The Black Helmets have cool uniforms

good game man your doing great considering the small amount of players you have to pick from!

I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief after the Black Helmets snuck a 28-21 win against Colombia. This was one of the few games I was confident of winning, but Colombia played far better than I thought they would based on the results of their first two games. Indeed, they were actually leading 21-14 at one stage, but I managed to rally to get the win.

At the end of the day though, that's two wins from three, which represents New Zealand's best-ever start in one of these qualifiers. Our only loss has been to the No. 2-ranked United Kingdom, who are probably shoo-ins for one of the qualifying spots. It looks like it will be a real ding-dong battle between the group's other four teams for that second spot.

Hosting Brazil next week. Not feeling quite so confident after the close call against Colombia, but hopefully I can deal to them.

Beat Finland again - it was much closer than last time though! Just snuck past them 35-31. Still, it keeps us in the qualification hunt for now.

It would really help if Colombia could somehow upset Brazil though.

Thanks Monkey. Qualify or not, this has still been NZ's best ever season in terms of games won. We did beat Columbia, so now it's all on against Brazil. Whoever wins that game will claim the second qualifying spot. But after the last encounter, you'd have to say Brazil are favourites for that ...