New Zealand on Thursday cantered to the bonus-point victory they needed to secure qualification for the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals with an 11-try 73-0 thrashing of Uruguay.
Fullback Damian McKenzie starred for the All Blacks with a try in each half, two conversions and a brilliant one-handed offload for Will Jordan to score the first of his two tries.
Richie Mo’unga, who also kicked five conversions, Cam Roigard, Fletcher Newell, Leicester Fainga’anuku with a hat-trick and Tamaiti Williams also crossed in the whitewash.
Photo: AFP
On a night of celebration, veteran lock Sam Whitelock set a new record of 23 World Cup appearances, surpassing the marks of compatriot Richie McCaw and England’s Jason Leonard.
However, they did lose prop Tyrel Lomax to a recurrence of significant knee injury early on.
New Zealand had to wait and see who would top Pool A, with the Italy-France game — to be played after press time last night — to determine the order of the three teams.
Uruguay initially played with the same effervescence as in valiant defeats to France and Italy, and thought they had taken the lead when Manuel Ardao dived over in the corner after 13 minutes, but a desperate last-gasp tackle from center Anton Lienert-Brown just forced him into touch.
McKenzie stepped inside a tackler to get New Zealand on the board after 20 minutes.
Fly-half Mo’unga converted and then soon ran in a second try, with both coming from 5m scrums as the All Blacks machine started to purr.
McKenzie collected his own grubber before flicking the ball inside to Jordan while narrowly avoiding stepping into touch for the wing to scamper over under the posts.
Roigard brought up the bonus point with another score from a 5m scrum.
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
RSS