Tag: all blacks

“If you love Sonny Bill Williams so much, why don’t you marry him?” – Nonu

NEWSDESK: All Black second five eighth Ma’a Nonu today suggested All Black coach Graham Henry live in the same house as, buy matching outfits with and marry former Rugby League international Sonny Bill Williams. “Oh! Sonny Bill! Want to get dressed and go get breakfast? Or shall we just watch DVDs all day? Let’s do that,” said Nonu.

Williams, who is targeting a midfield spot in the All Black side, is renowned for both his flair with the ball and his physical defence. He courted controversy in 2008 when he walked out on NRL outfit the Canterbury Bulldogs. “Did you order flowers? They’re for me? Oh you. Let me put them in water, then I’ll cook your favorite risotto,” Nonu told reporters. “That’s Graham and Sony Bill, that is.” Williams has signed with the New Zealand rugby and Canterbury through until the 2011 Rugby World Cup, after which Henry and Williams will probably get cheap flights to Fiji for a romantic getaway, said Nonu.

Weekend preview

sportreview weekends aren’t what they used to be. Friday night drinking heavily at work. Drinking heavily in a bar. Drinking heavily at home. Watching videos for 24 hours and eating starchy, salty food to recover, before accidentally drinking heavily on Sunday night.

Anyway.

There’s a lot happening this weekend that isn’t me lamenting the fading of youth and opportunities to drink heavily (and responsibly! Har, forgot to mention that!). The All Whites are taking on a ninja.
The NZ Herald have captured a ninja on film, who has ninja-ed their way into the Italian squad.
Ninjas, as well as being awesome, are famed for manouvering silently, killing efficiently and spiderman-like crawling on the ceiling. Football in Italy is serious business, and the ninja call-up reflects how gravely they’re taking the All Whites’ onslaught. Slovakia coach Vladimir Weiss will be kicking himself he didn’t bring a ninja, or indeed a sniper or slasher film protagonist on to do a job in midfield. Taking Shane Smeltz, Mark Paston or Winston Reid out of this mortal coil and the game would have greatly increased Slovakia’s chances of hanging on to their one goal lead providing the referee and referee’s assistants were unsighted.
It will be intriguing to see how Marcello Lippi deploys his ninja in the match, with the options of starting him at the top of the ‘christmas tree’ formation to create havoc in the All Whites’ back four (possibly using Shuriken or throwing stars), or bringing him off the bench to do a job. With a sword.
The whole country has gone Winston nuts thanks to his last minute equaliser, including this popular mobility scooter salesman.
Down south, the All Blacks will take on the Welsh in what used to be our national game. The All Whites’ World Cup run has shifted our national game paradigm significantly, it now looks like this:
1. Doing the fingers out the car window

2. Football

3. Rugby

4. Watching netball with a milo, silently wondering what the jiggins is going to happen tomorrow night on Coronation Street

5. Bitching and moaning
The Welsh have a strong rugby talking pedigree, fielding a great side of talkers in the 70s, who won respect with their flair for talking, before losing their talking edge in the 80s and 90s. Importing Kiwi talking talent has helped them become one of the modern era’s most feared talking nations in the six nations. The All Blacks were so rattled by Gatland’s fearsome ‘lost aura’ talking in 2009 that they only won 19-12.

Gatland appears to be keeping his talking powder dry in the build up to this two test series, mainly talking to himself in his hotel room, but there is still time to lay down some serious talking before his team runs on the field to be thrashed soundly. Enjoy your sporting weekend, team, and talk nicely to each other.

Kicking 2009 when it’s down

Doing a half-arsed wrap up of the year is becoming a tradition here on sportreview – here’s 2009.

If there was one week that summed up 2009 for me, it was seeing the All Blacks *cook* with Italy’s Next Top Model contestants in Milan in the most embarrassing and wooden photo op since Don Brash walked the plank, before our second string players participated in a shitty, shitty match at the San Siro, deeply marred by some shocking officiating from an experienced ref trying to enforce god knows what version of the rulebook is on top of the pile. Any Italians unfamiliar with Rugby watching the match would have found the oval ball code as appealing as toenail ravioli.

Earlier that day, New Zealand qualified for the Football World Cup in front of a crowd wholeheartedly supporting their team.

I don’t want to get into a Rugby v Football debate (although I think the nation’s office kitchens are going to be ringing with that mid year), but I really wish the first of these scenarios was more like the second – clear rules, supporting and having fun, and winning. That would do nicely.

Here’s my year, in sport, in sportreview.net.nz and for me.

2009: big sport stuff

All Whites making the World Cup finals
All of a sudden it’s 1982 again. I’m sure I’m not the only one who this qualification kind of sneaked up on. I wasn’t paying that close attention to the qualifiers, and then suddenly we were two games away, and the whole country was going All Whites crazy and calling it ‘Football’. Wonders never cease. For a country used to grim, po-faced ‘support’ of its Rugby heroes, where Grizz Wylie’s statuesque pose when watching matches is seen as a model for manhood everywhere, not, perhaps more appropriately, something to lean on to keep warm, the Latin explosion of noise and color in the Caketin that night could change our country’s sporting landscape forever. Could. Anyway. We really have something to look forward to this year. Leg Break or ‘lucky git’ as he’s known around here, will be our man in the Guardian’s Fan thingo.

Black Caps
Can’t I just skip this? Andy Moles was out faster than a sneaky fart in a meeting room, and suddenly Dan is player, captain, coach, selector and god knows what else – we would be deeply fucked if we lost him at the moment. We got a little taste of how un-fucked we are without Shane Bond in Dunedin before going back to being just fucked without him.  Everything in my July 2008 Black Caps coach application still applies – we need two things – 1. John Wright and 2. a plan.

Chiefs make the Super 14 Final
Not sure how they got on after that, ah har har

The All Blacks.
We’re still South Africa’s bitches, but how long they can continue a coaching panel the equivalent of a Benny Hill chase scene, I don’t know. I only got to one match, the bitter bitter disappointment in Hamilton. NZ’s other national sport of kicking the All Blacks when they’re down is still alive and well. To me, there wasn’t a lot of difference between the way we played on the end of year tour and in the Tri Nations, it’s just we executed better, and playing against poorer quality sides up north would have helped. It’s still not going well, though, is it? The All Blacks’ 2011 preparations (and make no mistake, it’s ALL about 2011) is still in the ‘Hey! Let’s build a waterfront stadium!’ phase. Must try harder.

New Zealand cyclists kick the world’s arse
New Zealand cyclists had 15 world titles this year, and just this week, up and comer Jack Bauer outsprinted Tour De France riders Hayden Roulston and Julian Dean to win the national Road Race title. We’ve got cycling talent coming out our ears, and it’s looking all on on the track and the road for the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. Pro wise, this year’s Tour De France should be a ripper, with Alberto v Lance and the new Brit Sky team. Can’t wait.

2009: sportreview.net.nz related highlights

Stalkipedia
I really enjoyed putting this together, there’s some great stuff in here, but NOT ENOUGH! I’m still accepting stalks team.

L&P take down
I wish more companies would piss me off so I could do This Kind Of Thing more often.

Podcasting
This is a lot of fun, and something I’m keen to do more of, if I can find a decent place to record them. The fist few have a certain charm, but the French preview one is where it hits its stride

The Herald showed some love

I won a copy of JRod’s first book

Best 2009 posts: Bowling through Wexford, Dan drops himself, Fight Club Duos, Keith Quinn on Twitter, Rattue joins the All Blacks, Tua / Cameron fight move, Bloggers at the Basin,

Best 2009 cartoons: Player Power, Dingo + shark, SuperDobbers, 18 and life to go,

Tech Talk with Phil Waugh – secretly probably my favorite thing I’ve done all year. Too weird?

2009: Rocking my world

Getting MySky
I CANNOT emphasise enough how much arse MySky kicks. Having long sent the VCR to the downstairs storage of doom, the ability to quickly ‘tape’ anything on a whim has changed my and sportreviewloveinterest’s lives. As a sport blogger, this means I can actually WATCH SPORT again – imagine that! It also means I can fast forward through the weather for the South Island – this makes me very happy indeed.

Starting a tumblr is a pretty low hassle way to make a neat site, and a great way to find new links and photos.

New Bike – conquered some sweet hills on this already.

Top 5 tracks in last.fm
1. The Kinks – This Time Tomorrow
2. Beck – Sing It Again
3. Ben Kweller – Thirteen
4. Harry Nilsson – Turn On Your Radio
5. The Velvet Underground – I Found a Reason

Film
In The Loop, Avatar 3D. I didn’t see many movies released in 2009 this year.

Books
Pathetic effort reading wise this year, due to watching too much iPod TV on the bus. I loved White Teeth and Cannery Row, while Man In Full made me very frustrated. Sport-wise, it was Summer 0f 49 and Tana‘s Up Close, continuing the All Black tradition of mildly revelatory bios after they’re safely retired.

So, another year down. I hope you all are enjoying the site, I really enjoy your comments and having some larfs, especially on the twitter. My personal sporting highpoint this year is watching sportreview jr, who’s 19 months now, kick a ball – he hits it hard. He’s going to break the back of some poor unsuspecting net one day.

Related: best of 2008, best of 2006 one, two

Steve Tew threatens the nation with John Mitchell, Jason Gunn

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NEWSDESK: NZRFU CEO Steve Tew warned today that continued criticism of the All Black coaching panel could see Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen’s roles taken up  by former All Black head coach John Mitchell and grinning twat Jason Gunn.

At a tense press conference, Tew said that assembled press needed to “watch it”, and that he was “this close” to  appointing the indecipherable, unpopular Mitchell to coach the All Black pack, while Dancing With The Stars co-host Gunn would oversee the backline, with Thingee joining as kicking coach in a package deal.

Tew said the NZRFU had considered this approach in the past. “We had a long look at bringing in Earle Kirton and the ZM Morning Crew after 2007, a long look,” said Tew. “We saved you ungrateful fucks two years of post match analysis with Polly and Grant.” A clearly tired and emotional Tew then challenged reporters to “Test me! Go on, test me! Do you WANT Mitch and Jase the Ace?” before being lead hurriedly away by NZRFU communications staff.

All Black coach Laurie Mains was quick to question Gunn’s coaching credentials; “I mean, I enjoy a Milo and Dancing With The Stars as much as the next man (Paul Holmes was very good, wasn’t he?), but I’d question Jason’s experience at the top level. Maybe if he came up through the Heartland comp or spent some time in the Currie Cup, they’d love him over there.”

The move is not without precedent; innovative coach Clive Woodward trialled Barry from Eastenders as defensive coordinator early in his regime and the New South Wales Warratahs have recruited Aussie party teenager Corey Delaney as head coach for next years’ Super 14.

This bench is frickin’ AWESOME

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Life is pretty sweet on the All Black bench. I mean check out the view – we’re talking ground level. Half way line. You CAN’T get closer to the action than this. I’ve even got an umbrella. That says All Blacks on it.

“What’s that? Warm up? Few stretches? Want a cuppa while I’m up? No? OK then.”

This rules. Running around. Warming up. I’ll probably cough up some snot badgers or bust out the wicked nose clearances later. Maybe the folks will catch it on telly.

What people at home don’t realise is that it’s not *really* a bench. It’s actually a whole lot of seats in a row, kind of seats you get a lot in school halls or gyms. They’re pretty comfortable, and take no time at all to stack away.

“Hey! Can I have one of those Poweraides? Blue one? Thanks mate!”

We get those free, by the way. I could probably get a Moro if I wanted.

So yeah, it’s a pretty good deal I reckon, spending your Saturday nights on a bench. It can get pretty cold in the winter, but you still get to have a shower after. The only thing to remember is shutting up when Ian Smith’s talking into his microphone, Smithy gets a pretty sandy vagina if you bugger up his bit. Those Moros come in handy, sometimes.

So yeah, this is it. Kicking back, sat on your arse catching the game. You can really see the world from a bench. I mean, if I get picked for the tour I could be sitting on benches in Italy. Wales. France. I bet the HQ benches are frickin’ sweet.

Bledisloe twitter coverage

The sportreview tweets from this evening’s Bledisloe, a narrow win for us in a ‘real’ ‘test’ ‘match’, tiring git code for ‘slightly boring’. In reverse chronological order.

Ted enjoys a cold one #allblacks http://flic.kr/p/6FMdpU

bugger drew mitchell’s knowledge of the rules #allblacks

donald doing well so far. B+. will he play full game? #allblacks

awesome swearing from aus assistant coach #allblacks

yes waving guy you are on tv #allblacks #muppet

solid work by franks on debut #allblacks

#sportreview jr has decided he wants to watch too #allblacks

ref not very good at offside or forward passes #allblacks

nose clearance followed by lip-read ‘fucking hell’. #fantasticcamerawork #allblacks

#allblacks http://flic.kr/p/6FLoGJ

shit. #allblacks

operation pizza in the oven #allblacks

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