2012 – Page 2 – sportreview.net.nz

Is this burning an Olympic flame?

We’ve had a pretty decent Olympics, to say the least. Gold medals! Aussie baiting! Learning about our propensity to measure ourselves against the rest of the world sporting-success-wise in unrealistic terms!

The per capita medal website gets mad revenue from NZ targeted banner advertising.

The 2012 Olympics has been a gold medal bonanza for NZ, but more importantly, we learned a lot about ourselves and each other, with Val Adams and Nick Willis manfully (and womanfully) coping with the expectations of a nation and a nation’s media in a much, much more mature fashion than the nation. To our credit, we’ve reduced the time in which we go from ‘teenager denied Fall Out Boy tickets by the man’ tantrums to ‘hey you guys, they’ve done their best’ over ‘lost’ gold medals to a few minutes, way down from 25 years as per rugby world cup cycles.

Our rowers were obviously our stars, but I was most pleased for Keirin rider Simon van Velthooven, who got the tied-for-bronze medal after an agonising wait against an absolutely top class field. And our equestrians, who exuded an air of wanting to get all the facking horse riding bore out of the way fast, so they could get on with getting on the lash, what. Bravo.

This has been dubbed the ‘social’ Olympics, ‘cos people are using the internet now and that, in the same way that trips to the loo with a smartphone are dubbed the ‘social’ ablutions. And so, sportreview presents a selection of Olympic links. Enjoy.

Boris Johnson welcomes you to London.

Legendary gold medallist and Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins = Tyres from Spaced.

The Atlantic’s essential photo site In Focus have shots from the opening ceremony and the Olympic flame’s arrival – and here’s the first from the games themselves.

How would you go in the 100m against Usain Bolt? Spoiler alert! Not very well.

100m live blog from Toby Manhire.

“Almost fucked out of it there” – Yachting commentary to beat all yachting commentary (link fixed).

Find out which Olympic athlete shares your physique. Sportreview is evidently the equivalent of a Serbian table tennis player, one that looks like he’d kill a man in a second.

Potentially more awesome that any Olympic event: Nah, it was quite good – Hamilton man rides his BMX off a 60m bridge and lands in the Waikato River.

Championes

This feels unusual. The Chiefs’ normal role in the scheme of things is starting slow, get our act together mid-way through, knock over the NZ teams heading for the play-offs, then have a bitter, nothing in it, game with the Hurricanes. Which we usually lose.

Which is why the sight of our guys dancing around the Waikato Stadium turf in triumph is a bit of a shock. The 2012 Chiefs had a new coach, lots of new faces and supposedly lacked horse power in the pack, who’d struggle to get ball to the backline, who were full of good looking razzle dazzle, but unproven as a combination.

The office-worker-rugby-guy’s version of a MySpace self portrait

Turns out that was all bollocks. Rennie, Wayne Smith and Tom Coventry have created:

a) a forward pack that smashed the fearsome Crusaders in Napier early on, and turned over most everyone that came their way since (except for the *ahem* Crusaders in the last but one round)

b) a backline that survived Kahui’s season ending injury, with the new guys performing just as capably as the super stars, and super stars Williams and Cruden reaching new levels of, ah, super stardom, and

c) a team culture that from the outside (and on the Twitter) seems like family. Watch the team song, and AWESOME haka – it’s more feel good than Winnie The Pooh meeting ET

The Chiefs were consistent (pretty much) all season. Bouncing back from the thrashing by the Reds away was significant to me. They’d been flying high until then, and that was the point where the Chiefs of old’s wheels would have fallen off – but they didn’t, surviving even some late-season wobbles against the Crusaders and Hurricanes to secure the home finals spot. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a rugby match less than the one versus the Crusaders. They’re the Jason Voorhees of semi-final rugby – no matter how many times you chop their head off and throw them in the lake, they’re likely to be back two minutes later to jump out of a wardrobe armed with a meat cleaver.

But the Chiefs hung on, and rode their luck to get the home final. Despite some good work in the first half, the frequent-flyer Sharks had no answer to the Chiefs’ pack, and the backs did enough in the slippery conditions to take their first trophy, and becoming the third NZ team to win the title (I’m magnanimously not inserting a big Hurricanes-troll at this point).

Rennie has done OK for his first season to say the least. Even though we’re saying goodbye to some key players, the team is more youthful than McDonalds counter staff for the most part. Retallick, Tameifuna, Kerr-Barlow and Cane (who’s seemingly played more for the All Blacks than the Chiefs) are all at the very start of their careers, while Cruden, who seems to have been around forever, is actually only just old enough to shave. There’s no doubt we’ll miss Sonny Bill, both for his distracting presence on the field and the bums he puts on seats. It’d be great if he’s genuine about wanting to come back.

It’s a good time to be from the Waikato. I made it to two matches this year – the basketball-on-grass match versus the Blues at Albany, and the late competition match versus the Crusaders. Waikato Stadium is a pit of facepaint, flags, Waikato Draught gear and cowbells – hard to take if you support the opposition, but magic if you’re from round our way. The stadium is the right size to sell out regularly, and is just bloody LOUD – it’s a huge advantage to us, and it looked like a Hamilton-as-Rio cow cocky carnival last night.

And so, just after our netballers won NZ’s first transtasman netball trophy, the Chiefs are on top of super rugby for the first time. The only way it could have been any sweeter would have meant Stephen Donald somehow kicking the final points, but *cough* this’ll do. I hope it’s the first of a few more.

Henry: “Dickhead reffed 2007 quarter final”

NEWSDESK: Former All Black coach Graham Henry has revealed he became physically sick when he realised the IRB had appointed a dickhead to officiate the All Blacks 2007 world cup quarter final match against France. “Watching the tape, I counted 40 missed penalties, and that pass was a mile forward for the try. Dickhead. Even Raewyn thought so,” said Henry.

“If a bloke is that much of a dickhead, you’ve got to question his ability to ref a world cup quarter final.”

An IRB official who did not wish to be named, ruled out any behind the scenes dickhead-conspiracy. “Rugby prides itself as a sport in which everyone can participate, including dickheads. Wayne is living proof being a dickhead is no barrier to becoming an international referee.” Current All Black coach Steve Hansen refused to be drawn on Barnes, saying he’d prefer to concentrate on the dickheads his team were likely to face in the rugby championship.

Henry’s book (“What A Flamin’ Dickhead” – AKLGrammar Press, $35.99) presents more evidence on the Barnes-dickhead theory, including Barnes’ high-waisted shorts and running style.

Currie under impression he’s representing NZ in the Haka

NEWSDESK: New Zealand Chef De Mission Dave Currie outlined his plans to bring home the Haka gold medal at an awkward press conference in London overnight.

A New Zealand athlete who did not wish to be named said Currie has made himself at home in the Athletes village. “Dave’s…. you know. His ‘Barcelona 92’ training shorts have seen better days, and are a bit on the short side these days. It’s hard to get decent sleep with ‘Ka Mate Ka Mate’ coming through the wall at 4am every fucking night.”

Currie appeared unaware of any athlete unrest, or indeed that the Haka was not part of Olympic competition. “Our toughest competition will be the Aussies,” said Currie.

Trolling through the issues

There’s a new dawn in Auckland. It’s not a second harbour crossing made up of trained dolphins ferrying commuters to the city on their backs (sounds cheap Mr Joyce!), or a ‘no arseholes’ rule in the Viaduct, set to transform the area into Tuesday night Invercargill main street within a week.

No, it’s the return of the prodigal son, world cup winner John ‘mad butcher’ Kirwan, back from Italy and Japan and, much to Twitter and headline writers’ amusement – the abyss.

The best thing for Kirwan is there’s no matches for almost a year – the feelgood factor the Blues could generate by not actually playing rugby could well last until twenty minutes into their first match in 2013.

I hope JK goes well – but posts like these and comments like these it’s clear the Warriors, who announced a series of youth programme and community initiatives last week are miles ahead in the having-your-shit-together metric. Except for on the field. No-one has their shit together there.

In rugby-teams-that-are actually-playing news, the sportreview-approved Chiefs go into Friday night’s big ‘clash’ as underdogs, thanks to the Crusaders’ cheating ways. In a DAMMING EXPOSE, stuff.co.nz’s EPIC TROLL Mark Reason details all the ways the Crusaders have CHEATED their way to seven titles, including:

Waiting in the car park before games to influence referees by beating them up.

‘Signalling’ at Bridge

If the Chiefs do overcome the CHEATING Crusaders and go on to win the title, the Chiefs players would no doubt run into the chicks from the Magic, who’d still be downtown on the daiquiris after winning the ANZ Netball Championship. If the Chiefs and the Magic were to go full-Mad Monday together, it could result in a generation of Waikato sporting superstars that would dominate the national sporting scene for decades to come. sportreview.net.nz’s postion is: this must happen.

Epic troll is epic.

My new phone

Sonny and Chur

The Black Caps’ West Indian tours has been somewhat challenging so far. Difficult country to tour. Upheaval in the coaching staff. Multiple injuries. A mixture of jaded old pros and inexperienced youngsters. If the guys aren’t careful, it has all the hallmarks of going full Cairns / Paroroe / Turner.

The Black Caps arrive in the West Indies looking forward to playing some decent cricket.

Ross Taylor receives the latest injury report from medical staff.

Brendon McCallum answers the cry for back up.

John Wright sits the boys down for a bit of a motivational talk.

As I write this, the Black Caps are putting together a decent bowling performance to win the third one-dayer. The West Indies are no one-man team, but Chris Gayle is the key. He can cheerfully take our attack to bits and make it look depressingly easy. We need to get him and get him early – on paper, there’s no reason why our patched-up team can’t beat the West Indies, even at home. Of course, things written on bits of paper are faily meaningless when you’re being carted to all parts of the ground, and have to share your sweltering hotel room with an overly-enthusiastic calypso band. Let’s hope our guys can push on from here.

Back home, there’s now two options for central Auckland test cricket venues. This new one is a stone’s throw from the old one, part of proposed development for the tank farm. There’s no doubt the concept photos are spectacular, and its right-beside-the-water-ness would give Auckland a central city sporting venue at last. It would be great if the Victoria Park and Waterfront groups can work together to make sure this happens in some fashion, and the test-cricket-in-Albany plan is sent to, well, Albany forever.

Last thing on cricket – Mark Boucher has been forced to retire from cricket due to a nasty, nasty injury. Great shame for him, and he’ll be missed by South Africa – but I’ll remember him mainly for this tremendous sledging effort against Zimbabwe.

Sonny
The sporting media loved the Sonny Bill story, as they got to report reports from those ‘in the know’ – New Zealand rugby’s number one ‘in the know’ sources are the guy who runs the mini doughnut stand outside Eden Park, and Murray Deaker’s postie. They had Sonny Bill going to Japan to play for a corporation renowned for having shitloads of cash and a shithouse rugby team – and they were right. Rugby’s worst kept secret since ‘Stu Wilson is a bit of a twat’ was revealed at a press conference that reached turning-up-to-work-naked levels of awkwardness.

Touchingly, Sonny Bill seemed genuinely sad to be leaving the Chiefs and the All Blacks. Less touchingly, he’s still going. Suddenly he’s all about handshakes and loyalty, when up til now, all appearances indicate he’s mostly interested in negotiating deals for heaps of wonga. It’s a bloody shame, he seems to have fitted in really well at the Chiefs – and things will change on both sides after a year away in Japan and Sydney. I’ve got no idea if we’ll see him back, we’ll see, and we’ll see if it seems to matter as much as it does now. If he really cared about the team and his team mates he says he does now, he might have put that first.

Still best rugby stadium in NZ cc @chiefsrugby

I took sportreview jr to the rugger on Friday night at Waikato Stadium. Highly recommended, $12 for adults and $5 for kids, with a bouncy castle and little giveaways for the up and comers. Shame about the result, but.

In the tour, Bradley Wiggins is in yellow, and appears comfortable on the bike, and jumpy like a cat in a bag full of dogs off it, sweating at cameramen and anonymous losers on Twitter alike. Wiggins is cool-as-fuck, Paul Weller on a bike, all mod sideburns and Jimmy-from-Quadrophenia accent.

The Tour De France seems to be presenting no problem for Wiggins, but the mechanical doping rumours won’t go away.

He’s also the leader and beneficiary of the best managed, organised and funded cycling organisation in the world that, after winning Olympic medals galore decided to produce a Tour winner, and it looks like they may have one. I’m nervous for him, his broken collarbone exit from last year’s tour is fresh in my mind, and I think it’s preying on his too. Hang in there Wiggo.

NSFW language, unless your place of work is Team Sky at the Tour De France, in which case it’s fuckin’ game on.

Reading list

Probably the greatest essay on athletes’ bowel movements you’ll ever read.

One of those epic Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell email exchanges, this time talking about athletes in the modern age, with the mass media and the Twitter and that. Yes, it’s long, but it’s worth sticking with.

If you’ve ever wondered how you’d really fare at paintball against ruthless killers and that, here’s how.

An amateur bowler comes *this* close to bowling three 300 games in a row. Heartbreaking. And an amateur cyclist tries drugs and quite likes them. Eye opening.

Weepu eats Cruden

NEWSDESK: The All Blacks injury crisis deepened today when it emerged out of form half back Piri Weepu ate starting first five Aaron Cruden. “It’s a worry,” said Steve Hansen. “Dan’s hamstring strain, along with Aaron being in Piri’s stomach leaves us short, so we’ve called up Beauden Barrett. Piri himself could even cover first five once his heartburn settles down.”

Weepu told reporters he ate Cruden at a Hamilton Cinema, where it was ‘pretty dark.’ “When the lights came on, everyone was like ‘where’s Aaron?’. Yeah, you always regret eating a team mate, I’m gutted for him. Hopefully the boys can dig deep on Saturday night and win it for Aaron,” said Weepu.

Dave Rennie said being eaten was obviously a career setback for Cruden, and could limit his impact on the remainder of the Chiefs campaign. The eating is not without precedent, it was long rumoured that Colin Meads ate Keith Murdoch after the 1972 Grand Slam tour, until Murdoch was found un-eaten in the Australian outback years later.

Walk in the park

The Herald went big on Jeremy Wells‘ ‘Victoria Park as a cricket test venue’ proposal on Saturday with Steve Deane and Dylan Cleaver chipping in with editorials, and an epic ‘your views’ page. Let’s not mess this up – this is a fantastic proposal. We’re now a city with no central city sporting venue AT ALL (OK, Vector aside), and this proposal would bring crowds of happy, thirsty sports folk into the CBD without *too* much disruption and give test cricket a unique setting. The alternative options for test cricket (Eden Park, bloody ALBANY!) excite me as much as a ‘Danny Morrison, life coach’ audio book.

The Herald’s commentators berated the recently released city stadium discussion document for its very lack of vision – Auckland’s stadiums are beset by underinvestment, location and self interest issues and this document does little to sort that out. Set that against the example of the Gold Coast’s Skilled Park, a replica of Brisbane’s FANTASTIC Suncorp Stadium, only with one tier. When there’s demand for more capacity, they’ll simply build another tier on top, and she’ll be right, Bruce. As an Auckland sports fan and ratepayer, that’s the kind of vision I’d have liked to see in the vision document. In the absence of leadership from the city’s leaders, let’s help make Victoria Park happen.

Teh rugby
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the All Blacks’ two tests so far. The first one, cos the new look All Blacks, with a patented mix of youth ‘n’ experience WASTED the Irish, and looked bloody good. The second, because it was close, and we still won. Of course, as a former resident of the Republic, I was gutted for Ireland they couldn’t get over the line – but not *that* gutted. A key part of my personal arrogant All-Black-supporting folklore is that teams like Ireland and Scotland have never beaten us, so I took it in my stride. Still, I was unimpressed that with some NZ fans on Twitter ‘going for’ the Irish. I’m all for sportsmanship, but this is unacceptable. Support your world champion national team, we’ve been waiting to be able to say that for a while now, let’s make the most of it. Sound poo-covered jandal beatings all around.

For the All Blacks, everyone has played well, generally, but I’m most excited about Aaron Smith, the passing number nine. We’ve been down the ‘halfback as extra loose forward’ path for so long now – but with Marshall, Kelleher at half back, not to mention Andrew Hore, Ali Williams, the Franks, as well as arguably Conrad Smith, we’ve actually wound up with about 23 loose forwards on the park at a time. So, this return to simpler times where the half back actually clears the ball in a timely fashion is a welcome one and the backline looks better for the extra time and space. Next few years will be interesting when Smith and TJ ‘chosen one’ Perenara go head to head for the spot.

Oh, and three test-series. I like them, let’s have one every year.

Metro
You should really pick up this month’s Metro. Steve Braunais takes the most thoughtful look at the Blues’ season I’ve seen (great to see SB writing about sport again – still waiting for the football book!), and Donna Chisholm investigates concussion in our contact sports. The first thing I turn to though, is Duncan Greive‘s (of friend-of-sportreview Deadball, among other things) sport page – a pithy run through of things that matter and things you probably didn’t know. I’m very pleased to see Duncan contributing longer pieces, like the excellent Dylan Boucher piece a couple of issues back. Like I say, recommended.