canada, with some lasagna and roast chicken going down a treat the last couple of nights. Ali got special privileges at last nights dinner and was allowed to use the tea towel for a bib to avoid dirtying her pristine white NZ t-shirt!

Ali and her special bib>

We have more training planned for tomorrow and the next few days. Everyone appears to be getting very excited now with the games getting so close. Apparently our pool play may be down a number with Iran possibly not being able to get visas into Canada. So it'll be interesting to see what happens there.

Well that’s all from us for now, more when it happens.

Paris to Canada

Monday morning (French National Day) we were up early and on the water for a session before we packed up everything and headed for Paris. We arrived at the Comfort Hotel with out drama and enjoyed the experience of having a real bed and a good hot shower. Unfortunately the shower and bed didn't quite live up to what we had imagined, but never the less they were better than army stretchers! Liv, Tans and Jo headed out to the center of Paris to enjoy the French National Day celebrations, while everyone else went to bed. They saw some amazing fireworks with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop. The Eiffel Tower even sparkled blue, which was fantastic.

Tuesday morning we were up at the crack of dawn and quickly loaded the boats and had some breaky before heading to the airport to drop the boats off at Air Canada Cargo. We unloaded everything at the airport, grabbed ourselves some trolleys and headed to the Air Canada check in while Tam and Gibbo took our trusty Peugeot vehicles back.

Becks and Ali were treated to luxury and upgraded to Executive First Class for the trip from Paris to Toronto, while the rest of us had some fun back in cattle class! Toni had an interesting meal, with it still being frozen when served to her, while Liv was given fish when she had specifically requested a special non fish meal! Other than those little events the plane ride was good and we arrived safely in Toronto to get our next flight to Edmonton. We all grabbed some dinner and boarded the plane for the four-hour trip to Edmonton. After a touch of rearranging with some kind Canadians we were all able to sit together. Arriving in Edmonton we were introduced to our awesome meaty big cars and headed to the University of Alberta to find our accommodation. After venturing to the top of the wrong building and trying to get in the wrong rooms, we finally found the correct building we were supposed to be in and unpacked and relaxed! Sleeping in real beds was a real treat and the showers were hot and powerful! We are staying in one of the many Uni hostels on the 9th floor. We have three wings, so the NZ Women's and Men's teams are all together and our supporters will fill the 3rd wing when they arrive.

Today we started with a sleep in, then went running in a thunder and lightening storm, which was very exciting. The storms are incredible here, lasting for a good two or so hours! We are all just chilling this afternoon enjoying a well-deserved rest. We are all just about to head out to visit the huge big Edmonton mall this afternoon. Apparently its so big there is a roller coaster in the middle of it! Rather exciting!

More news when it happens! :-)

Paddle Ferns Treated To A 6 Course French Lunch

Coinciding with Tam's birthday, the friendly baker came up trumps when he served us up a 6-course lunch just outside his bakery in a wee tent to keep the rain off us. It was a delicious meal. We were also introduced to French cider and had a wee taste of apple brandy, which was extremely potent! It's what the French have in between the courses to allow them to eat more! To thank the Thury Harcourt Club and the baker we gave them a signed photo of the team. The baker snuck away and scanned our picture and printed it onto edible paper, which he then stuck on to a cake for Tam's birthday! He even put a very cool candle on the cake, which was like a firework! The cake tasted amazing! We also got treated to some of the most amazing Brie cheese. It was gooey and so flavorsome. Truly incredible, we felt like we were eating it like ice cream! The baker took us for a wee tour around his bakery. He showed us the cool machine that makes the baguette and explained that they cook slowly by starting them at a low heat and then moving them up levels to more and more heat. When lunch finally finished it was getting late so we jetted home with our full bellies and jumped on the lake for a training session before the sun went down.

More From Thury Harcourt

Well the weather has somewhat not been what we had hoped for. It's rather like English weather here, four seasons in one day. We've managed to get a heap of washing done which has been great; nothing beats the feeling of freshly cleaned clothes after a week or so in dirty ones! Also with ten peoples washing to hang up it requires a lot of clever clothesline designing!

We have played against the Thury Harcourt club team while we are here on the pitch that they held the 2007 European Championships on. Its amazing, with solid metal frames which have been dug into the ground. According to photos we saw, they had to drain the lake and then went to play with some diggers and other exciting equipment to put three sets of goals in.

We have a lovely baker friend who comes to visit us every morning with a big brown bag filled with delicious fresh baguettes and a loaf of bread. While Tam has been feeding us extremely well with her one pot wonders!

Today is Tam's Birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY Tam! Age...undisclosed.

Tomorrow we depart Thury Harcourt for Paris. We get the luxury of staying a night in a Paris hotel before getting up at the crack of dawn to no doubt put the roof racks back on the van and load the boats up to be at the airport before 7am. We then fly out to Canada to begin the last stage of our Worlds build up!

More when it happens!

Hull to Thury Harcourt

A long trip from England saw us arrive in Canterbury on Monday evening. We stayed at the Canterbury YHA that had the best power showers we've all seen since leaving home! A big treat from rugby clubroom and kayak club showers!

Tuesday morning we hit the road for a quick trip down to Dover to catch the ferry back to Calais in France. Tam went a lovely shade of green on the ferry ride over as the ship bounced about all over the show. Docking in France we were ready to hit the road. We all piled into the vehicles and drove off the ferry. Suddenly the van came to an abrupt stop and Gibbo ran to the car and announced that we were one down. We had managed to leave Becks on the ferry!! After we had contained our fits of laughter we got in contact with Becks through cellphone and were able to get her safely back to us!

We had a long (& expensive) trip to Thurry Harcourt going through an unbelievable amount of toll booths. A few of the toll booths cost us 6.90 Euros for each car! We arrived into a picturesque Thurry Harcourt at 8.30pm and dived into the first restaurant we found. It turned out to be AMAZING! They had the most amazing wood fired pizzas! Having sufficiently filled our tummy’s we headed off to discover our accommodation for the week. While the setting for our little cottage was incredible, the inside was left a lot to be desired. It can only be described as walking around a rather rough student flat! Never the less we made the best of the situation and turned our wee cottage into the Paddle Ferns Love Nest. We were given some Swiss army stretchers complete with handles to lift the wounded, some mattresses and each subsided to the various rooms and called it a night. The following morning we were up at the crack of dawn...well maybe not, try 8am! Gibbo set us up with a bit of a plan of attack and we were off for the next couple of days training.

Thursday night the catwalk was out as Project Runway took place. Tam in her secrecy had been out and brought some accessories and with some white t-shirts we had picked up along the way we were randomly spilt into pairs and had to design an outfit we would wear at the worlds after party. Each pair had one hour to use the t-shirts and the accessories to make their masterpiece. Some extremely entertaining pieces were created. Each person was allowed one vote, but not allowed to vote for themselves. It ended up being a tight contest between Team Gibbo & Tania verses Team Tam & Megan. With points tied, the last vote was counted and the winner was.........Gibbo and Tania. Gibbo and Tans designed a stunning white suit jacket for Gibbo. It included beautiful duct taped cufflinks, a red paper handkerchief in his duck taped pocket and a tall top hat made with white paper. A very entertaining evening with lots and lots of laughs!

Well that’s all the news we have for now, thanks for all your support! Keep it coming!

MORE WHEN IT HAPPENS!!

Hull International

Quick update! We played in the Hull International tournament over the weekend in Hull, England. We won the ladies division!













I believe we came 6th in the div 2 open grade. Will confirm later. We had some lovely torrential rain over the weekend with a touch of lightening and thunder. Adds to the excitement. We head to Canterbury tomorrow for the night before catching the ferry back to France on Tuesday and heading to Thurry Harcourt for a week. More when it happens!

Hull, England

- Saint Omer Canoe Club

We departed Saint Omer early Thursday morning and got on the road for a 50 min drive to Calais to catch our ferry over to Dover, England. After going through customs and having a good wee giggle with the English customs officer and receiving a stamp in our passports we were herded towards line 126 to await boarding of our ferry. In no time we were on the P & O Ferry and


enjoying browsing the duty shops on board. Upon arriving in Dover and oohing and ahhing at the well known white cliffs of Dover we were in the vehicles and headed north towards Hull.












- Dover Cliffs

30 mins into the drive we stopped in at a petrol station type thing to have our lunch in a car park! Its not every day you do that! We arrived in Hull and got settled into our "new" scout hall. Apparently a scout hall built in 1982 is considered new! Anyhoo, we were delivered some judo matts to sleep on and settled down for the night after a quick visit to the supermarket. It was a real treat to be able to read the labels on the products!

Today is Friday and we began the day with some Yoga and stretching. We headed into the center of Hull to find some well needed internet access for everyone and will be jumping on the water in an hour of so to prepare ourselves for the tournament ahead. We are playing in both the div 2 open grade and the ladies division, so that will give us six games tomorrow to work on things!

We will do our best to jump on the internet over the weekend and keep you all posted with the results from the weekend!

- Humber Bridge







The vehicles with their New Balance and Thule Sponsors Stickers