Category: greatest hits

Cricket rocked by Healy fucking idiotic comment fix

This is the excerpt of your first post template…

NEWSDESK: sportreview.net.nz can exclusively reveal that popular Channel Nine commentator Ian Healy has been taking large sums of cash in return for delivering fucking idiotic comments to order, so as to game the fucking idiotic comment spot gambling market.

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.”

Drunk All Black fans blast NZ cricket boss

NEWSDESK: Drunk All Black fans have slammed the actions of NZ cricket boss Justin Vaughan at Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup test match in Melbourne. “Vaughan was clearly unable to chop his piss – he made me ashamed to be Kiwi,” said Rangiora farm hand Mark Jughandle. After a drinking spree that began in his hotel bed that morning, Jughandle had consumed an estimated 23 draught beers by the time he took his seat at Etihad stadium, but his enjoyment of the match was severely hindered by Vaughan, who “totally wrecked the buzz” and was most likely a “soft cock”.

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.”

Photoshop Matthew Hayden and win a crappy DVD

In today’s Sunday paper, retired Australian opening batsman Matthew Hayden appears, endorsing VIP passes to Gold Coast theme parks. Hayden, famous for hosting weird BBQs in Regents Park like a homeless person and bullying Englishmen and Glen McGrath is one of cricket’s least loved players and a curious choice to sell anything to New Zealanders. Myself, I considered setting myself alight to prevent me even thinking about buying one of these VIP passes.

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…

Continue reading “Photoshop Matthew Hayden and win a crappy DVD”

England’s Golden Generation X

England’s Golden Generation’s peak lasted about fifteen minutes, from when Micheal Owen, 12, ran through the Argentinean defense to when David Beckham tried to kick Simeone in the nuts. He missed.
England’s previous Golden Generation turned to custard when the successful vox-drums-bass-guitar formation was changed to a more European vox-drums-bass-guitar-guitar line up, resulting in an early exit from Glastonbury in the semi finals
Instead of, you know, developing young talented players and nurturing them until they were ready to win World Cups and that, England (who probably should have just built a team around Matt le Tissier) instead decided they’d just pinch the Man U youth academy and call it a Golden Generation.

David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdiand and, erm, Gary Neville (unluckily, Ryan Giggs, who would have been handy, was given suspect directions to a Welsh training camp as a youth) were going to take on the world and show ’em that Tel and Baz England hadn’t forgotten how to beat them foreigners at their own game. Or something. All they needed was a manager. That’s where it gets complicated.
First, England tried an English manager. Big mistake. Glenn Hoddle was like a swan on meth, elegant and stylish from a distance, but the closer you got, the more likely he was to bite your nose and fling shit at you. Kevin Keegan was fantastic at geeing the lads up, but hopeless at tactics, selection, media management, winning games, being generally coherent, brushing his hair and riding a bike. Steve McLaren was like teeth perched on a pair of legs. None of them, with the exception of Hoddle’s early days, none were much chop at managing football teams.
Then, seduced by the continent like an London businessman tipsy at a Parisian working lunch, England turned to foreign managers. Big mistake.

First there was Sven-Goran Ericksson, who has somehow managed some of the biggest clubs in Europe without anyone being able to ascertain if he’s actually any good. Strangely, his ‘biggest feats as England manager‘ wikipedia section omits shagging Ulrika Johnson. Sven spent most of his time in the hot seat shagging, making incomprehensible statements and giving the Golden Generation a sense of entitlement to rival David Beckham’s hairdresser. His 2006 world cup team were outplayed by their own WAGs, and Sven was out of a job.
Fabio Capello, despite a CV rammed with titles and Champions League trophies, had issues learning the language, and the culture. Seeing his players crowded around a telly willing Susan Boyle to a Britain’s Got Talent title and playing as themselves on the XBox was hard to take for this proud, sophisticated and urbane man. His squad’s obsession with the goings on in a boring Manchester pub boiled over in South Africa, as this extraordinary video reveals:
England’s Golden Generation now lies in ruins, like Cesar’s Rome, Mountbatten’s India or McCartney’s Wings. Despite dominating the Champions League and the tabloid headlines with their clubs, this gilded group never gelled for their country. And as the next generation coming though seems more interested in fucking about with their phones and threatening each other with knives, they may need a hero from down under.

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.

Black Caps in the West Indies: Party Time! Excellent!

Lock up your sun lounger and towel – the Black Caps are in the West Indies and ready to par-tay. Any student worth their beer bong knows you need to chop a few at home before you go into town, and so the Caps warmed upwith a 7 run win against the Windies before the cup kicks off proper.Even though it was a warm up game, most of the team didn’t bother warming up, and left the scoring runs and getting wickets and that to ‘Black To The Future’ duo Scott ‘The’ Styris and Jake ‘Snake’ Oram.
Oram and Styris light their farts in the general direction of the Australian team hotel
While getting one over your hosts is a good thing, acclimatising to local conditions is crucial also. When you step off the plane to find bodies in the sand, tropical drinks melting in your hand and steel drum bands after a month of eating Christchurch shopping mall food court lunches with the Crusaders, it’s easy to lose your head. The bars and beachs of the Caribbean have been a graveyard for touring teams over the years:
Fred ‘Andrew’ Flintoff prepares for a cruise on the HMS Ian Botham
The Caps go into this tournament in the now trademark role as Dark Horses™. It’s a fact that all cricket writers and TV analysts are contractually obliged to mention New Zealand as ‘possible semifinalists’, ‘dark horses’, capable of ‘suprising teams’, and ‘could go all the way’ in tournament previews, while laughing openly at previous semi final capitulations over port in the Hilton each night.
Black Beauty here is a Dark Horse™, black (like the caps) and about the size of NZ’s chances of winning the tournament.
The tournament will be an interesting come down from the recent IPL, more Ewan Gilmor than Julian Clary, and will hopefuly be better run than the last West Indian World Cup, which lasted several years. Jesse, and backing up the captain and old pros’ form will be key for us. Go Caps.