A couple of helping hands for football

By Steph Bell-Jenkins

Selina and Emma Oliver are helping to create football history.

The Cambridge couple have been volunteering at FIFA’s first Women’s World Cup play-Off tournament which wraps up today in Hamilton and Auckland.

Now, the wife-and-wife team is looking forward to the main event, the ninth FIFA Women’s World Cup in July and August.

Co-hosted by Aotearoa and Australia, the tournament will bring 32 nations together at 10 venues, including Waikato Stadium.

“I don’t think people realise just how big this is,” said Selina, who has been volunteering for FIFA since mid-February, helping people get accreditation for Waikato Stadium.

“We’ve never had this in New Zealand before and we may never again. It’s the first time the Cup has been co-hosted and the first time FIFA has held a play-off tournament, so we’re breaking new ground.”

Selina plans to volunteer again in July/ August and Emma will if work allows. Both are encouraging others to get involved.

“It’s just the experience,” Selina said. “It’s something you don’t get to do every day.

It’s fun and it’s interesting being behind the scenes.”

Emma has been working in the guest operations team on game days, welcoming and helping VIPs such as FIFA officials, politicians and local government representatives.

She said there were people from all walks of life in her crew, including many who knew nothing about football.

Selina and Emma have been playing football since they were teenagers, Selina mostly with Cambridge Football Club and Emma mainly with Hamilton North.

They met when their teams played in a Waikato Cup match more than a decade ago.

“Hamilton North absolutely annihilated us,” Selina said. “I had to mark Emma and I hated it.”

However, the two discovered they were highly compatible off the field when they were reintroduced later by a mutual football friend.

They hope the World Cup will lift the profile of women’s football.

“Hopefully we end up with a (Ruby) Tui – someone just to bring it out on the surface and make it a visible sport in New Zealand.”

Here Is Harry Ready To Go

8278494 www.floridaltd.co.nz

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& postpartum related pain

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Get gardening

Get gardening

Get gardening

A monthly gardening column, courtesy of Amber Garden Centre

Autumn is nature’s natural planting time, soil temperature and moisture levels return to normal, planting trees and shrubs gives them the chance to establish new roots before winter. Look out for new season’s camellias and rhododendrons available now.

VEGETABLES

A monthly gardening column, courtesy of Amber Garden Centre As the weather remains so hot, it is important to make sure the garden is well looked after. Watering bigger plants like perennials and hedging heavily a few times a week will be more beneficial than daily light watering. Annuals and vegetables may need more frequent watering. Plants benefit more from being watered in the early hours of the morning or at dusk. This will help prevent leaves from burning in the harsh sunlight

A monthly gardening column, courtesy of Amber Garden Centre As the weather remains so hot, it is important to make sure the garden is well looked after. Watering bigger plants like perennials and hedging heavily a few times a week will be more beneficial than daily light watering. Annuals and vegetables may need more frequent watering. Plants benefit more from being watered in the early hours of the morning or at dusk. This will help prevent leaves from burning in the harsh sunlight

Dig potato crops and store in a cool, dark, airy place. Winter crops of greens – cabbage, broccoli, silverbeet and Chinese cabbage – all enjoy the cooler temperatures. Plant seeds of radish turnips along with peas and broad beans. Bare areas in the vege garden can be sown with green crops such as mustard or lupin, to be dug in later to feed the soil for spring.

Vegetables – February is the month where everything is ripe. So it’s a great time to preserve or freeze excess produced to enjoy over the cooler months. Inconsistent watering can lead to vegetable plants drying out and becoming bitter, it also increases the chances of pests and diseases attacking. Herbs – it is common for softer leaved herbs like basil, dill and coriander to go to seed very quickly in this hotter weather. Harvest the young foliage early and dry it or freeze it to use later.

Vegetables – February is the month where everything is ripe. So it’s a great time to preserve or freeze excess produced to enjoy over the cooler months. Inconsistent watering can lead to vegetable plants drying out and becoming bitter, it also increases the chances of pests and diseases attacking. Herbs – it is common for softer leaved herbs like basil, dill and coriander to go to seed very quickly in this hotter weather. Harvest the young foliage early and dry it or freeze it to use later.

FLOWERS

Winter colour for the garden – pansy, viola, primula, poppies and dianthus. Planting while the weather is still nice will get them established and give colour throughout the cooler months. Spring bulbs can be planted now the soil temperature has cooled.

Flowers – While it is still hot and dry, plants like begonias, petunias and portulaca will do better. It is time to start thinking about your winter garden beds but hold fire on planting until it cools down more, or plant in shade.

LAWNS

Autumn is the ideal time to sow a new lawn.

Flowers – While it is still hot and dry, plants like begonias, petunias and portulaca will do better. It is time to start thinking about your winter garden beds but hold fire on planting until it cools down more, or plant in shade.

CAMBRIDGE VOLUNTEER FIRE BRIGADE

CALLS OVER THE LAST WEEK

SATURDAY:

Motorbike over bank

Motor vehicle accident, Tirau Road

FRIDAY:

Bon re, Tennyson St

Person locked out of car, Duke St

Cardiac arrest, Kingdon St

THURSDAY:

Building alarm and evacuation, Peake Road

Building alarm and evacuation, Victoria Road

Building alarm and evacuation, Cambridge Road

WEDNESDAY:

Motor vehicle accident, Tirau Road

TUESDAY AND MONDAY:

Over the course of 9 hours the brigade attended over 40 calls relating to the cyclone. These ranged from trees blocking roads, roofs being lifted, trees fallen onto houses and trees fallen on powerlines.

LIST WITH THE TOP TEAM, AS VOTED BY CAMBRIDGE!

Barrier concerns

On Saturday there was yet another serious crash in the southbound lane of the Cambridge-Karāpiro road.

Waka Kotahi are telling, not suggesting, a wire barrier will stop the accidents/incidents on our rural roads. They should live here and see the line of cars back up with nowhere to go, this included young kids in a wire barrier area getting out of their cars and standing on the road to get a look.

My thoughts and opinions are: drop the barriers we are going ahead with and reduce the speed to 90kph coupled with a double yellow line all the way from Cambridge to Piarere. People respect the yellow lines In my opinion. At present they are coming off the 110kph expressway and still travelling 105kph when they reach the 80kph limit. How does this compact me? I am the owner driver of Safe Drive NZ Travel Shuttle. Installing a wire barrier will increase my travel to Cambridge by around eight kilometres a trip four to five days a week, because they make it impossible to access driveways or turning points on the other side of the road. Added to this is road user charges, time and fuel, adding $1600 to $2000 to my operating cost a year. Every other person travelling to work will have the same added costs, some will be adding up to 16 kilometres a day for their travel to Cambridge.

If any emergency service needs to get to a property, they will have up to an extra 16 km to drive before reaching the patient. I am also concerned that the enclosed lanes may present issues in the event of an emergency –our nearest defibrillator is only about 1.5km across the road, but 9km if I have to drive around the barriers.

David McNally Cambridge

Start with the slip

In response to MP Louise Upston’s comment regarding the Piarere intersection (The News, February 16), the most immediate improvement to the intersection would be to make the slip lane far more obvious to the traffic on SH29, so drivers “know”, not to cross over to the left.

Drivers wait for the north bound traffic to pass on SH1, holding up the traffic behind them. The proposed roundabout is not going to alleviate this situation.

Slowing the traffic only sees long queues building up, just look at the end of the expressway at Cambridge, two lanes with a third converging from Cambridge into one. It brings traffic to a screeching halt and takes kilometres to get moving again.

The queues at this intersection show the traffic counts from 2019 to support the roundabout are way out of date.

During a three-and-a-half-day court hearing I attended there was no mention of the foggy situation in this area. In August 2022 in fog, a heavy transport truck ran into the stopped traffic causing serious injury to the people. Visibility is very important here and a graded separation is needed to keep the traffic flowing. There has to be improvement to traffic flow and safety, the graded separation is the ultimate choice, not the planned roundabout. If that intersection was in another country it would have been improved long ago. Do things once and do it right, Don’t waste money on holding up traffic.

(Abridged)

John Hansen Cambridge