I was trying to figure out how to beat the 'get_one($obj)' method so that I could get a certain object type from under a specific page name.

For example, i have 2 blocks of news (same object of ArticlePage) which are 'current' and 'archive' ' and i want to list the two different lots

In the end I figured it out, by hovering over the page number in the CMS (in this eg it was 21), I can see the ID, and then i use this to get the DataObject Parent.

$news = DataObject::get_by_id("ArticleHolder", 21);

and follow it with below for the items

return ($news) ? DataObject::get("ArticlePage", "ParentID = $news->ID", "Date DESC", "", 5) : false;

Oh, if any of the SS team know of an easier way to get the ID of a page name via code (rather than manually finding it myself), I would appreciate it.

You can do it in a template by nesting 2 control blocks:

<% control Page(my-url) %>
<% control Children %>
...

Or in code by calling similar methods

$otherPage = DataObject::get_one("SiteTree", "URLSegment = 'my-url'");
return $otherPage->Children();