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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jesse Ryder is a bloody hero. Taking a year off an NZ cricket contract doesn’t just mean ‘not drinking piss’ or ‘getting your head together’. No, when he’s not not playing for his country or playing in the IPL or the Bonga Bonga Shitloads Of Wonga T20 competitions, Jesse is challenging a cricket commentator to a fight.
It’s a scientifically proven fact that cricket commentators are very, very annoying. Sure, we’ve all shouted at them from the couch, tweeted abuse, lazily fantasised about flicking Mark Nicholas with a wet towel or taunting Ian Smith with a cream bun, but only Jesse is manning up and genuinely looking to punch a cricket commentator in the face. Craig McMillan has wussed out, but I hope Jesse continues in his quest to mix it up with the microphone wielding blitherers. Not only would it make him a bigger folk hero than some kind of Lance Cairns / Shreck the Sheep hybrid, but this could be our best chance to improve the quality of commentary overall. Surely pundits will be less likely to talk a whole lot of self serving meaningless shit when faced with the possibility of players coming up to the booth and thumping them at the conclusion of their innings? Go Jesse.
I took sportreview junior to the Blues v Chiefs match at Albany stadium on Saturday night. I’m a fan of the stadium – the crowd is nice and close and there’s grassy banks on either end, it’s not dissimilar to Waikato stadium. But the stand we were in (on the open side of the ground) was a total shambles. Massive slow moving lines for tickets with no organisation in sight. No eft pos at food vendors (with bonus big queues). A cash-out eft pos stand that ran out of cash. In fairness, the crowd was much larger than I’d expected, maybe it took the administrators by surprise too.
I hope this is being worked on. Nothing would dampen a post-world cup glow of rugby enthusiasm like roll-up cash-paying rugby crowds being treated like people who enjoy standing in queues for expensive shit food more than rugby. Luckily, the match itself was a wall-to-wall-no-defence-and-miracle-try spectacular with a bonus fracas to make up for it. Let’s hope some of the RWC feel good factor trickles down to our own rugby crowds, or those watching from home will be seeing a lot more Eden Park-style empty seats in the background.
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.
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.
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.”
