ABs avoid Shibuya meltdown, eye bigger tests
Some thoughtful Black Caps correspondence, netball dominance, NRL intransigence and Lawson impertinence.
There was an All Blacks test in the weekend, albeit one that felt very much like a commercial obligation.
As a rule, we should have no problem with the All Blacks spreading the gospel and deigning to play tier-two teams. The world needs more of the big teams travelling to play developing nations, but if you want to point out that it’s the 12th time the All Blacks have played in Japan outside of the World Cup, while they’ve played in Apia once, haven’t played in Suva since 1984 and have never gone near Nuku’alofa or Tbilisi, then I’d say, “Well spotted, sir/madam.”
As it was, the test was nothing more than wallpaper in my place as multiple events fought for my attention and at one point, as play shifted left and right across the soulless Nissan Stadium, I couldn’t help wondering if the whole exercise would have worked better if played by holograms on Shibuya Crossing.
The All Blacks did enough good things to thump Eddie Jones’ latest vanity project 64-19, but there were the mandatory extended periods of yuckiness that have blighted Scott Robertson’s freshman year and make you less than confident about the team’s chances in the trilogy tests against England, Ireland and France.
There were robust performances from skipper Patrick Tuipolotu, hooker Asafo Aumua (on attack at least), Mark Tele’a, Wallace Sititi and returning halfback Cam Roigard, and a two-try cameo from debutant Ruben Love, which is something at least.
On the soon-to-expire 1news.co.nz, Patrick McKendry used the Yokohama test as an exercise in selection for this weekend’s England showdown at Twickenham, which all told is probably the best use for it. Of most interest will be the choices he makes at Nos 9 and 21, with Roigard, Cortez Ratima and TJ Perenara all with cases to make.
Cam Roigard marked his return to international rugby with a start against Japan in Yokohama last Saturday and it could be that Robertson keeps him in the No 9 jersey for the Twickenham clash. But it’s probably a 50-50 call between the Hurricanes player and Cortez Ratima, not involved against Japan — and even the wearer of the No 21 jersey is a toss up.
Does Robertson give TJ Perenara, on the bench against Japan, another turn there for the experience factor?...
Roigard’s running game from the base of the ruck has the potential to keep the now notorious England rush defence guessing which may provide a little more space and time for the All Blacks’ first-five — likely to be Beauden Barrett after his assured performance there against the Wallabies in Wellington last month.
Ratima, smaller and potentially slightly more agile than Roigard, could test the English with his speed but such attributes are also well suited to a bench role.
Settling on the right mix at halfback to play a side with revenge on its mind after losing two close tests in New Zealand in July could be [the] toughest decision Robertson makes this week.
MORE READING: “How Japan became the envy of the rugby world.”
This is the sort of feature you produce to justify being on the ground in Japan, but even within that genre it is well reported and has merit.
Across the global game, the commercial model has shown itself to be ineffective. In the last few years, three English clubs have gone under, and in Australia, the Rebels collapsed this year. The system of selling media rights, naming space and tickets to pay the players has been held hostage to the true forces of capitalism where success drives the successful and crushes the rest.
What’s evolved in Japan is a three-way ownership structure where most teams are partly funded by commercial rights sales and partly funded by a parent corporation, with their local communities in some cases pitching in… through the provision of facilities that are for communal use.
Toyota Verblitz, for example, will soon have access to a new training facility that will be available to all the sports the car manufacturer supports, as well as local teams and community groups.
“Corporations are eager to support sport to create social inclusion,” says [Hajime Shoji, chief operating of Japan’s professional club competition, League One]. “The meaning of the financial support is not to lead to monetisation, it is to create social inclusion.”
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There’s a lot of words here to process ($), but the central point seems to be pretty clear: New Zealand Rugby have effectively gagged Shane Christie from talking about “safety recommendations he negotiated when he could no longer play the game because of concussion-related brain injury”.
In a letter on April 5, NZR chief executive Mark Robinson told Christie the suggested [safety] improvements could not be spoken about publicly but were part of the sporting body’s internal work on head injuries.
Excuse the language, but man a lot of weird, unnecessarily clandestine shit happens at that place.
As a follow-up question to the extraordinary scenes in Bengaluru and Pune, you can’t get any bigger picture than: “Yes, great, but what does it all mean for the Black Caps test prospects moving into the future?”
Frankly, I’m still in celebration mode and am not quite ready to return to that particular theme, which has been hovering like a pregnant raincloud since New Zealand toasted its World Test Championship by losing to Bangladesh at home.
It felt like something was ending then and it seemed like a natural, if slightly premature, time to start thinking about attrition and renewal.
And yet every time the side looks ready for a full-blown restyling, it conjures up something, whether it’s being part of one of the greatest ever test draws in Karachi, winning after following on against England at the Basin and following that up by a two-millimetre win against Sri Lanka at Hagley Oval that was built upon another Kane Williamson masterclass.
Here’s what I wrote after that win:
What has happened in the following eight days of cricket [vs England and Sri Lanka] has been remarkable. I wouldn’t go as far as to say restorative, because this still feels like the final flickerings of heat and light in this era of Black Caps’ cricket, but fair play to them for keeping that flame burning… just.
Are we still in that holding pattern or does India represent a “new dawn”, as reader Stephen suggested?
It was another post in the comments section that really caught my eye.
Wrote Henry Kember (lightly edited for clarity):
Thanks to this result, we may just find history (well, historians) tenuously stretching the era of the Golden Generation to include 2024.
Which is hard to justify, but IMHO it’s not a stretch to say this: the Golden Generation is survived by a dressing room and team culture with more baked-in self-belief than any previous generation of NZ cricketers could’ve given it.
There are enough players left from that era with deep muscle memory of extraordinary, sometimes insanely close victories (the multiple nail-biters against Pakistan home and away) and clutch performances. There are enough players who turned up for the last few series of the first WTC cycle (Daryl Mitchell and Devon Conway), and made good use of the team’s momentum to perform well and discover in themselves they’ve got what it takes.
If the Crowe-Hadlee era is 1980-90, you could say the ’92 World Cup team were maybe running with a similar inherited tailwind. But skip to a couple of years later and we’re at rock bottom.
Perhaps the difference between that team and this one is the modern-day emphasis on team culture? The systems and processes that codify it? Dylan, I’d be interested to know what you think.
What I think is that you’ve put a great deal of thought into that Henry and you’re almost certainly onto something. While the likes of Williamson (although winning in India in his absence is one of the more head-scratching elements of this latest success), Tim Southee and Tom Latham are still around, then the knowledge of how to win tough cricket matches remains screen printed upon the fabric of this team.
More importantly, as you mention, there is a rock-solid team culture and, much to my frustration sometimes, a conservative set of selection principles that has elongated this generation’s successes, albeit at a far more sporadic rate, even as they’ve lost the likes of Trent Boult, BJ Watling, Ross Taylor, Colin de Grandhomme, Neil Wagner and possibly Henry Nicholls from the XI who won the mace.
The cultural part of that equation is great and should hold Generation Next, including Rachin Ravindra, Glenn Phillips and Will O’Rourke, in good stead, but has that conservative bent just delayed the inevitable crash and offered certain players sinecures while holding back others?
That victory in Pune was achieved by a team with eight of the 11 in their 30s, with Ajaz Patel the oldest of them at 36. In normal circumstances Kane Williamson (34) and Matt Henry (32) would have been expected to play. Even the relative newbies Conway, Mitchell and Tom Blundell are 33, 33 and 34 respectively. Age might just be a number, but at some point it becomes an obstacle and it’s right to ask whether New Zealand Cricket’s high-performance arm has done enough to promote youth in the red-ball format.
Just not right now…
READ MORE: “Changing of the guard: Pune 2024 a window into New Zealand’s future.”
Cricinfo makes a relatively weak case that there are other youngsters knocking at the door to join Ravindra and O’Rourke, including Ben Lister. Maybe in white-ball cricket, but the talent pool looks a lot shallower in long-form cricket.
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The White Ferns are already demonstrating that confidence from their unexpected World Cup success is translating to other formats. It feels like an age since they have gone into the final match of a bilateral series with chips still on the table, but that’s the situation in India after they recovered from a first-up loss to smash the hosts by 76 runs in game two.
Like the men, they are also without their best player, with Melie Kerr ruled out after the opening loss.
The third and final ODI against India starts tonight at 9pm at Ahmedabad.
Contrasting fortunes for our netball and league teams as they took on our transtasman foe over the weekend.
I watched most of the second half of the netball and was blown away by just how much better the Silver Ferns looked than the world and commonwealth champions. The Ferns asked all the questions and seldom did Australia manage anything resembling a coherent answer.
It was shocking or, according to Radio NZ, “audacious”.
Captain Ameliaranne Ekenasio admitted she was a little bit stunned by what they had achieved.
“I just can’t believe it but at the same time I totally can as well... I feel like we’re reaching our potential and I’m seeing what people are capable of, and I’m seeing people be super comfortable in who they are and bring it on court,” Ekenasio said.
“I’ve honestly never felt our team be so confident in the entire time I’ve played for the Silver Ferns and that’s a really big shift for us.”
The skipper said harnessing a more ruthless mentality had been key for them.
Key to the victory was near-unstoppable shooter Grace Nweke who is moving to Australia to take up a contract in 2025 with the NSW Swifts.
Netball New Zealand has remained staunch on their eligibility rules, which would rule Nweke out of Silver Ferns contention next year, but they will surely cave, even if it takes Dame Noeline Taurua to throw a public tantrum to get it done.
As remarkable as the Ferns Constellation Cup victory has been, it can’t mask the fact that interest has waned in the domestic ANZ Championship.
The only surefire way to get eyeballs on the sport now is when the Silver Ferns are playing well and if you don’t have your best players on court in the international game, then what have you got?
In an increasingly competitive women’s sport space, the Silver Ferns are netball’s shop window and you simply can’t have them wearing hand-me-downs.
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The Kiwis and Kiwi Ferns were outplayed by their Kangaroo and Jillaroo opponents, but it was great to see Christchurch embrace the weekend.
The news that the NRL has put any potential expansion beyond Papua New Guinea on ice was a bit of a Debbie Downer. Christchurch, with its brand new covered stadium coming online soon and a resurgent love of the 13-man code, seems a perfect base for a team, but it’s clear the 17 existing clubs are jealously guarding their turf (and percentage of the broadcasting rights), so any prospective franchise is going to have to work extremely hard to prove they just won’t hold their own on the financial front, but can add value on both the balance sheet and in the intangibles ledger.
David Moffett of the South Island Kea says he’s on to it.
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Speaking of expansion teams, it seems to be going quite nicely for Auckland FC; a little too nicely for Sydney FC’s coach Ufuk Talay to bear, following his team’s 0-1 loss to the newbies.
Ufuk Talay, the visiting coach at Mt Smart Stadium, was adamant there was a handball from the defender before he backheeled the ball over the line in the last of seven added minutes on Sunday afternoon.
As the free kick by Jake Brimmer came in from the left, Talay also felt there was a shove in the back on his centre back Alexandar Popovic, but video assistant referee Adam Kersey didn’t find any reason to rule the goal out.
Liam Lawson continues to win friends and influence people… or maybe it’s lose friends and alienate people.
Whichever one you choose, Lawson’s re-entry into the blue-chip open-wheel class has been absolute box-office gold. Whereas his predecessor, Daniel Ricciardo, stole hearts with his toothy grin and surf-bro demeanour, Lawson is instead seeking admirers by going tyre-to-tyre with some of the biggest names (and egos) in the sport, and isn’t afraid to flip the bird when he feels he has a point worth making.
Scotty J. Stevenson had this amusing take on the Kiwi’s first fortnight of racing in 2024, which included the headline of the weekend: “Lawson’s an idiot say those overtaken by Lawson.”
Lawson showed admirable contrition on the whole finger-pulling business, which at least proved he’s human.
“It’s not in my character and I shouldn’t have done it,” he told reporters after the race. He also claimed that Perez “spent half the lap blocking me, trying to ruin my race, so I was upset”.
Let’s face it, most of us have pulled the finger during a daily commute and our careers (mostly) don’t depend on the result of our drive.
We’d be upset too, if someone called us an idiot and then proceeded to behave idiotically.
Quite honestly, F1 is as interesting right now as it has been since Fernando Alonso, one of Lawson’s chief detractors, first started carving his way around the circuit.
Vive les idiots!
Just in. 1news.co.nz status has moved from "soon-to-expire" to shrink-to-survive (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/tvnz-workers-called-into-all-staff-meeting-to-hear-strategy-plan-in-hunt-for-30m-cost-cuts/2U5FAOK4YVHCZAGDBTRTNBEJUE/), which I'm pretty stoked about TBH. A rare piece of good news in an incredibly bleak year for the media.
Lawson raced hard but fair, unlike a certain Dutchman, but he's definitely not in the Latinos' good-books. Alonso, Perez and Colapinto obviously do not like him. Him giving the finger to Perez after being held up for a lap was such a Kiwi thing to do, I laughed then and still chuckle now. Very ballsy too, considering it was Perez' home GP.