Rugby World Cup

We have been learning about the Rugby World Cup.  Some children didn't know too much about it, so we learned these things:

The Southland Stags are the Rugby team for Southland, and the Highlanders are the Rugby team for Otago and Southland.  The All Blacks are called All Blacks because they wear all black.  That rugby team are the best players out of all of New Zealand.

New Zealand think that they are the best rugby team in the whole world.  Australia think that they are the best team in the whole world, and South Africa think that they are the best too.  Lots of countries want to be the best in the whold world, so they need to all get together and have a play off, to see who the winner is.  The winner of all the games will be the best rugby team in the world, and they will win the trophy, which looks like a big cup (or pirate treasure, as Markus thinks..).  That is why it is called the rugby world cup, because they all play rugby and the trophy looks like a cup.

Each room in the school has decided to support one of the bottom 8 countries in the World Cup, and we are supporting Romania.  We decided that Romania needs lots of fans here because all their fans are a long way across the other side of the world.  Yesterday we made Romanian flags and blew up balloons in the Romanian colours.

We also learned that the Haka is New Zealand's way of challenging the other team.  They want to beat the other team so they try to scare them at the start of the match and say that the other team better watch out, because the All Blacks mean business!