First job is the clear-out. All Blacks Nonu, an eye-liner-ed maverick that won’t listen to The Man, and Hore, a disappointing captain despite the ginger beard and that, are out. Dumping two current All Blacks is as bold a move as putting up a really, really cringey sign right beside your main airport, but it’s no surprise, the indications were were there all along if people had been paying attention:

More players are expected to go – hilariously, the enigmatic tweeter Corey Jane seems pretty disappointed not to be included in the first cut, and has been flouncing on and off Twitter in protest, when flouncing around a rugby field properly might be a better move. Throwing out All Blacks like a Dublin nightclub bouncer is a new thing for super rugby in New Zealand – all eyes will be on Hammett next year, if he hasn’t been made All Black coach by then.

Still, the latest challenge to the Hurricane’s title challenge is stuff.co.nz’s attempt to bring the team down from within. They’ve imported their very own Stephen Jones lite, Mark Reason, to provide some fist thumping, claret slurping, yorkshire pudding farting, jolly hockey sticks rhetoric to really set the cat among the grouse. This week, he aimed both barrels at Hammett and the wayward Hurricanes:

Nonu’s propensity for yellow cards and dissent is not acceptable. Hore’s drinking is not acceptable. Weepu coming back from injury overweight is not acceptable. Jane tweeting dissent is not acceptable.

Reason, who mysteriously googles very poorly and probably looks like an injured Piri Weepu, is obviously taking his ‘wind everyone up’ brief seriously, but he’s trying too hard. Outraging New Zealand rugby fans is  easier than locating a dickhead in Australia – we’re unhappy when we win, let alone when we lose. Most people’s abiding memory of winning the 1987 world cup is being upset at that dork waving behind David Kirk. Word on the twitter street is that Reason is only starting to rev the Land Rover, and will be full steam ahead trolling the rugby public by the time the world cup comes around. Thanks, stuff.co.nz, that’s just what we need.

The Black Caps showed they were prepared to win ugly; make no mistake, this was an ugly win, possibly up to full Ricky level on the sportreview.net.nz Ugly-ometer:

Ugly scales up from L-R

For this match, sportreview.net.nz made the rare effort to actually review some sport, sacrificing time that could have been spent unconscious to stay awake and watch the entire Black Caps innings. Bono would have done a better job of opening the batting than McCullum in this match – our new tactic of building a platform for wickets-in-hand fireworks later in the innings means McCullum now bats at entirely the wrong end of the line up – sort it out! Taylor and Ryder played it safe to get us a reasonable total, but traditional one day tactics dictate the  ‘accumulation’ period usually lasts between overs 18 and 35. New Zealand’s accumulation period may be still going – it was an innings best described as ‘gelatinous’, but, on a pitch more dry and dusty than 48 hours in a Koru Lounge with Phil Goff, it would do. Then this happened:

In the cricketing equivalent of that Australian schoolkid chucking that bully about, the Black Caps surrounded Du Plessis, who’d just run out the competent De Villiers like schoolboys around a well worn copy of Playboy to let him know he’d fucked up, if he hadn’t worked it out already. The ensuing fracas lead to fines and bad examples for youngsters watching. Let’s have a look at the Black Caps’ crimes in slow motion:

Stryris and Vettori attempt to manoeuvre Du Plessis into training ground set-piece move ‘Black Cap sandwich’. 12th man Kyle Mills, who was just passing by, helpfully offers the South African a drink. Of choke-a-cola.

Du Plessis shoves Mills, in the process setting the game back years in the vital USA market, because nothing looks as ‘wussy’ as when cricketers fight, not even cyclists. Vettori tries to rescue the situation by telling Du Plessis to use his bat at least.

Ross Taylor, in his role as aspirant captain comes in to show his angry face to precisely zero effect, while Southee shows his growing maturity by clapping in an insincere manner. A garden gnome (in red) tries to restore order.

Styris and Du Plessis are nominated to kiss and make up on behalf of the sides by their captains, and play resumes.

Did the Safas choke? Well, a little bit. Maybe. But, they came up against a New Zealand team that discovered their self belief down the back of the couch, and used it to turn the heat on South Africa like Gordon Ramsay with a knife in each hand and sand in his undies; Stephen Fleming would have been proud.

For choking students, this match closely resembled the All Blacks’ loss to France in the 1999 rugby world cup semi final – decent team, handy lead, a few signs of life from the opposition, then folding like a cheap card table. Hard to take for the Proteas and to be honest, Kiwi sports fans should wait for the All Blacks’ next world cup performance (which is happening soon I hear) before throwing too much shit their way.

I was very pleased for Jacob Oram, who took some vital wickets and a stonking catch – he showed exactly how much we’ve missed him over the years, and how people who’ve criticised his place in the team are cocks.

Like much of the country I imagine, I went to bed after the first innings and awoke to a big surprise, roughly equivalent to a horse’s head in the bed. Considering our form going into this tournament, and the stumbles along the way, we can be very pleased with making the semis, especially as we knocked over a proper big team in the quarters to get there. Sri Lanka at home will be tough, but fuck it. Bring it on.

If you’ve made it this far, here’s more quarter final coverage, that’s better than what you’ve just read, to be honest:

The C-word – crucket.co.nz (check out the awesome comment on this post!)

Andy Bull’s Guardian sport blog

The Outside Edge – still pinching myself

How much fun was it? Cricket is the perfect sport for This Kind Of Thing, not too much physical exertion for the oldies, and lots of space in between the action for farking about. Plus Adam Parore got hit with a bouncer while being a cock. That was a highlight.

Some of these guys could still be playing for the Black Caps. The Greatbach / Astle partnership in particular was as smooth and brutal as a gang fight in a butter factory. That said, the years haven’t been kind to Gavin Larsen’s bowling. Nor Sir Richard’s, who doesn’t play a lot these days, unlike Ewan Chatfield, who still turns out for his club “if they haven’t got enough players.” Bless. Tana Umaga, though, that guy could play for the Black Caps *now*. As could bloody Marc Ellis.

You there! This is what your hair looks like!

Subtle Rexona product placement.

Our PM smiled and waved a bat at Shane Warne’s friendly bowling, but good god; as a nation, we need to improve our banter. Ben Hurley struggled manfully to lift the standard, but John Key – is “Liz says Hi” the best you can do? It’s hardly “I can smell the uranium on your breath” is it? It doesn’t even make sense. Warne showed us how it was done with an offhand and off color crack about the TradeMe prize winner’s wife – the crowd went quiet as they tried to work it out. Warne’s a great sport, we couldn’t have asked for a better heavily botox-ed pantomime villain for this event. He needs to bowl his underarms a bit straighter though.

The whole day, complete with the perfect venue and rugby and Hobbit luminaries, was a raging success, not to mention a tribute to Stephen Fleming’s mana, determination and political and organisational skill. Surely there’s a role for him somewhere in the national setup in the near future?

I do have two grumbles – the TAB made their beachhead in the nation’s living rooms even bigger with their guy Mark Stafford doing much of the TV interviewing. He may be able to ask softball questions OK, but do you want or accept Goldstein or the Marlboro Man doing the same? I don’t, and I don’t see the difference. And, Ian Smith’s mean-spirited, un-funny comment about Geoff Allott still bothers me. Fuck off Ian Smith, you dreary know-all bore.

Predictably, our sporting media found Jesse Ryder’s waste of time tweet while fucking about on the internet researching the issues of the day, and created a ‘mediashitstorm‘. Mediashitstorm* is defined in the Oxford Feckin Massive Dictionary All Journalists Are Contractually Obliged To Keep On Their Desks as a media-enabled variation of storm in a team cup, surrounded by a veil of shit, disguising the fact there’s not actually a story in the cup. Those in the Black Caps’ communications department can thank their lucky stars Critter Twitter was not around in years gone by:

The most glaring absentee from the Black Caps’ Twitterati is Dan Vettori, who claimed at a press conference ‘he wasn’t a narcissist like Styris‘. sportreview.net.nz can reveal Vettori instead uses ‘Vetter’, an extremely exclusive social networking site for those that understand the pressures of being captain, selector, coach and extremely exclusive social networking site administrator, where he happily ‘Veets’ about his breakfast most days.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of all this Creeting Tweeting is that international cricketers put their trousers on one leg at a time, and get paid out by the missus, same as the rest of us.

A spokesman for Yardglass, Cistern and Crack said the athlete’s village design was consistent with their earlier work. “We need a bit of perspective – no-one’s shat in anyone’s bed yet.” The spokesman pointed to several years experience decorating student flats in Dunedin with a 65% bond refund strike rate as well as innovations like astroturf carpeting, longdrop toilet conversions and a fridge in the lounge.

“Athletes bringing a synchronised swimmer back to their room may want to leave the light off, but that’s standard practice where we’re from.”

YC&C admitted cultural differences and the fact games officials thought their architectural model was something someone had spilled had lead to confusion, and promised emergency remedial work immediately. An engineer was later seen heading to the athlete’s village with an industrial roll of Glad Wrap.

Fresh concerns emerged last last night about a related Otago events management company’s plans for the opening ceremony titled ‘Slumdog 500′, involving a number of barely road worthy vehicles, drunk driving and civil unrest.

A sportreview.net.nz reporter went undercover to meet Healy in his hotel. “He was keen to do a deal. He even demonstrated a few fucking idiotic comments in the room to show he could do the business. It could have just been him talking, but still… they were pretty idiotic.”

Healy outlined how it would work:

HEALY: “I’ll be in the booth just after the first drinks break. Richie’ll come on first crapping on about the score or something, then I’ll come in with something fucking idiotic.”

REPORTER: “How will we know it’s our comment?”

HEALY: “You’ll know, mate. You’ll know.”

Our reporter said “Healy delivered the goods – it was like clockwork. First thing out of his mouth was ‘Here comes Ricky Ponting, you can tell by his arm hair he’s got the freshest armpits in the game. That’s the mark of a true Aussie champion.’ We could’ve cleaned up at the bookie’s with that and fully got our money’s worth.” Healy went on to deliver two more fucking idiotic comments during that day’s play, causing his fellow commentators to remark on their idiocy at the time.

Healy’s Channel Nine colleagues were saddened that Healy has bought the fucking idiotic into disrepute: “This kind of fucking idiocy needs to be weeded out of the game, so we can get back to a more innocent, genuine kind of fucking idiocy,” said Bill Lawry.  When confronted with the allegations, Healy challenged our reporter to pick out the planted comments from his normal commentary: “Mate, just about everything I say is fucking idiotic – that goes for in the booth, and at home. That’s the mark of a true Aussie champion.”

Justin Vaughan, who lives in Auckland, “whinged like a little bitch”, declined the offer of a fight and “ratted out” Jughandle’s group to stewards. He also performed poorly in an impromptu boat race, consuming a mere three chardonnays over the course of the match, however Jughandle did concede Vaughan may have been unaware he was participating in said race.

Jughandle has labelled Vaughan’s behavior as unacceptable and called for a review of minimum alcohol levels at grounds: “Mate, I reckon Helen Clark would be better value on the piss. Guys like him should be breathtested at the gate to make sure they’ve got enough down them.”

This will not stand. We cannot allow shitheels like Hayden to appear in our papers, unless it’s underneath ‘Australian ex-cricketer in punch in the face tragedy’ headlines or the like. There is no reason why Kyle Mills, say, couldn’t hold a card and look gormless to endorse this card.

So – Photoshop competition. Fire up your favorite image editing app (If you don’t have Photoshop, Pixlr.com is handy, or even MS Paint will do – sportreview.net.nz is no stranger to lo-tech, as regular readers will know) and get your entry in by 6pm NZ time, Sunday 8 August.

Here’s what you need to get underway:

- Original scan (jpeg, 183KB)

- Clear cut with blacked out sign (gif, 83KB)

Email your entry in either jpeg or gif format (ideally 500 pixels wide) to richard (at) sportreview dot net dot nz. You can also email me for the .PSD file of the above picture if you promise not to laugh at my pathetic photoshop skillz.

Points will be awarded for 1. being funny and 2. making Hayden look like a twat. See the entries after the jump…

The winner will get my copy of the Sports Cafe ‘What Were They Thinking” DVD, notable for the Marc Ellis v Zinzan Brooke parallel parking competition. Here’s the only reference I could find online, and it’s a scathing review. Ah har. So, not a very good prize then, but I *may* find something else to throw in during the week, or even throw a Moro bar in the courier bag, a real one, to sweeten the deal. It’s all about Photoshop, and  glory, after all.

I’ll publish a selection of the best entries here – good luck. Here’s a couple of mine to get us underway.

First entry is in from @Naly_D of the Dropkicks – can you do better?

Here’s one from Subash of The Cricket Couch, who has an excellent pic of James Anderson and a donkey on his site:

JRod from Cricket With Balls *wants* the DVD, making me question his judgement and sobriety.

Hadyn Green of Public Address says ‘I told you I was shit’. Chin up chap, I’ve done worse.

Very strong entry from AntsGardiner – does anyone else think he’s starting to look like Jacob Oram?