Good article in yesterday's Daily News (click here) on old boy Paul Williams. Paul has been named to the high performance rugby referees squad so we can look forward to watching him control things in the ITM Cup. 

As a past player - who could forget his sideline conversion to give us our second ever win over NPBHS - Paul has a great feel for the game and the players. It's just the spectators he will need to watch out for.

This week saw the annual Leaders trip to Waitomo wher the guys get together to build their team and work on their leadership skills. By all accounts they participated very well and got to put some of their skills to the test when their van broke down on the way home. Don't Panic and Be Patient were a couple of the real lessons learned.

While Taranaki is the oil heartland of NZ the rig in our front yard is not looking for black gold. The drilling is to establish the soil/sub soil structure under the main classroom block in preparation for earthquake strengthening. This is one of those cases where there will be no potential return, whatever they find is going to cost us money!

Gifted Students Make FDMC History

I am delighted to announce that our senior  Future Problem Solving (FPS) team of Patrick Fisher-Evan,  Ryan Sadler,  Kurt Biesiek and Louis Poole have been selected to represent New Zealand at the International Competition to be held in Iowa this June. To my knowledge this is the first time FDMC students have made it to a world final.

FPS is a world renowned, highly academic way of using futuristic thinking to extend top students to be innovative thinkers, researchers and team players. Detailed information can be found at www.fpsnz.co.nz

Unfortunately there is always a 'but' and ours is that we need help from old boys and friends to raise the money needed to get to Iowa. We are under great time pressure as we were only informed we qualified last week.

Please consider us as potential partners. Donations can be made to givealittle.co.nz under Future Problem Solving FDMC. Every little bit helps. However, if  a business or corporate would be willing to sponsor us that would be great! The boys are motivated and willing to model FPS to groups. They may well be the men you wish to employ in the future!

I can be contacted at

0272279992 or at r.wackrow.fdmc.school.nz

Robyn Wackrow

Last Friday, 14th February, we had the annual Francis Douglas Swimming sports. There was plenty of encouragement from houses and the House leaders did a great job urging everyone to participate.

The senior students dressed up in some great costumes, with chants and songs being sung throughout the day.

Over 250 races were raced on the day with many preliminary races, happening the week prior to swimming sports.

There was the all age house relay that was raced at the end of the day with an extra entry of a staff team, who did very well but managed a second place behind a strong Solomon team.

After all the points were tallied, there was a clear house winner with Solomon taking out the most points, followed by La Salle who tried but just couldn’t quite match the performances of many of the Solomon House. Loreto followed in third place with Benildus in fourth place.

Over all it was a very successful day with many students competing in numerous races.

Final points and Age group Champions were:

1st        Solomon         2107

2nd       La Salle          1532

3rd       Loreto             1384

4th       Benildus          1289

Age Group Champions

Year 7

1st        Ollie Spicer (S)
2nd       William Johnson (LS)
3rd       Connor Ford (B)

Year 8

1st        Ethan Seed (S)
2nd       Jamie Kestle (B)
3rd       Theo Johnson            (LS)

Junior

1st        Zac Reid (LS)
2nd       Matthew Meuli (L)
3rd       Jack Spicer (S)

Intermediate B

1st        Oisin Quinn (S)

2nd       Riley Barrett (L)

3rd       Aleksander Timarac (S)

Intermediate A

1st        Eliot Lundon-Moore (S)

2nd       Cameron Tofts (B)

3rd       Andrew Stevens (S)

Senior

1st        Michael McKillop (S)

2nd       Jack Earp (B)

3rd       Patric Klups (LS)

It is our week for visiting Brothers. Yesterday both Br Adrian Watson (pictured above) and Br Jack Iremonger where able to attend our investiture mass for senior school leaders. Always great to have old boys and Brothers at the College.

Br Adrian tells us he has had a change in roll. He is currently based in Wellington and is working with Caritas helping with their work in the Asia and Pacific region. It sounds like Br Adrian will be spending a lot of time in some fairly remote places.

We had a visit on Monday from a great name in the College's history Br Peter Bray. Br Peter was a first day pupil of the College and lead the school as Principal through out the 1980's. 

Br Peter is still serving people and education in the tough role of Vice Chancellor of Bethlehem University in Palestine. Br Peter spoke to senior students about the realities of life and education for his students, an eye opener for our guys and a far cry fro their daily experiences. 

To our knowledge there have only been two swimming and athletics sports starters at FDMC in the last 40 years. The first was Father Dave Monaghan. The second and current get set go man is long serving staff member Peter Costello. Peter's enthusiasm for the job is undiminished. It is just his aim that is getting a bit dodgy!

We say it every year but man has the staff numbers grown over the years. The photo above is of the 2014 College and La Salle Hostel staff. We will leave up to you to play the "boy hasn't he aged" game. Staff names are absent to protect the guilty.

The Scholarship results came out this week and we were very pleased to find our students have had their biggest haul (10) in quite a few years. The following are the students that did us (and themselves) proud.

Matthew Poole  -  Physics, Statistics, Calculus
Shaun Bradley - Accounting, Geography, Economics
James Caughtrey - English, Economics
Eric Yang - Biology
Michael Blanks - Physical Education 

Great to note that the 10 scholarships were spread across 9 different subjects.