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Kicking 2009 when it’s down

January 10, 2010 in cartoons, cricket, cycling, football, general sport, greatest hits, links on friday, media, rugby by Richard Irvine | 1 comment

Doing a half-arsed wrap up of the year is becoming a tradition here on sportreview – here’s 2009.

If there was one week that summed up 2009 for me, it was seeing the All Blacks *cook* with Italy’s Next Top Model contestants in Milan in the most embarrassing and wooden photo op since Don Brash walked the plank, before our second string players participated in a shitty, shitty match at the San Siro, deeply marred by some shocking officiating from an experienced ref trying to enforce god knows what version of the rulebook is on top of the pile. Any Italians unfamiliar with Rugby watching the match would have found the oval ball code as appealing as toenail ravioli.

Earlier that day, New Zealand qualified for the Football World Cup in front of a crowd wholeheartedly supporting their team.

I don’t want to get into a Rugby v Football debate (although I think the nation’s office kitchens are going to be ringing with that mid year), but I really wish the first of these scenarios was more like the second – clear rules, supporting and having fun, and winning. That would do nicely.

Here’s my year, in sport, in sportreview.net.nz and for me.

2009: big sport stuff

All Whites making the World Cup finals
All of a sudden it’s 1982 again. I’m sure I’m not the only one who this qualification kind of sneaked up on. I wasn’t paying that close attention to the qualifiers, and then suddenly we were two games away, and the whole country was going All Whites crazy and calling it ‘Football’. Wonders never cease. For a country used to grim, po-faced ’support’ of its Rugby heroes, where Grizz Wylie’s statuesque pose when watching matches is seen as a model for manhood everywhere, not, perhaps more appropriately, something to lean on to keep warm, the Latin explosion of noise and color in the Caketin that night could change our country’s sporting landscape forever. Could. Anyway. We really have something to look forward to this year. Leg Break or ‘lucky git’ as he’s known around here, will be our man in the Guardian’s Fan thingo.

Black Caps
Can’t I just skip this? Andy Moles was out faster than a sneaky fart in a meeting room, and suddenly Dan is player, captain, coach, selector and god knows what else – we would be deeply fucked if we lost him at the moment. We got a little taste of how un-fucked we are without Shane Bond in Dunedin before going back to being just fucked without him.  Everything in my July 2008 Black Caps coach application still applies – we need two things – 1. John Wright and 2. a plan.

Chiefs make the Super 14 Final
Not sure how they got on after that, ah har har

The All Blacks.
We’re still South Africa’s bitches, but how long they can continue a coaching panel the equivalent of a Benny Hill chase scene, I don’t know. I only got to one match, the bitter bitter disappointment in Hamilton. NZ’s other national sport of kicking the All Blacks when they’re down is still alive and well. To me, there wasn’t a lot of difference between the way we played on the end of year tour and in the Tri Nations, it’s just we executed better, and playing against poorer quality sides up north would have helped. It’s still not going well, though, is it? The All Blacks’ 2011 preparations (and make no mistake, it’s ALL about 2011) is still in the ‘Hey! Let’s build a waterfront stadium!’ phase. Must try harder.

New Zealand cyclists kick the world’s arse
New Zealand cyclists had 15 world titles this year, and just this week, up and comer Jack Bauer outsprinted Tour De France riders Hayden Roulston and Julian Dean to win the national Road Race title. We’ve got cycling talent coming out our ears, and it’s looking all on on the track and the road for the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. Pro wise, this year’s Tour De France should be a ripper, with Alberto v Lance and the new Brit Sky team. Can’t wait.

2009: sportreview.net.nz related highlights

Stalkipedia
I really enjoyed putting this together, there’s some great stuff in here, but NOT ENOUGH! I’m still accepting stalks team.

L&P take down
I wish more companies would piss me off so I could do This Kind Of Thing more often.

Podcasting
This is a lot of fun, and something I’m keen to do more of, if I can find a decent place to record them. The fist few have a certain charm, but the French preview one is where it hits its stride

The Herald showed some love

I won a copy of JRod’s first book

Best 2009 posts: Bowling through Wexford, Dan drops himself, Fight Club Duos, Keith Quinn on Twitter, Rattue joins the All Blacks, Tua / Cameron fight move, Bloggers at the Basin,

Best 2009 cartoons: Player Power, Dingo + shark, SuperDobbers, 18 and life to go,

Tech Talk with Phil Waugh – secretly probably my favorite thing I’ve done all year. Too weird?

2009: Rocking my world

Getting MySky
I CANNOT emphasise enough how much arse MySky kicks. Having long sent the VCR to the downstairs storage of doom, the ability to quickly ‘tape’ anything on a whim has changed my and sportreviewloveinterest’s lives. As a sport blogger, this means I can actually WATCH SPORT again – imagine that! It also means I can fast forward through the weather for the South Island – this makes me very happy indeed.

Starting a tumblr is a pretty low hassle way to make a neat site, and a great way to find new links and photos.

New Bike – conquered some sweet hills on this already.

Top 5 tracks in last.fm
1. The Kinks – This Time Tomorrow
2. Beck – Sing It Again
3. Ben Kweller – Thirteen
4. Harry Nilsson – Turn On Your Radio
5. The Velvet Underground – I Found a Reason

Film
In The Loop, Avatar 3D. I didn’t see many movies released in 2009 this year.

Books
Pathetic effort reading wise this year, due to watching too much iPod TV on the bus. I loved White Teeth and Cannery Row, while Man In Full made me very frustrated. Sport-wise, it was Summer 0f 49 and Tana’s Up Close, continuing the All Black tradition of mildly revelatory bios after they’re safely retired.

So, another year down. I hope you all are enjoying the site, I really enjoy your comments and having some larfs, especially on the twitter. My personal sporting highpoint this year is watching sportreview jr, who’s 19 months now, kick a ball – he hits it hard. He’s going to break the back of some poor unsuspecting net one day.

Related: best of 2008, best of 2006 one, two

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Catch a Tiger

December 1, 2009 in general sport by Richard Irvine | No comments

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Here’s Tiger winning The Masters, his first Major, by 12 shots way back in 1997. When was the last time you saw him smile like that? Most days, Tiger makes being the world’s most successful, famous and highly paid sportsman look as much fun as losing changes from an Excel spreadsheet.

Tiger’s love of privacy makes Howard Hughes look like Rodney Hide. He swears, he glares, and woe betide anyone who wants to talk to him. It says a lot that his best mate is ‘top’ NZ ’sportsman’ and prickly shit Steve Williams, a nightclub bouncer at Club Fuck You.

This current troubles will pass (he was crazy not to front-foot this in the media. WHAT are IMG getting paid for?), but I just hope he doesn’t retreat further into his shell because of it.

I know it must be tough being Tiger, but come on, Golf is fun. I have that hacker’s love of golf where I lie awake after a round thinking about that one sweet 7-iron that hit the green nicely, not the search for my third lost ball in the rough. I’d hate to see Tiger grimly march past Nicklaus’ 18 Majors with little joy. I want to watch him enjoy himself while he does it.

Tiger reading list:

The Guardian’s wonderful Lawrence Donegan profiles Tiger.

Another Guardian profile, linking to The man. Amen, a 1997 Esquire article on Tiger, when he was more trusting of the media. The Guardian profile asks:

Why should a man who, at 33, is in the prime of his life, who constantly expresses the joy his son and daughter bring to his life, who is reckoned to be a billionaire and who earns close to $2m a week even if he chooses to lie in bed, be so apparently fed-up and irritated?

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In the Dock

November 25, 2009 in general sport by Richard Irvine | No comments

Hilarious / cautionary tale of Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter, while off his tits on LSD:

The middling hurler — whose career record stands at 138-119 — claims he dropped acid not knowing it was a game day, and took the hill despite being “high as a Georgia pine.” He tells viewers about imagining Jimi Hendrix in the batter’s box, Richard Nixon calling balls and strikes and coping with a ball that constantly shifted in size.

Wikipedia has the full story.

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The sweep that stops a nation

November 4, 2009 in general sport by Richard Irvine | No comments

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via the twitter. This year’s cup had  so many jokes, eh.

Happily, in a related google search, I found the Office Pest blog.

NZ’s sporting JFK moments

October 27, 2009 in cricket, general sport, links on friday, new zealand, rugby by Richard Irvine | 6 comments

The Guardian has a list of six JFK moments, the ones so significant that the where-you-were and the who-you-were-with is tattooed (JFK moments are often painful) permanently on your brain.

So what are New Zealand sport’s JFK moments? Here’s a few to get started, and where I was at the time; get into the comments and tell me what I’ve missed.

1930 Phar Lap wins the Melbourne Cup – not born

1956 All Blacks beat South Africa: “I’m absolutely buggered!” – not born

1960 – Peter Snell wins in Rome – as above

1983 Graham Thorne presents the Cricket from Australia with a perm – watching sportreview sr. pissing himself laughing, not fully understanding what a girlyman ex-All Black Thorne was making of himself on the national box with this unexpected, bold hairstyle choice

1985 Coney and Chatfield hold out Pakistan at Carisbrook – bouncing up and down on the couch in Hamilton, about as excited as a 12 year old could be

1995 “The America’s Cup is now New Zealand’s cup” – down at the Viaduct, in its pre-Viaduct incarnation at 8am on a Sunday morning, with half of Auckland, seemingly

1999 The greatest fucking Rugby comeback of all time – in a Cricklewood flat in cloud of stunned silence with a mate. We didn’t go to the pub to watch, assuming we’d be there next week for the final. I’d spent about eight months talking the All Blacks and their ‘fast, mobile’ pack up to work colleagues. The croissant on my desk on Monday bought a lump to my throat

2006 Tana Umanga’s handbag goes for twenty odd grand on TradeMe – at my desk, head in hands, rocking gently back and forth

Auckland, New York

September 15, 2009 in general sport by Richard Irvine | No comments

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Sport’s top five Fight Club duos

August 12, 2009 in cricket, football, general sport, greatest hits, rugby by Richard Irvine | 5 comments

<SPOILERALERT> This post discloses plot details from David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999). If you haven’t seen Fight Club in the ten years since then, give yourself a cock punch. </SPOILERALERT>

Can we apply Fight Club’s plot twist that Tyler Duden is merely a macho, sexy figment of Ed Norton’s narrator character’s imagination to sport? It works with Calvin and Hobbes and Cameron and Ferris, after all. Yes we can, here’s a top five.

5. Matthew Hayden is a figment of Justin Langer’s imagination.

Matthew Hayden scared the shit out of world Cricket by standing two metres outside his crease, flogging attacks with his swagger, self-righteous Christianity based verbal abuse, and those brutal forearms that could take an eye out. If you were an opposing bowler, seeing that maniacal light in his eyes was far, far scarier than seeing the headlight of an approaching freight train while trying to get your stalled car off the track. Langer got lots of runs, too, but no-one ever noticed.

4. Tiger Woods is a figment of Phil Mickleson’s imagination

Poor old lefty. Phil’s stellar amateur career pointed to triumphs in a whole lot of Majors before happily retiring with the world’s biggest bag of Nacho Chips. Then along came Tiger, more force of nature than golfer, who grimly went about winning TRUCKLOADS of Majors, doing amazing shit, filming ever more self-reverential ads, getting bored and reinventing his swing every couple of years, and turning the air blue.  He made Phil wear a “Best player to have never won a major’ baggy sweatshirt until, agonisingly, 2004, when Mickleson eventually nailed the Masters. Phil and his alter ego really don’t get along, meaning Phil has spent the last decade looking ever more pissed off and whiny. Hilariously for everyone else, the pair are often forced to play together in tournaments and the Ryder Cup, where the atmosphere on the tee turns more icy than Hoth.

3. David Beckham is a figment of Gary Neville’s imagination.

Gary ‘n’ Dave were key members of Ferguson’s golden generation, the ever so reliable right back and the rock star winger who announced himself with a wonder goal and wasted no time marrying a Spice Girl. Beckham’s England captaincy, the falling out with Ferguson, the move to Madrid and the haircuts were all covered to death and made him Football’s biggest name, at least off the field. Meanwhile, Gary kept his head down, tided up neatly behind Becks on the right, and just got on with it. Still, deep down Gary was intense, wild (watch this til the end) and scary intense; when he snapped, he was terrifying, frankly.

2. Carlos Spencer is a figment of Andrew Merthens’ imagination.

You can tell by the haircuts. While Carlos rolled out ever-more-bizarre combinations of curls, bleach and goatees throughout his career like a some kind of NPC Cher, Merthens played it straight down the middle with short back and sides every time, the kind of thing that befits an ex-private schoolboy  and future Prime Minister. Merths used to run, but soon settled in to the role of All Blacks’ quarterback, doing the accurate passing and pinpoint kicking basics so well he mostly wound up getting picked. And winning, especially with the Crusaders. Up in the big smoke Carlos was pure rock and roll, strutting around Eden Park like Prince on his motorbike in Purple Rain, or Kiss’ Gene Simmons, with wipers kicks, netball passes and banana poppers*.  He’d have been right at home in the Harlem Globetrotters. Both wound up messing up a decent shot at a World Cup for New Zealand.

1. John McEnroe is a figment of Bjorn Borg’s imagination.

The Ice-Borg’s baseline game, with all the flair of a garage door, won him a record breaking number of Wimbledon titles, while his aloof, oh-so-European temperament had the mysterious, intriguing allure of a sort of demure Swedish Zorro. New Yorker McEnroe didn’t give a fuck about any of that and smashed his way into world Tennis intent on winning Majors and yelling very loudly. Borg and McEnroe’s careers only really crossed paths for three years; they first played in a semi final in 1978, and Bjorn’s defeat to McEnroe in the 1981 US Open ended his career; Borg left the stadium immediately after the loss, not bothering to stay for the ceremony and press conference. Mac had broken him – his serve and volley game, based on superb touch, was the antitheses of the Swede’s metronome-like style. Poor old Bjorn realised he had to get out of the way of this big sweary freight train that was busy grabbing Tennis by the nuts and squeezing. Hard.

*I made that up.

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Old Tom

July 20, 2009 in general sport by Richard Irvine | 1 comment

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As Tom Watson’s putt on the 72nd died a little to the right, every golf fan died a little inside, too.

The walk from the 18th green to the 5th hole for the playoff put back on all those years he’d shed throughout The Open. He looked tired, and the contrast with the seemingly seven foot tall Cink, who went about winning the playoff with the matter-of-fact efficiency of a Storm Trooper, was stark.

Tom conducted himself with down home dignity, of course, and while not many can match his record, I wanted the fairytale. Bugger that putt.

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Andy Murray’s new Fred Perry kit

June 16, 2009 in general sport by Richard Irvine | 2 comments

Andy Murray is about to enter the British-Wimbledon-hopeful vortex that sucked in poor old Tim Henman and left him with the personality of a pencil. He *may* have been like that before. Still, at least Andy’ll have some sweet threads, as Fred Perry have kitted him out in a new retro range. Want.

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No dinner ’til your topspin serve kicks

June 4, 2009 in general sport by Richard Irvine | No comments

Fantastic article from Slate: Wanted: Insane Tennis Parents – The only way to end America’s Grand Slam drought.

Unfortunately for the USTA, national organizations with comprehensive mission statements don’t produce tennis champions. Crazy tennis parents do.

While sociopathy—the utter lack of a conscience—undermines a society, it happens to be really useful on court.

I guess Tennis just brings out the fucking nuts in folk.

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