2011 was the year you could say ‘it’s all happening’ and be right. Earthquakes. An election. A world cup. What didn’t happen? Here’s a quick round up.

Rugby World Cup
As a nation, New Zealand did the vacuuming, put the sausage rolls in the oven and hosted the rugby world simply and well, despite the haters and grandstanding, which became less and less important as we went. As for the rugby – well, we bloody won it, didn’t we? Two months on, you only have to show me Graham Henry’s post-final-win-eyebrow gymnastics or Richie McCaw being eye-gouged and I’m glowing like those folk in Cocoon.

Beating the Aussies
After a world cup (remember that) where we did our lose-in-the-semi thing, That First Win In Australia Since Ever was an epic of fingernails on the floor. It was hard to know what kind of NZ cricket team we had post-captaincy switch (alright, it’s ALWAYS hard to know what kind of team we have), but the Tasmanian fightback showed we had some real heart – and hope for the future. Bring on the South Africans.

Super Tottenham
I haven’t mentioned them much on the site, for fear of jinxing them. After missing out narrowly last time, Spurs are quietly having a brilliant season and look very much at home in the top four. Ask me more about how it’s going after we beat Chelsea this morning.

Le Tour
One of the best and worst I’ve seen – worst because of the first week crashes that took Wiggins et al out – best because of the slow burning drama and eventual, worthy winner. Cadel deserved his win for the way he rode, and the way he’s ridden over the last few years. He won’t do it again though, and I hope for a few more fireworks next year. It’s been a fantastic year for NZ’s cyclists also, the folding of Pure Black Racing aside – hoping for a big medal haul on the track in London next year too.

Man of the year
Well, who do you reckon? Stephen Donald is a bigger folk hero than Bob Dylan, his journey from whitebaiting to world cup winner was more beautiful than an unattended burger restaurant. The whole country got the Beaver fever and I couldn’t have been more pleased. Here he is resting on the beach or my little tribute.

sportreview.net.nz highlights
A new daughter, other family stuff and employment related madness meant I’ve not been able to give as much care and attention to the site as I’d like – but I’m still proud of how it’s gone this year. I’ve done some of my favourite rugby writing ever on the back of the world cup, with the brouhaha over the jerseys beforehand, and the nervousness against Argentina, beating Australia in the semi, the final the highlights for me. Drinking was a reoccurring theme over the year, with the All Black selectors getting drunk and this little number about alcohol abuse in the north of England.

Twitter, obviously, is where all the former sports bloggers are hanging out these days – and most of the athletes. It’s possible to go from abusing someone on the field to abusing them on the internet in no time nowadays. Two twitter related posts: for the cricket and for the rugby. I love Powerpoint (even thought it was a slow year for sportreview cartoons) and loved this.

Of course, most thanks go to you, mysterious readers. This site is obviously a little labour of love, I do it for no other reason than I enjoy it thoroughly. sportreview.net.nz is the kind of crappy NZ sports blog I would like to read if this one didn’t exit – it’s extremely heartening to know others enjoy it too. Thanks, appreciate it.

Other stuff:

My top five listened to songs, from last.fm:
1. Harry Nilsson – Lullaby In Ragtime
2. Robyn – Dancing On My Own
3. Robyn – Indestructible
4. Joni Mitchell – Car on a Hill
4. Harry Nilsson – Always

I’ve done bugger-all film watching or reading this year. Drive was the best (only?) (current) film I saw at the cinema, and I’m working my way through Peter Guralnick’s Elvis Bios. TV wise, I’ve really got into Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad and Community. I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed the Discourse NZ podcast. All recommended.

Wishing you a happy and more settled 2012 – see you next year!

 Photos:

Me and Dan. I told him how gutted I was for him, but also how stoked I was for Stephen Donald.

Best rugby ground in NZ, still. Tremendous atmosphere for all three matches I went to there.

Eden Park felt like a proper international stadium during the RWC. Let’s hope they keep those temporary stands somewhere handy.

Future Tour de France champ.

Turns out other stuff has been happening that’s not rugby world cup related. Here’s a quick run down.

Sportsfreak has a petition going to keep domestic cricket on Radio Sport over the summer. It is your duty to support this fine initiative – one day, you’re not going to be able to put off painting that deck any longer. Do YOU want to listen to Des from Whanganui’s stream of conciousness talkback on why we should have lost the RWC while you do it? I farkin’ don’t. Support cricket, sign up.

“But don’t the writers write to the level of the fans? “Sports fans here are pretty well informed. I think they would appreciate a greater sense of journey being brought to describing sports events. They don’t start at two o’clock at kick-off. They start days beforehand.” – Tim Wilson on NZ sport writing via Quote Unquote

Long read from Wired about the new America’s Cup catamarans, and testing them on the Hauraki Gulf. Looks like the next regatta will be the yachting equivalent of playing T20 cricket on crystal meth, inside a Ferrari driven at high speed. Masochistically, I’ll kind of miss the maddeningly-slow tension build up, Dennis Conner and the lawyers.

The Premiership has gone goal crazy, with freak results every weekend – it’s going to be a great year, I look forward to Man City pulling off a Newcastle style collapse and Alex Fergusson finally exploding from stress, they look to be the obvious highlights. Meanwhile, seven Tottenham wins on the trot. I like it.

Shark pool!

Some guy takes LSD and tries to recreate Doc Ellis’ rumoured actual-LSD -no-hitter on a video game. Doc Ellis himself explains.

Subbuteo! It’s alive and kicking and is more than life or death to nerds everywhere – watch this guy win the Subbuteo world cup, then go all mental. Stick that up your XBox.

We’re smoking! Go easy to Paris! Wise words from Jens, via the Dropkicks.

Kenny Powers, K-Swiss CEO is farkin’ hilarious and a great example of viral sports-orientated marketing.

So. Sport and that. Have to say, actual sport to watch has been a little thin on the ground with the Super 15 at a sedative point of the competition and the Black Caps being on the world’s longest holiday. Still, we DID get another classic piece of Alex Ferguson media relations to enjoy this week – I reckon he gets Darth Vader to help him brush up on press conference technique. Sunday morning’s Champions League final (at a very civilised time, NZers!) could be a classic, or it could be a classic ‘cancel each other out’. Be grateful though, the alternative final could have been Real Madrid v Chelsea, in what would have been the nastiest match since Oscar the Grouch took on Judith Collins at cage fighting. I predict 1-0 to Barca, with Messi nutmegging Ryan Giggs, tweeting about it, dribbling through the defence three times before smacking it into the net off Fergie’s face. Looking forward to it.

The big story in Rugby has been Dan Carter and Richie McCaw signing back up with NZ for four more years. The NZRFU is all about flexible contracts these days, with sabbaticals, casual Fridays and god knows what else on the menu. sportreview’s admiration for Richie McCaw went up about tenfold when he decided to re-sign at his local rugby club, doing the presser from a bar leaner.

Where would one expect the captain of one of the world’s most successful sporting teams to make such a momentous announcement?

Parliament Buildings for the ubiquitous prime ministerial photo opportunity? A swank golfing resort? The red-carpeted lobby of some five-star hotel (though there aren’t many of those left in Christchurch)?

Nope. Richie McCaw – who hails from a family farm in the Hakataramea Valley but a proud Cantabrian now – opted instead for his local footy club.

The only way he could have done it in a more Kiwi fashion is if he’d done a yard class and spewed $5 of chips on a TV camera. On ya. Now, the focus turns to Sonny Bill signing up – the big issue seems to be letting him smash people over in-between matches. Considering how comfortable the NZRFU have been with All Blacks smashing people over in bars in the past, I reckon the deal is as good as done.

On Wednesday night, I tuned in to watch the State Of Origin. I was a big fan in the 90s – Graham Lowe, Alfie Langer masks, Cockroaches, big Mark Geyer, big Marty Bella, state against state, mate against that guy that shat in that hotel corridor, big men sorting their differences out with their fists and each other’s faces. Fantastic stuff. But my GOD, I caught about 15 minutes of the build-up to Origin One (as everyone INSISTS you call it), and was convinced Australia was about to collectively disappear up it’s own arse so far that they’d somehow disappear and pop out as a nation somewhere on the Afghanistan / Pakistan boarder and be forced to make a new life for themselves without all the sharks and minerals and that. It was that over the top – interviews with the player’s families in the crowd, Phil Gould wandering beneath the goalposts looking like he was trying to find his way out of the stadium after a messy corporate function three weeks previous. Have to confess, I watched about half an hour of the match and went to bed. Some things are just more important than sport.

Seve Ballesteros died this week at 54.

Holding a slender lead in The Open of 1979, with Jack Nicklaus breathing down his neck, Seve was fearless from the tee, swinging hard and landing erraticly, missing 8 of 9 fairways when he took his driver. In the clip below, he gives his drive everything, lands 60-70 feet right of target in the car park, delicately lofts his ball back onto the green and rolls it in for birdie. He won the tournament.

Sure, Jack had fetching taste in knitwear and 18 majors to Seve’s 5, but there’s little doubt who’s cooler. Never forget about style and imagination in sport, team, they’re  important. Danny Blanchflower‘s quote seems appropriate: “The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

- Lawrence Donegan on Seve

- Photo gallery

A McSweeney’s review of Tony Hawk’s book contains this neat little passage:

Note: Starting in the early eighties, Hawk dominated ramp skating in ways that would be literally impossible to overemphasize. I’m not merely talking about his success in contests, although until he retired in 1999 he was all-but unbeatable, but rather I’m referring to the extent that his innovation and abilities consistently eclipsed those of his peers. To watch him skate was, and to a degree still is, to gaze into a widening chasm between skateboarding’s present and past. Whenever he dropped in on a ramp, the accepted boundaries of the sport were in a thrilling, beautiful flux.

Bill Simmons at a memorabilia convention:

(see also Simmons’ write up on breaking news on twitter)

Plus, two awesome stories from last night’s Campbell Live – paddock hacks, a yet to be made film about farking about in paddocks in munted cars, and Mahe Drydsdale living the dream, if your idea of a dream means getting up very early and sitting in the water.

These sin-binned-hockey-player-taunting green men made me laugh a lot, especially when one pretends to cry (via @cam_mcmillan)

Poor Wayne Rooney, can’t even have a pint in peace

In alternate reality comes to life news, Maradonna tuns out for Tottenham. He’s no Steffan Freund.

Casual! Casual! Casual! He’ll regret that quite spectacular own goal, and that haircut

- Jeremey Coney interview:

“I did get on the field in front of Bay 13 at the MCG. I can remember having an exchange with a hostile crowd down there. I did give some back – which was stupid. “Ah, look, we’ve got a young goose here, there’s only 35 shoplifting days to Christmas, Cornery,” they shouted. Then they started to throw marbles and they were pinking me on the back of my jersey. There must have been a hundred marbles around me and I thought I was going to roll an ankle. Then they started throwing pies when they ran out of marbles. And that attracted the birds. I had undulating ground underfoot and above, flying wildly around me, were birds swooping to attack these bits of meat. It was a disaster. And it was from that day on that I was solely a slip fielder.”

- Gideon Haigh’s sweet tribute to England’s Chris Tavere:

“As an ersatz opening batsman, Tavaré did not so much score runs as smuggle them out by stealth.”

- How A $500 Craigslist Car Beat $400K Rally Racers:

“I once asked Bill why he insisted on going through every spectator section crossed up and with the engine banging off the limiter. “Dude,” he said, “I don’t care if it costs me a couple of tenths. It makes the fans go nuts.”

- The top ten Roy Keane battles:

“The two had been grappling for an hour or so before McAteer responded to a Keane foul by miming writing motions, mere days after the midfielder had said he’d rather buy his son a Bob The Builder CD than Keane’s autobiography. Soon afterwards, they chased for a loose ball, Keane elbowed McAteer in the head, and off he trudged.”