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häkinakinaHosea Up on High2010 the centennial year of Mäori rugby was also a very good year forHosea Gear. The final of the three special games to mark one hundredyears since the selection of the first official Mäori All Blacks will beremembered for the storming try scored by Hosea which set the matchalight and saw the Mäori team come from behind to beat England35 – 28 and complete a clean sweep of the three match series.Hosea had a pretty good Super Rugby Series too, so it was a surpriseto most rugby fans when he wasn’t picked in the All Blacks Tri-Nations team, instead he was sent off to the Commonwealth Gamesin Delhi in the New Zealand Sevens squad – where he shone – andhelped win Gold.Having been excluded from the All Blacks earlier in the year it wasagain a surprise to some when he was selected for the end of yeartour to Hong Kong to play Australia - and then on to Europe to playEngland, Scotland Ireland and Wales.Hosea proved his fans faith in him wasn’t misplaced. He scoredthe first try in the opening match against England. A week laterhe scored the opening try against Scotland and went on to scoreanother in the 49 – 3 win against the Scots.And he helped seal the grand slam by again scoring the openingtry against Wales and another later in the game at the MillenniumStadium in Cardiff.By the end of the year he had racked up another two highlights.Against stiff competition Hosea Gear was chosen senior MäoriSportsman of the Year and The Albie Pryor Mäori Sportsperson of theYear, at the 20th Mäori Sports Awards last year.Hosea has come through the summer in good shape in fact a littlelighter than his normal playing weight but he expects to makethat up when he gets back into weight training. He’s back in theHurricane’s training camp and has a full Super rugby, Tri-Nations andprovincial season ahead of him.And then of course there’s the Rugby World Cup tournament startingin September.20T E P U N I K ö K I R I | K ö K I R I | K O H I - T Ä T E A - H U I - T A N G U R U 2 0 1 1