Month: May 2010

Black Caps T20 World Cup exit FAQ

Q: What the fuck? What the fucking fuck?

A: We went out to England, who’d already qualified for the next round, minus their best player, who went home to help his wife have a baby.

Q: Their best player went home to have a baby? Can’t they ALL have babies? We’d win then, eh?

A: Getting every England players’ WAG pregnant and due to give birth around the time of our second round encounter would have proved morally and logistically challenging. And then where does it end? Do we get all the Aussies’ WAGs pregnant too? And what about Lara Bingle? What if we’d got her pregnant just before she split from Michael Clarke? She seems pretty unstable now, judging from the headlines of womans’ magazines sportreview.net.nz can’t help but glance at while walking to the bus. Imagine her as a solo mum, pushing a pram around a mall all jacked up on hormones. Things would get even freakier than they are now.

Q: But jesus fuck, you told us we were the dark horses! We were the dark horses, right?

A: Well, yeah, one of the pre-reqs of being a dark horse is playing well and that.

Q: But we’ve got a top order capable of pummelling attacks like Tong Grieg pummels the English language!

A: Blame cow corner.

Cow corner – the dream: In the mind of an NZ cricketer, cow corner is a magical place where cows frolic with dolphins and fly above the water to a happy place, a place of glory, a place where no harm can possibly come.
Cow corner – the reality: trouble.

The Black Caps batsmen’s obsession with cow corner, and weird refusal to pay ANY shots on the off side throughout their innings against England would prove to be their undoing, with no less than 43 batsmen serving catches up to square leg like meals on very disappointing wheels. Yes, their shot selection could be questioned. At least they’ve stopped trying to ‘feather’ the straight ones into the stumps for the moment, small mercies and all that.

Q: That Ryan Sidebottom’s really, really, really annoying, isn’t he?

A: Yes, the fact he runs like a page 3 girl is most annoying for me.

Q: Where to from here for NZ?

A: First we play Sri Lanka three times in the USA, in the “Yee-ha!” series, for the “Hoo-boy!” trophy, bought to you by “Riding around in pickups hitting letterboxes with baseball bats and taking a heck of a lickin’ off the old man the next day,” to bring the charms of leather on willow to an un-enthused nation, following football’s excellent example. After that? God only knows. FAQs like this probably aren’t helping, but neither is cow corner.

Championes (league), Championes (league), ole, ole, ole

We are fourth. It seems all those old Spurs records like never finishing top four, never beating Chelsea, never beating Arsenal, records that usually go “the last time Tottenham did X, Gary Linneker was playing…” are starting to tumble. Finally.

This run of nine wins in eleven games, including taking three points off Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City in the last month to seal fourth and the Champions League spot is totally unexpected. After 2006’s Lasagne, I thought  we’d never make it, and spend eternity battling Villa and Everton for sixth spot in a not-quite-good-enough Premier League purgatory, changing managers every  18 months in a sadistic, perpetual false-dawn cycle of rebuilding, then being shit.

And honestly, Harry Redknapp was not my ideal managerial candidate. A right Del-Boy wide boy that swooped for half a dozen eastern Europeans every time  the transfer window, before selling all his decent players to, well, us, I wasn’t holding out much hope. I was wrong, he has achieved more than any Tottenham manager in years, actually DOING SOMETHING IN THE LEAGUE is the true test of a club, not just nicking a League Cup every decade. I haven’t been as happy as a Tottenham fan as seeing us not just go one nil up, but keep on attacking City in the final minutes. That’s my Tottenham. This means a lot. I may have gone a bit mad on the Twitter.

It will be quite a summer, with a World Cup on, and Harry with a bulging checkbook. God only knows who we’ll get in, we have a very strong side, with Modric, Bale, Huddlestone and Dawson the stand outs for me. Maybe we could use one more big centre half, and one striker of true international class. And some shirts that haven’t been vomited on. Anyway – come on you Spurs.

ICC promise most confusing tournament format ever

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NEWSDESK: Anxious to live up to standards set by 2002 ICC Champion Trophy’s ‘Super Confused Round’ and the 1999 England World Cup’s ‘Baffle Raffle’, the ICC are promising further innovation in the current T20 world championships. ‘We’re going to make the NRL Finals look like a design classic – we’re expect grown men to weep trying to work it out,” enthused ICC spokesman Brampton Bender-Brampton.

“We gathered the finest minds the English public school system has produced, put them up in a Sussex Castle-slash-Conference Centre, gave them tea, gin and a whiteboard and left them to it,” Bender-Brampton told worried-looking press. “When they came back three weeks later asking for erasable markers and more pornography, we knew we had the right team on the job.”

Task Force Shit-Gaggle member Little ‘Lord’ Chortleroy was struck by the dedication the working group showed whenever they were fully concious. “At one stage we were considering teams qualifying for a ‘Prove Who Admires And Respects The Queen The Most’ round, to be presided over by Prince Phillip and Rudi Koertzen, but we felt it played England’s hands too much. Phillip was frightfully disappointed when we woke him up and broke the news.”

For 2010, the West Indies’ spread out geography was taken into account to maximise confusion further – “Some teams may even turn up at the wrong venue altogether! As for fans – well, those without a super yacht of their own may well be best off staying home,” said Bender-Brampton, as he dodged burning copies of Wisden being lobbed in his direction.

Players are cautiously welcoming the challenging mystery format. “Doesn’t matter, mate, I’m still biding my time, waiting to punch either Duckworth or Lewis in the face. I hate those guys,” said New Zealand Captain Daniel Vettori.

Far Canal

Ma’a Nonu has hit the headlines in the eye with a  dreadlock like a dancer at a Fat Freddie’s Drop concert, turning the airwaves blue after his team scraped past the Chiefs from ‘We were good last year’.

Nonu’s outburst has blown the lid off the Hurricanes’ rampant swearing culture, where groups of players meet midweek at each others’ homes to swear behind closed doors. This kind of thing happens during matches all the time, but has gone unreported up til now, due to the age old ‘what happens on the field stays on the fucking field’ Omertà. sportreview.net.nz can unveil Andrew Hore as the ring leader of the Hurricanes’ swearing ring:
Andrew Hore: “Fucking catch it or I’ll fucking waste you!”
Andrew Hore: “Charge down! In your fucking face!”
Colin Cooper’s fears this poor example will affect up and coming players has already been realised:
Aaron Cruden: “Stop tackling me. You fuckers.”
While this language is familiar to anyone who’s traveled on a bus with schoolchildren or pensioners, or spent any time socially with six o’clock news presenters, in cases like these, journalists must get outraged and demand fulsome apologies, despite using these words and worse while performing mundane tasks like  putting the cat out.

Handily for Nonu, the four days of headlines so far is golden publicity for his post rugby career – he aims to make the transition to stand up comedian with the stage name Ma’a ther-fucker. Ahem.

Another who’s made the leap from sport to comedy is Herald writer Chris Rattue, who, faced with the choice of writing a column about how he didn’t have any ideas for a column this week, or the warm familiar bubble bath and highball that is his favorite topic, Banging On About Robbie Deans, Chris chose BOARD. Kind of like his audience. Bored. These jokes write themselves some weeks.