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Articles by James Borrowdale
‘We’ve got grand final tickets’: Belief builds in Auckland amid Warriors NRL fever
Optimism is springing in Auckland where Warriors fans are hopeful off finally winning an NRL premiership this year. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images
‘We’ve got grand final tickets’: Belief builds in Auckland amid Warriors NRL fever
‘We’ve got grand final tickets’: Belief builds in Auckland amid Warriors NRL fever Optimism is springing in Auckland where Warriors fans are hopeful off finally winning an NRL premiership this year. Photograph: Phil Walter/Getty Images From the concourse above Go Media Stadium's northern bank, in the hour before kick-off, the New Zealand Warriors final game of the regular season seems almost incidental.
‘We’ve got grand final tickets’: Belief builds in Auckland amid Warriors NRL fever
‘We’ve got grand final tickets’: Belief builds in Auckland amid Warriors NRL fever James Borrowdale in Auckland Tue, 8 September 2026 at 1:49 am UTC Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.
Louis Davis: ‘For as long as I can remember I’ve experienced an inner turmoil’
James Borrowdale|Sunday Magazine August 8, 2026 • 12:00pm Louis Davis has penned a new book, The Modern Dad.Photo: Bruce Mackay Louis Davis is one of Aotearoa’s most recognisable online influencers and the country’s reigning TikTok creator of the year. He spoke with James Borrowdale about the life behind the account, the complications of turning it into content and why now was the time to explore his philosophies on parenting in his new book.
‘Pressure is a privilege’: Braxton Sorensen-McGee on being New Zealand’s youngest star
Back in 2022, Braxton Sorensen-McGee was in the Eden Park crowd to watch the heart-stopping semi-final between France and New Zealand. The then 16-year-old, at the ground with her school team, remembers the moment of relief when a last-minute French penalty goal attempt drifted wide, allowing the Black Ferns to scrape through to the final of the Women’s World Cup. In another gripping contest against arch-rivals England, New Zealand went on to win the tournament.
Metro — Live Through This
Society When Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman, dressed in unrelenting black, with characteristically heavy eye makeup completing a funereal mien, shuffled her papers on the table of Select Committee Room 3 and looked up at Iranian ambassador Reza Nahar Ahari, she tried to channel a history of pain.
Auckland City aiming to do amateur football proud in Bayern Munich mismatch
Were you looking for a symbol to exemplify the gulf that lies between Auckland City Football Club and their rivals at the Club World Cup, you would find it at Kiwitea Street, the team’s home ground.
Welcome to Sixes: cricket pushes boundaries of competitive socialising
The England Test captain, Ben Stokes, is among the players who have invested in Sixes. Photograph: Sixes Last month Headingley got a new cricket venue. It doesn’t have a lot in common with the long-established and much more famous one down the road – this one tends to be drier, warmer and significantly more attractive to young people. In October a similar venue arrived in Bristol, both just a couple of miles and a world away from the County Ground.
Long, unhurried days with a cooler: the cricket fans sticking with New Zealand’s forgotten format
From the spot where Helen Julius spread her arms across the peeling, sun-flecked green paint of the pavilion’s bench seats, Eden Park’s Outer Oval in Auckland was almost picturesque. There were the white-clad cricketers – Auckland batting, Canterbury in the field – and a bank of agapanthus just beginning to break out in flower beyond the sight-screen on the ground’s northern boundary. Sparrows, nesting in the pavilion roof, chattered incessantly.
Sleeping dogs: Tom Phillips and New Zealand’s wilderness myth
Smith heads for the Coromandel Peninsula, almost wilfully oblivious to the fact that society at large, as a malevolent political force tightens its grip on the country, is following the example of his marriage and breaking down. All of that, anyway, is forgotten when his grand vision suddenly becomes his view.
November 2024
The disappeared Solitary confinement destroys people, but New Zealand continues to inflict it on our most vulnerable and damaged people, including children, as a matter of course. Aaron Smale reports on the practice that won’t go away and the people that are psychologically annihilated and physically disappeared in state institutions. By Aaron Smale
February 2024
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Mindshift
Depression entwined itself into Alex’s existence when they were 10, summoned by the roiling hormones of early puberty. They were overwhelmed, unable to understand how and why the world had been drained of its joy, its goodness, its hope. A writing exercise at primary school — Alex (not their real name) wrote about wanting to die — alerted the school to the force of the depression. Alex was referred to a doctor, who referred them to what was then called Child, Youth and Family and a counsellor.
Metro — A Night at the Dairy
Society The long, high screech of car tyres spinning against tarmac interrupted the story of how Sarbjit Singh had lost the use of an eye. “It’s started already,” he said, lifting his good eye to peer through the open roller doors of Walia Superette at a Karangahape Rd just beginning its Friday-night descent into the mess that alcohol and other substances make. It was some time after eight o’clock.
Blind author Minnie Baragwanath’s big inclusive vision Original
Blind author Minnie Baragwanath tells James Borrowdale about her big vision for a more inclusive Aotearoa. Abigail Dougherty / Stuff There are more than one million New Zealanders living with access needs. Minnie Baragwanath tells James Borrowdale how facing her own challenges drives her to change how we think about disability. This story is featured on Stuff’sThe Long Read podcast.
10 days in ICU
Winona, our three-year old, who breezed through her own infancy in sunny good health, asked in the morning whether Tabby was still “feeling poorly?” She was, and it was Saturday – our local clinic shut for the weekend – so Jacq took Tabby to the A&E as I entertained Winona at home. Overnight, Tabby’s sores had grown into an archipelago of pronounced white disks adorning her tongue and throat, and her breath – usually a baby’s sweet, milky loveliness – had taken on the horror scent of decay.
When Only Rain Stops Play
People, Neesham said in the statement announcing he had turned down the NZC contract, would inevitably see it as him “choosing money over representing my country” — which it wasn’t: it was merely a consequence of being offered a place once it was too late. But it is a choice players are increasingly being asked to make — and who, honestly, would begrudge them if their decisions don’t align with a fan’s sense of national pride?
March 2023
Thanks to the rise of professional leagues, cricket has never been so lucrative, nor the schedule so packed. The risk of burnout is growing as players wrestle with decisions about career pathways.
Metro — Peter the T. Rex, Tourist
Out of death, life — or at least an ever-more-detailed portrait of it, though many details of Peter’s life and death remain a mystery. Whether he was indeed a male, for instance, whether he had been the antagonist or protagonist in the confrontation that ended with his death, or the reason for that battle. But as Dr David Burnham, another of that paper’s co-authors and a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, told Metro, much can be inferred from his remains.
The Most Outspoken Man In Sport
Jimmy Neesham was in purgatory — the blandly comfortable kind of purgatory to be found in high-end international hotel chains. The simple act of eating breakfast was to be oppressed by the familiar. It was late 2021 and over the past two years he’d been in the United Arab Emirates, India, England and Wales, but no matter the location the omelettes all looked the same. So did the waiters, and so did the rooms. “What am I doing?” he would think, contemplating his eggs.
March 2022
Ani Tawhiao-Lomas (right) with partner, Giuliano Porta and their baby, Calina Mareikura Porta. Photo: Tim D. Tiny Plates, Big Ambitions This Auckland company wants to decolonise your baby’s tastebuds. By Nicola Harvey About Town: Waimarama Time passes and people change, but the sun still shines at this North Island beach town. By Sarah Catherall Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? Recycling is a scam — and it’s coming back to bite us.
I’m a stay-at-home dad. It doesn’t affect my masculinity
The morning our first child drew her first breath among a half a dozen medical professionals and the beeping machines of a West Auckland hospital room, the front page of the New Zealand Herald quoted the Prime Minister in huge block letters: “A very sad day,” she declared. It was unrelated, thankfully, to our family’s new arrival: she was born a week or so into the country’s first lockdown—the day after, as fate had it, New Zealand’s first COVID-19 death. It was an auspicious beginning.
‘I didn’t want sex without drugs, and I used drugs to find sex’
Content warning: this article contain discussion of rape. It may be triggering or disturbing for some people. The chemsex scene is a subculture within the gay community where men mix drugs like methamphetamine & GHB with sex to maximise pleasure and decrease inhibitions. Re: speaks to a young man about his experience, and looks at what is happening in NZ. The regret was a familiar kind of pain. Aaron*, 27, methamphetamine still stoking the fire of his mind, would tell himself never again.
Iron sharpens iron: City Kickboxing and the team behind Israel Adesanya's UFC success
UFC has smashed its way to prominence in New Zealand, with a cluster of star fighters — including middleweight champion Israel Adesanya — winning global recognition. To the team behind the elite’s success, however, star power counts for nothing. Towards the end, exhaustion seemed to almost win: the bodies dragged themselves up from the floor as if gravity had tripled in strength.
Covid-19 disrupted your travel plans? We've got a solution
We know it's a serious global health concern, and people's safety is the top priority, but for those who's travel plans have been disrupted by the Covid-19 outbreak it's also ok to admit that's a bit of a bummer. Travel writer Sue Lees has some tips on making the best of a less-than-ideal situation, with a new short series for Metro, Pretend Cities. The unsettled international situation got your travel plans on hold? Don’t despair.
Lani Writes: Food, sweat and rugby on the World Cup Trail in Japan
Convenience stores hit the spot on the World Cup trail in Japan. In Japan on assignment for the Rugby World Cup, I made the Lawson store and FamilyMart my main sources of sustenance. That first week, while finding my feet, all time was spent either on trains, at rugby stadiums and hotel press-conference rooms, or in my own hotel room — the air-con blasting as I waded through notes and audio and images.
Whether or not Trump claims are true, Russia is still using sex for spying
Dan Lomas of University of Salford takes a look of the murky world of spying and sex scandals Just a week before his inauguration as US president, Donald Trump became deeply embroiled in a bizarre story about unverified claims that the Russian government holds compromising information on his private life.
'I didn't want sex without drugs, and I used drugs to find sex'
Content warning: this article contain discussion of rape. It may be triggering or disturbing for some people. Source: 1 NEWS The chemsex scene is a subculture within the gay community where men mix drugs like methamphetamine & GHB with sex to maximise pleasure and decrease inhibitions. Re: speaks to a young man about his experience, and looks at what is happening in NZ. By James Borrowdale The regret was a familiar kind of pain.
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