Always look on the bright side of sport
At least nobody rained on the Warriors' parade
Way back in the landline days, when stories were measured in centimetres and woe betide any cub reporter who filed 30cms when 20 were asked for, a nicotine-stained subeditor leaned over my desk and asked me to explain the piece I had just filed.
“It’s a match report about a boring game that I had the misfortune to be assigned to.”
More than 25 years on, I can’t recall if those were the exact words I used, but I remember more clearly the response. The sub, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Count Homogenised, explained that the height of arrogance was to watch and write sport for a living and then to effectively complain to the reader about it. It was the reporter’s job, he harrumphed, to find fresh angles from the stalest fare.
That valuable piece of advice came flooding back to me today when I originally started this newsletter by writing, “one of the most highly anticipated sports-watching weekends of the year peaked at 10pm on Friday and got progressively wetter and duller from there”.
Nah, that won’t do, but neither can I say with a straight face that I enjoyed:
Brian Harman’s “nail-biting” six-stroke victory at the Open Championship;
Jonas Vingegaard’s “thrilling” 7m 29s Tour de France triumph (that failed to move the locals);
Max Verstappen’s “shock” Hungarian GP win on a record-breaking day for Red Bull racing;
The “pulsating” 0-0 draw between France and Jamaica to cap a weekend of World Cup “boilovers”;
And the “nerve-shredding” climax to the drawn fourth Ashes test that sealed the series for Australia.
The last one was perhaps the most disappointing because it turned what could have been a genuine thriller at The Oval this week into a somewhat academic exercise. The purest definition of the term “optimist” is scheduling a five-day test in Manchester, with Dunedin not far behind (you can add Auckland to that list, but NZC doesn’t host tests in the country’s biggest city any more and they’re not going to in the foreseeable future either, so moot point).
Instead we had death by rain radar.
Or, as Cricinfo’s Vithushan Ehantharajah wrote:
Mother Nature, though, held her nerve. She does not put point and square leg on the boundary. She refuses to get rid of her slips. Bowls her spinner - sorry, plays her spinner. And for the first time this Ashes series, England take a backwards step, eventually retreating inside. Mother Nature has won. And four hours later, at 5.24pm, Australia have retained the urn.
That England dominated the first three days of this fourth test made it all feel a lot worse. This was on course to being the most Hollywood version of Bazball, tenets hammed up to the nth degree, under the brightest lights and in front of the most eyes. Opponents snuffed out under par, a bumper 592 underpinned by Zak Crawley and Jonny Bairstow… to establish a 275-run lead, then the quick prising out of four wickets, all by Friday. Alas, the weekend brought nothing but one more dismissal, 150 overs lost and a Bible’s worth of rain and misery.
Nice.
More prosaically, the Daily Mail has identified the six moments that lost the Ashes.
As England collectively waited on a break in the weather, they retired to the Old Trafford sheds to watch the golf, which was played an hour’s drive west in Hoylake.
Having established such a big lead, the only way to engender any excitement in the final round was as if somebody went on a tear to put some scoreboard pressure on southpaw Brian Harman. The wind and rain made that a near impossibility, so it was more of a procession than a contest.
Still, there were a couple of laughs to be had.
Harman credited his love of hunting for his patience and implacable temperament. It also led to him being heckled as the Butcher of Hoylake.
This ESPN profile does a nice job of painting a picture of Harman, who has always been known as an angry character on the course.
The first time Sea Island resident Davis Love III saw Harman play, he was throwing clubs in a junior tournament. PGA Tour pro Brendon Todd, his teammate at Georgia, remembers competing against him in a junior tournament in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Todd was 17 and two years older than Harman.
“He was the most talented, angry kid I’d seen [at] that point,” Todd said. “I remember walking off the golf course being like, ‘If that guy can just calm down a little bit, he’s going to be out-of-this-world good’.”
This is not a Weather Channel Substack, but it was teeming down south of the equator, too.
The weather in Wellington for Sweden’s 2-1 Group G victory over South Africa was foul and probably scared off potential 11th-hour ticket buyers, which is a shame, because it was a decent match.
The crowds in Dunedin haven’t looked great, but a bit of context is probably required. Close to 14,000 turned up for Switzerland’s 2-0 win over the Philippines and 12,000 as the Dutch beat the Portuguese 1-0. It looked pretty average on telly but we’re talking about a city of 128,000 with an outsized student population. Some 21,000 saw Nigeria and Canada play out a 0-0 draw in Melbourne, a city with a population of five million.
To continue to search for perspective, this was taken minutes before kickoff at an NPC semifinal at the same ground.
Still, even with that context, you can’t help but wonder if Fifa has allocated too many games to the deep south.
One place where crowds should not be an issue is Penrose. The Warriors, eh! Even Prickly Stuart couldn’t take the sheen off another Mt Smart thriller.
“In regards to that decision before halftime with [Sebastian] Kris’ no try - that was a high shot. It should have been a penalty try… should never have even got to golden point.”
As irksome as Stuart’s tirades are, he has a point about that particular call. Kris definitely bore the brunt of Dallin Watene-Zelezniak’s desperate cover defence across the chops and if the shoe had been on the other foot Jason Paris’ staff and family would have had to have hidden his phone from him. Stuart also forgets, however, that if that decision goes their way, the whole game changes from that point on. He has no idea how it will end up. Perhaps it would have stung the Warriors into a second-half frenzy rather than complacency.
The Raiders were gutsy and the try from the end of the world1 was spectacular, but the Warriors were the better team.
Writes Peter, my Warriors’ roving fan/correspondent:
The fact that Ricky Stuart had his team fly in on Tuesday reflected how important this game was and how tough an assignment he knew beating this Warriors outfit would be.
A full-strength Green Machine is one of the strongest teams in the comp with the likes of Joseph Tapine, Josh Papali’i, Corey Horsburg, Jack Wighton and Jordan Rapana combined with their never-say-die attitude. Before the game I was telling anybody who would listen that I’d be happy with a one-point win. What d’ya know!
For most of the game I was amazed at how we contained their pack, defused their bombs and tackled every Raider that came our way, their only try resulting from us dropping the ball.
Shaun Johnson had control of the game and at 20-6, I was marvelling at our dominance, resilience and slick passing. But in the NRL, you’re never safe and in minutes, a stunned home crowd had the sickening feeling of witnessing a comfy win turn to a gutting defeat and Jarrod Croker lined up a winning conversion attempt.
Croker has had a dreadful run with the Warriors this season. They spoiled his 300th game earlier in the season and on Friday he carried the can for the missed conversion.
The crowd around me was in a bewildered panic and I admit I wasn’t confident about a golden-point win but the team was, telling coach Andrew ‘Webby’ Webster, “We’ve got this.” Is that the crucial factor that this squad has? Belief in the coach, the systems and themselves. They made the winning play look like a rehearsed training-ground move.
Did they clock off or lose that vital momentum in the last quarter? It was a vital lesson in their run to the playoffs. It’s important they learn from that and use the experience when they really need it.
Thanks Pete, it’s always good to leave on a positive note. The old sub would approve.
THIS WEEK
Keep an eye out this week from a guest contribution that charts the evolution of Middle Eastern money in sport, plus a few bits and bobs that might have been missed. And go the Ferns… both Silver and Football!
I have been amazed at how teams are still playing the Warriors like they’re the 2021-22 version. They’re still trying to beat them up the middle, but there is little ground to be won against a pack led by Addin Fonua-Blake and Tohu Harris. If I was playing the Warriors I’d be urging my team not to die on the altar of completed sets and to move the ball wide early in the tackle count, constantly asking the centres and wingers to make decisions on defence.
A lot of angst about ticket sales in NZ. 31k at Eden Park tonight, 27k in Melbourne, for not dissimilar types of matchups. I reckon we are doing ok.
Matej Mohoric win and interview was a highlight from the cycling...
Personally quite enjoyed England being denied the Ashes like that. Make some dumb decisions and end up 2 down, it was never going to be likely you'd get 3 full games and win them all.
Agree with the comments already made re: the weather in Manchester. It was disappointing on one hand but England really put themselves on the backfoot by losing the first two games. The talk from Stokes & co about winning the last three games was stoic but extremely hopeful. It’s a rare series in England unaffected but weather and even without it you need every roll of the dice to go your way from 2-0 down. I think England will realise that deep down and should be bitterly disappointed because as the series as gone on they’ve gotten better, to the point of looking the better team, which has surprised me. I think some hairbrained batting in the first two tests (nervous energy?) and the ongoing sentimental selection of Anderson have been killers for them. And they’ve had a few things go their way that they haven’t taken advantage of - patchy form of a number of usually bankable Aussies and the injury to Lyon.