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Adam Thomson (rugby Union)
Adam Thomson (born 23 March 1982) is a New Zealand rugby union player. He represented the New Zealand All Blacks between 2008 and 2012, playing a total of 29 tests including two during the victorious 2011 Rugby World Cup campaign. He played for the Melbourne Rebels in 2016, having also played Super Rugby with the Queensland Reds (2015) and Highlanders (2006-2012). He has also represented the Canon Eagles in Japan's Top League and New Zealand province Otago. Thomson plays mainly as a blind-side flanker (number 6). He made his All Blacks debut against Ireland as a replacement for Rodney So'oialo on 7 June 2008, helped win the World Cup in 2011, and last played for the All Blacks against Scotland in November 2012. Early life and New Zealand representative teams Thomson was born in Ashburton. He attended Christchurch Boys' High School, and played in the same 1st XV side as fellow All Black Dan Carter. Carter revealed on Instagram, that Thomson was the captain during his time ...
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Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / Ōtākaro flows through the centre of the city, with an urban park along its banks. The city's territorial authority population is people, and includes a number of smaller urban areas as well as rural areas. The population of the urban area is people. Christchurch is the second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand, after Auckland. It is the major urban area of an emerging sub-region known informally as Greater Christchurch. Notable smaller urban areas within this sub-region include Rangiora and Kaiapoi in Waimakariri District, north of the Waimakariri River, and Rolleston and Lincoln in Selwyn District to the south. The first inhabitants migrated to the area sometime between 1000 and 1250 AD. They hunted moa, which ...
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Rugby Union
Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players each, using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends. Rugby union is a popular sport around the world, played by people of all genders, ages and sizes. In 2014, there were more than 6 million people playing worldwide, of whom 2.36 million were registered players. World Rugby, previously called the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) and the International Rugby Board (IRB), has been the governing body for rugby union since 1886, and currently has 101 countries as full members and 18 associate members. In 1845, the first laws were written by students attending Rugby School; other significant ...
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2008 Tri-Nations
The 2008 Tri Nations Series was the thirteenth annual Tri Nations competition between the national rugby union teams of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. The All Blacks won the series on 13 September 2008 after defeating Australia in the last match of the series. Background This was the first Tri Nations tournament after South Africa's 2007 Rugby World Cup victory, and they went into the competition as the top team in the IRB World Rankings (having ended a 175-week run for New Zealand). On 30 June 2008, before the tournament began, New Zealand and Australia were ranked second and third in the world respectively. The All Blacks went into the series with a world record 29 successive home victories, and South Africa with a 13 match winning streak. By the end of the tournament New Zealand had retaken top place in the IRB World Rankings. After 26 weeks at number one, South Africa slipped to second. Australia remained third. The final match of the Bledisloe Cup series be ...
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Kieran Read
Kieran James Read (born 26 October 1985) is a New Zealand former rugby union player. He played as a number 8 and is a former captain of the New Zealand national team, the All Blacks. Read played for New Zealand from 2008 to 2019. He is one of the most-capped players of all time, and the forth-most-capped All Black in history, having played 128 tests, scoring 26 international tries. Read captained New Zealand 52 times. He was the IRB Player of the Year in 2013 and a key member of New Zealand's 2011 and 2015 World Cup-winning teams, becoming one of only 20 players to have won multiple Rugby World Cups. Read played for the in the Super Rugby competition, and played for and in the Mitre 10 Cup, before spending his final season in Japan with Toyota Verblitz. Early life Read played his childhood rugby in the small town of Drury in the Counties Manukau region, just south of Auckland. He attended Opaheke Primary where his mother taught and Rosehill College, with a one-ye ...
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All Blacks
The New Zealand national rugby union team, commonly known as the All Blacks ( mi, Ōpango), represents New Zealand in men's international rugby union, which is considered the country's national sport. The team won the Rugby World Cup in 1987, 2011 and 2015. They were the first country to win the Rugby World Cup 3 times. New Zealand has a 76 per-cent winning record in test-match rugby, and has secured more wins than losses against every test opponent. Since their international debut in 1903, New Zealand teams have played test matches against 19 nations, of which 12 have never won a game against the All Blacks. The team has also played against three multinational all-star teams, losing only eight of 45 matches. Since the introduction of the World Rugby Rankings in 2003, New Zealand has held the number-one ranking longer than all other teams combined. They jointly hold the record for the most consecutive test match wins for a tier-one ranked nation, along with England. The A ...
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Air New Zealand Cup
The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for liquid water to exist on the Earth's surface, absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention (greenhouse effect), and reducing temperature extremes between day and night (the diurnal temperature variation). By mole fraction (i.e., by number of molecules), dry air contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level, and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere. Air composition, temperature, and atmospheric pressure vary with altitude. Within the atmosphere, air suitable for use in photosynthesis by terrestrial plants and breathing of terrestrial animals is found only ...
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Dan Carter
Daniel William Carter (born 5 March 1982) is a retired New Zealand rugby union player. Carter played for Crusaders (Super Rugby) in New Zealand and played for New Zealand's national team, the All Blacks. He is the highest point scorer in test match rugby, and is considered by many experts as the greatest ever first five-eighth (fly-half) in the history of the game. He was named the International Rugby Board Player of the Year in 2005, 2012 and 2015 (equaling the record three awards of Richie McCaw) and has won three Super Rugby titles with the Crusaders, and nine Tri-Nations and Rugby Championships with the All Blacks. Carter injured his groin while doing kicking practice during the 2011 Rugby World Cup but was a key member of the 2015 Rugby World Cup-winning teams, becoming one of 21 players to have won multiple Rugby World Cups. In the 2015 Rugby World Cup Final against Australia, he kicked four penalties, two conversions and a drop goal, and was named the man of the ...
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Scotland National Rugby Union Team
The Scotland national rugby union team represents Scotland in men's international rugby union and is administered by the Scottish Rugby Union. The team takes part in the annual Six Nations Championship and participates in the Rugby World Cup, which takes place every four years. As of 4 December 2022, Scotland are 7th in the World Rugby Rankings. The history of the team extends back to 1871 when the Scottish rugby team played their first official test match, winning 1–0 against England at Raeburn Place. Scotland competed in the Five Nations from the inaugural tournament in 1883, winning it 14 times outright—including the last Five Nations in 1999—and sharing it another 8. In 2000 the competition accepted a sixth competitor, Italy, thus forming the Six Nations. Since this change, Scotland have yet to win the competition. The Rugby World Cup was introduced in 1987 and Scotland have competed in all nine competitions, the most recent being in 2019, where they failed to rea ...
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Rodney So'oialo
Rodney So'oialo (born 3 October 1979 in Motoʻotua, Samoa) is a New Zealand rugby union player who recently played in Japan for the Honda Heat. He is now the director of rugby and head coach at Trinity College Kandy, Sri Lanka. Previously, he had been a stalwart for the Hurricanes in the Super Rugby competition, making 101 appearances for the franchise. He also made 62 test appearances for the All Blacks between 2002 and 2009. His usual position is at number eight. Career In 2001, So'oialo played for the New Zealand Rugby sevens team at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Mar del Plata, Argentina, which New Zealand won. The next year he was again a member of the New Zealand sevens team, winning gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. He made his debut for the All Blacks on 23 November 2002, playing at no. 8 in a match against the Welsh at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. The following year he started at no.8 for a test against England in June, and then as a reserve in ...
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Flanker (rugby Union)
Flanker is a position in the sport of rugby union. Each team of 15 players includes two flankers, who play in the forwards, and are generally classified as either blindside or openside flankers, numbers 6 and 7 respectively. The name comes from their position in a scrum in which they 'flank' each set of forwards. They compete for the ball – most commonly in rucks and mauls. Flankers also assist in pushing in a scrum, but are expected to detach from the scrum as soon as the ball is out to get to the play before the opposition's forwards. Flankers also participate in line-outs, either being lifted to contest or win possession, or to lift other players. Flankers are usually the key participants in the tackling process. The flankers, especially the openside, are often the fastest forwards on the team but still relied upon for tackling. Naming Flankers can be known by several different names. Historically, they were often called wing-forwards, although this name had a more ...
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Top League
Japan Rugby League One (formerly the Top League) is a rugby union competition in Japan. It is the highest level of professional rugby competition in the country. The Japan Rugby Football Union created the competition in 2003, by absorbing the Japan Company Rugby Football Championship, to drive up the overall standard and popularity of the sport and improve the results of the Japan national rugby union team. The chief architect of the league was Hiroaki Shukuzawa who strongly felt the urgency of improving Japanese domestic company rugby to a professional level which would allow Japan to compete more convincingly at Rugby World Cups. Until 2022, it was an industrial league, where many players were employees of their company and the teams were all owned by major companies. While the competition was known for paying high salaries, only world-class foreign players and a small number of Japanese players played fully professionally, which meant most of the players still played in a ...
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Highlanders (rugby)
The Highlanders (formerly the Otago Highlanders) is a New Zealand professional rugby union team based in Dunedin that compete in Super Rugby. The team was formed in 1996 to represent the lower South Island in the newly formed Super 12 competition, and includes the Otago, North Otago and Southland unions. The Highlanders take their name from the Scottish immigrants that helped found the Otago, North Otago, and Southland regions in the 1840s and 1850s. Their main ground through the 2011 Super Rugby season was Carisbrook in Dunedin, with home games occasionally being played in Invercargill and Queenstown. The Highlanders moved into Carisbrook's replacement, Forsyth Barr Stadium at University Plaza, for the 2012 season; the stadium opened in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, but after the Super Rugby season. They finished the inaugural season eighth, and the following season finished last after winning only three of eleven matches. However, in the 1998, 1999 and 2000 seasons ...
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