A football writer writes
Bruce Holloway covers the football in a way I couldn't, Parker's dilemma, a wasted RWC opportunity, and the Mankad exposes cricket's cultural divide.
Having sat through a good portion of the 90 minutes of All Whites’ nothingness served up at Eden Park, I was feeling a bit toey.
It was a glorious early spring day. One of those rarities in these parts with little wind and only the vague threat of a shower. I thought of all the things I could have been doing - weeding the driveway, a trip to the Albany Mega Centre to buy wardrobe fittings, scraping an inch of gunk off the barbecue - and concluded that watching the New Zealand national football side flub their way around a familiar patch of grass was not the worst thing in the world.
Still, there was a strange tingling in the fingers and the desire to punch hard on the keys to produce a withering block-caps assessment along the lines of: “CAN WE NOW ADMIT THIS IS AN OVERRATED ALL WHITES SIDE?”
Deep breath, check your angst - realise that while you might be able to impress nobody with your encyclopaedic knowledge of the final five minutes of the 1979 FA Cup final - United come from 0-2 down to level, before Arsenal’s Alan Sunderland scores a last-minute winner - you don’t know jack about New Zealand football beyond the headlines.
Still, I wanted an honest assessment. I’ve written before about how I believe the All Whites are held to different standards than other professional New Zealand sides, but I needed the thoughts of someone who has watched far more football in this country than I have, than pretty much anyone has.
I turned to Bruce Holloway, a veteran journo whose son Steven is a former colleague, a former national league footballer and the co-host of a great podcast. To my everlasting gratitude, Bruce had filed 600 words within a couple of hours. Here they are…
by Bruce Holloway
When the All Whites lost 0-2 at Eden Park to an Australian team fielding possibly the most bewilderingly random starting XI in its history, it was the final soundbite of match commentary from Fred de Jong which resonated most for me.
“It would be good if they could get a goal – but they can’t,” Fred pithily concluded of the All Whites’ efforts, which produced a lot of perspiration, but little inspiration.
And after five games and 564 minutes since New Zealand scored from open play against a team from outside of Oceania, it’s fair enough to ask, “Why can’t we score?”
Whereas the Brisbane game three days earlier was at least a good watch, with some nimble, fluent, attractive play from New Zealand against decent opposition, the Eden Park match was mostly mince, with the same dearth of goals.
It reminded me of how a couple of decades back Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano once described goals as the orgasms of football.
“And like orgasms, goals have become an ever less frequent occurrence in modern life,” he so presciently wrote in Soccer in Sun and Shadow.
Newcastle United’s Chris Wood is of course our pre-eminent orgasm hunter. But it is not as if he is going to get in behind teams very much these days, and New Zealand so seldom play to his strengths with an old-fashioned ball or two into the mix.
The perversity here is that back in the day the All Whites game – apart from being built around an uncompromising defence – was highly focused on set pieces such as free kicks, corners and long throws. This was the bread and butter of our goalscoring.
You can’t help but think how more of an old-fashioned Route One approach would suit Wood down to the ground (assuming he was not injured), if not so much for most of his younger teammates.
Nevertheless, despite the goal drought, a generation of youngsters ARE steadily emerging, and some of them have much to offer. We will be hearing a lot more of the likes of Elijah Just, Matt Garbett and Alex Greive. Just not today though.
On that front, however, it was a reality check to see Joe Bell, another player who has been talked up a lot by us fans, have a complete stinker at Eden Park.
And whether we are talking about Wood, Bell, or anyone, it is worth noting very few of our players are getting much game time with their clubs at present. Further, New Zealand have desperately missed the attacking inspiration of once-in-a-generation Sarpreet Singh and, to a lesser extent, the even more regularly injured Ryan Thomas.
In summary, the prevailing mood of optimism and hope that infected us All White fans a year ago now seems like just a vague rumour.
Worse, we now have no meaningful games until the World Cup qualifiers in two years.
So if this puddle of match marks the end of Danny Hay’s tenure as coach, the larger question is: Was Hay-ball in any respect different to Hudson-ball (a reference to previous All White coach Anthony Hudson, who talked a great game but only managed modest returns)?
Because we’ve seen so little of our national team, and the media coverage is so scant, it is hard to be too absolute, but I’m certainly finding it hard to differentiate.
To end on a digression, how should we remember Winston Reid, our one-time skipper, veteran of 33 matches, and absentee from 47?
Years back when the captain’s armband was passed from Ryan Nelsen to Reid, and he mumbled his way through a few trite, nonsense interviews, I felt the contrast was so stark that I commented how he was arguably our most ineloquent skipper ever.
I’d modify that slightly after the Eden Park gig to say that he deserves to be remembered as our most unemotional captain. On a day when everyone else – especially media - was trying hard to make an occasion of it and extra special for Winston, he just looked and sounded bored shitless.
Bruce, aka Cordwainer Bull, was editor of New Zealand football fanzine, Sitter!, from 1997-2005.
Joseph Parker’s fight with Joe Joyce for the interim WBO heavyweight title was everything you want to see in a world-class heavyweight bout, even if at times you had to watch between your fingers as you put your hands to your eyes.
Joyce was a class above, constantly moving forward with the inevitability (and speed) of a steamroller. I thought that lack of pace was open to exploitation by somebody with the hand speed of Parker, but the sheer volume of accurate shots thrown by Joyce and his ability to move just quickly enough to block off the ring spelled doom for the New Zealander.
He looks the real deal and a title fight with Oleksandr Usyk would be highly anticipated.
Conversely, my respect for Parker as a warrior only increased. He showed enormous bravery and heart as he stood there and landed shots that would have wobbled lesser men, despite cuts above his eyes and welts all over his face. Watching him try to get to his feet in the 11th under the exhortations of his ringside buddy Tyson Fury was heartbreaking and, thankfully, futile.
I wanted to write today about how I hope Parker will now take a long look at his future. He’s made his money; the Joshua fight set him up for life. He has four daughters, the youngest born this year. I really hope he doesn’t turn himself into a Dereck Chisora, taking well-paid prizefights with little hope of winning to boost the profiles of Next Big Things.
In effect, I would have just been writing what Duncan Johnstone has covered so well in Stuff today. Johnstone has been covering Parker since his early days. He knows the fighter and he knows the game. I hope the fighter reads it.
This knockout loss comes after Parker has been taken the distance too many times. Rounds are invaluable experience in this toughest of games, but they also take their toll and there’s no doubt that opponents have found Parker more hittable the longer he has plied his trade.
Once gifted with extraordinary evasive defence, he’s trading punches more regularly now and getting hit in order to deal out his own hits. It comes with age and having to constantly fight with a size disadvantage.
There will be fights out there for Parker. Rematches with the likes of Whyte, Joshua, or Ruiz would rattle some pay-per-view tills. There’s also the elusive Deontay Wilder or the likes of Luis Ortiz.
But Parker’s sacrifices are bigger than ever these days, having to leave his wife and young family behind with his decision to ply his trade in Britain.
The punishment versus pleasure equation must get increasingly difficult. Parker only needs to look in the mirror over the next few days for evidence of that. It won’t be pretty.
A reader, whose name now escapes me but was obviously a very intelligent person, sent me a note one day asking why on earth this year’s Rugby World Cup was being played in Auckland and Whangarei only. If memory serves, he was from the Waikato and had two rugby playing daughters but was unlikely to be able to get to Auckland for games.
If you’re reading this now, apologies for not getting back, but I agree, it is a wasted opportunity. At the very least, games should have been taken to Tauranga/ Mt Maunganui and Hamilton as well. Even if that’s still northern-centric, it would be tapping into the country’s golden triangle of population while not greatly increasing travel costs.
I have nothing against the good people of West Auckland, but playing a pinnacle tournament at Waitakere Stadium is a bit embarrassing.
Joseph Pearson, who is a one-man World Cup writing machine at Stuff, digs into the issue here.
The Black Ferns wrapped up the match-play section of their World Cup prep with a 95-12 mismatch against Japan. I was dipping in and mainly out of this while also catching an equally one-sided AFL grand final (Geelong 20.13 [133] eviscerated Sydney 8.4 [52]).
It would be wrong to try to draw any conclusions on this other than to say I somehow missed every one of Portia Woodman’s seven tries, which on both counts is quite some feat. I’m also quietly pleased they didn’t raise their bat for 100. While I’m no proponent of the NFL’s unwritten rule where teams basically stop trying to score when they have a big lead to protect the dignity of their professional peers, I’m also no fan of pointless humiliations. This is showing my age, but I remember how flat I felt when the All Blacks scored a ridiculous 145 points against Japan in 1995.
Two extraordinary stories front the world cycling champs. One of the favourites, Mathieu van der Poel “inexplicably” withdrew just an hour into the men’s road race. It was later revealed he’d had an eventful evening.
This followed a furore following French cycling’s decision to send its men’s team halfway around the world in business class, while the women flew in coach.
The AFL grand final was a bit of a flop, but the NRL final is likely to be far closer, with Penrith and Parramatta not only battling for the Provan-Summons Trophy, but for the very soul of league heartland in the outer reaches of Sydney’s west. One man lucky to be playing is Fijian Viliame Kikau, who escaped a ban for a blatant shoulder charge and will suit up for the Panthers one last time before trying to revive the fortunes of another west Sydney club, the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.
The biggest Twitter blow-up this weekend occurred in women’s cricket, when India’s Deepti Sharma sealed victory for her side by running out England’s Charlie Dean at the non-striker’s end in a fashion once referred to as a Mankad.
Hand on heart, I hate Mankads and think they’re a weak way of “earning” a wicket. I also think the Sharma example is a clear example of a bowler expressly looking to execute a Mankad, rather than a batter being deservedly dismissed for taking liberties while backing up early and excessively.
That being said, some of the noise around the wicket played into some obvious cultural tropes (with many also noting that England’s adherence to the nebulous “spirit of cricket” is somewhat selective).
I also received an interesting note from Melanie Sharma-Barrow, a lawyer, activist and fellow Substacker. The note is abridged but it does raise a couple of interesting points I would not have arrived at by myself. I reproduce this with the permission of Melanie because it doesn’t matter how worldly we might think we are, it is invaluable to have some understanding of the other side of a cultural divide, even one as seemingly inconsequential as a run out.
“There is a cultural undertone in the media reporting… It is a shame that the Indian captain is being gaslit in having to explain her tactics and, more worryingly, being demonised. Comments regarding the English captain using words invoking the ‘spirit of the game’ are very reminiscent of the way many women of colour experience being told how to behave by European[s].
“I think spirit of engagement is very important, but we must allow the ‘spirit’ of the game to be a ‘multi-cultural’ spirit.
“The tears of the English [batter] are also interesting. As black women will tell you, in a work situation, when a white woman starts crying, it invokes an empathy like no other… It would be interesting to consider what the reaction would have looked like if the Mankad had been the other way around, and what the reaction would have been if the Indian cricketer had cried in response. Nearly a decade in this [culture and strategy consulting] sector would tell me [that] few would care if a woman of colour cried in such a situation and the conversation would centre not on ‘spirit’ but instead on [the need for] resilience.”
THIS WEEK
Just a quick reminder that I’ll return on Friday but in the meantime there will be some Scotty Stevenson goodness to enjoy on Wednesday evening. Look out for that.
I wonder if Johnny Lomax or Isaac Luke had a view on Kikau’s tackle and the judicial response ....And no comment I have noted about Sevu’s head-clash. New interpretation?