Author: Richard Irvine

Welcome to sportreview.net.nz - here's a bit about the site. Here I am on Twitter, or email me at richard (at) richardirvine dot com.

Stalkipedia is go!

Ever met a famous sportsperson? Got a funny story about it or a photo? sportreview.net.nz’s new project is Stalkipedia – a community chronicle of sporting stalking.

I want your stories and your photos – the more stalks we capture, the more fun it’ll be.

You get BIG bonus points for a photo! That’s me on the right with Glen Osbourne – no great story, he was most accommodating to have his photo taken with someone that drunk. Most interesting thing – CHECK OUT THE SIZE OF HIS HAND!

All the details are over on the Stalkipedia page.  Anyway, here’s a proper story to start off – the time I met Colin Meads.

Target: Colin Meads.
Stalker: Richard, sportreview.net.nz
When: 2002
Where: Muddy Farmer pub, downtown Auckland. The loo, to be precise
Details: I was having a few quiets late one Friday night, when I spied an array of then-All Black coaches and administrators regularly wobbling past our table. John Mitchell. Jock Hobbs. Colin Meads. The Hurricanes had played the Blues that night at Eden Park, and those guys were getting stuck in.

I kind of forgot all about them until I went for a slash and came around the corner into the urinals and nearly bounced off this man-mountain coming the other way. I looked up and saw the most tremendous eyebrows. I can’t stress this point enough – as someone often accused of being well brow-endowed, I was impressed. Colin makes Graham Henry look like Kate Moss. The brows belonged to non other than Colin Meads, the man, the legend, etc. He was bloody huge. I had to say something.

Me – “Can I shake your hand?”

Colin Meads – “OK”

*shakes hand*

Me – “Having a big night?”

Colin Meads – “Big night… *significant pause* ….ah ha. Biiiiiiiig night.”

And that’s it. I doubt he’d remember me. On reflection, I’d have preferred to meet our greatest in somewhere other than a pub toilet. Still, you have to seize the day, right?


Update: the first stalk is in! Mark encountered foul-tempered ex-Chelsea striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in Cardiff. Read all about it on Stalkipedia.

Googling shit up with Garth George

Today, NZ Herald go-to curmudgeon Garth George rails against John Key’s proposed national cycleway. Sandwiched between heart-rending tales of being forced to ride a bike to school and smug reference to his “warm, dry, powerful motor car” are six quotes about cycling.

I tweeted that Garth probably had wiki quote open while thundering out his column. I was wrong.

But I *did* find five of the six quotes Garth padded his bluster out with on Quotegarden’s cycling page, which is the first result when you type ‘cycling quote’ into Google.

So, I present the following table just so we’re clear where Garth got his material for today’s column from:

Garth George quotes from Google’s first hit on ‘cycling quote’

The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. – John Howard

You never have the wind with you – either it is against you or you’re having a good day. – Daniel Behrman

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. – Ernest Hemingway

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. – H.G. Wells

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it – if you live. – Mark Twain

 Garth George quotes from somewhere else

If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it. – Maria Louise Rame


The professionally pissed off Garth George

So, sportreview.net.nz apologies to Garth for thinking he was a wikiquote man instead of a first-result-on-Google  kind of guy.

Links on Friday

Best. Commentator. Ever. ‘Pour some sugar on me!’. We need this guy for Black Caps v India NOW (but none of this).

This is like one of those ACC ads. For God’s Sake, Don’t Go To The Football And Fall Asleep. YOU WILL BREAK YOUR FACE!

Fight! Fight! Fight! Gannets, seals, dolphins and frickin’ sharks all gang up on a bunch of sardines. *Spoiler* – the sardines lose.

‘The horror… the horror…’ ‘Bit of a late night, was it?‘

sportreview podcast volume one

sportreview.net.nz presents volume one of our weekly podcast.

If you’re looking for huge names, results, plays of the month, Cricket, sport, you’ll find it on the sportreview podcast. A weekly podcast.

If it’s sport, it’s on the sportreview podcast.

Download:sportreviewnetnz podcast vol1 210209
(1.6MB download / 1’20” duration)

Ponting rested to practice terse press conferences

SRPA: Ricky Ponting revealed he worked on his sandy-speedos press conference technique while rested from captaincy duties. A testing fixture list and a team that’s a bit shit means he’ll spend much of the next 12 months bristling at the media. “Preparation is everything – I could’ve spent the time arranging me tapes in the glove box, but I wanted to put the time in getting narky.”

ACB media training consultant Hugh Brantingham-Eton said “Even a champion like Ricky has to work on their game. I mean, he went out of his way to take offence at the Vettori / Haddin comments like a thoroughbred shitting on their trainer, but we still see areas for improvement.”

Scenario-based training tested Ponting’s self-importance and general fuck-knucklery in a variety of situations, like post match interviews, and walking through airports looking cross. “We worked on slagging groundsmen, whinging about match referees, blaming batting failures on car-parking issues and having a face like a smacked arse.” said Brantingham-Eton. “But we had fun, too, some afternoons we’d throw sausage rolls at journalist-shaped  targets, just to let off steam.”

Ponting is confident the extra training will keep him sharp: “It was back to basics. Sometimes all you need is ‘What the fuck did you just say?’, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ and ‘I’m Ricky fucking Ponting, who the fuck are you?’, then a walk out. You can over-think this stuff.” said Ponting.