America's Cup hosting debate festers like a boil on a sailor's butt
PLUS: Vaccine-hesitant netballers and massively underdogged cricketers
There’s always been an element of ugliness about the off-water shenanigans that encircle the America’s Cup. The drama is often wryly explained away as “just part of the game” as if people, usually uber-wealthy men, acting like asshats was some sort of cute diversion from real life.
The Herald today reported on the latest Mark Dunphy outburst ($). The businessman claims to have $40 million in firm funding for a local Cup defence. I’m not sure he’s the most reliable weathervane for public sentiment as he appears to be knee-deep in agenda-driven agitation himself - evidently connected to those trying to get the New York Yacht Club to sue Team New Zealand - but here’s some of what he had to say.
“The simple fact is that there is a viable funded option to hold the America's Cup defence in Auckland, but the [Royal New Zealand Yacht] Squadron’s agent, Team New Zealand, point blank refuses to consider taking up that option and holding the Cup defence here.
“We believe [TNZ] haven’t had any discussions with Auckland Council, the New Zealand Government, or other New Zealand funders since missing their first venue announcement date on September 17, or since missing their second venue announcement on November 17.”
The RNZYS has told its members there was not a “viable New Zealand venue proposition”.
This is the bit that every New Zealander who has contributed to the public purse over the past five years could, maybe should, feel aggrieved by.
Team NZ CEO and former grinder Grant Dalton has waxed lyrical for years that they exist to bring the Cup home. They finally did it, with central and local government responding by handing over barrels of gold doubloons to an event that did not come close to meeting economic return predictions. Yes, this was mostly due to Covid but it was also in no small part due to Dalton grossly overestimating the number of challengers that would turn up.
Now, with Auckland actually in a position to capitalise from the event as the infrastructure is already in place, Team NZ are trying their hardest to take it offshore to cash in themselves.
Sailing website Scuttlebutt put it thus: “So the Kiwi team, abandoning tradition, is now shopping the greatest asset they have – the venue. This has their rabid fans left at the altar, an abandoned bride wondering where the love went. The sex had been good, the romance real, but the team’s heart belonged to an ornate sterling silver bottomless ewer.”
Not totally sold on the analogy, nor am I sold on Dunphy’s Kiwi Home Defence organisation.
I’m not sure I can put it any more delicately than this: Taking the Cup overseas has always felt like a real s***house move by Team NZ but quite honestly, if we’re rounding up the loose change from a bunch of millionaires in a bid to keep a boat race here, what kind of world are we/ they living in?
Over at Stuff, American Magic seems really happy with the new protocols released last week.
VAX ISSUES
Dame Noeline Taurua is quoted widely and I have to confess to being a little confused by what she was saying in parts, but it seems abundantly clear that multiple players are resistant to vaccine mandates.
“We’ve worked alongside the New Zealand Players Association as well in regards to further advising players, utilising immunologists as well, and our Dr Mel Parnell, who’s associated with the Silver Ferns,” Taurua told RNZ. “So we’ve gone through different stages with different individuals and you know, that’s up to them and we won’t take that away as to what they want to decide.”
The Breakers, perhaps the country’s most forgotten professional sporting franchise, are dealing with their own Covid issues reports Marc Hinton in Stuff, with four in the camp returning positive tests, resulting in the cancelling of their final pre-season game.
“Nobody is any danger of heading to the hospital any time soon,” Breakers CEO Matt Walsh told Stuff. “We prepared for this possibility when we came here, knowing at some point we could face something like this. We have followed all NBL protocols, right now we’re all in isolation, and we’re going to get further testing… to ensure that it is just the four within the group that have tested positive and carry on from there.”
INDIAN SPRING
New Zealand begins a test match tomorrow for the first time as world champions.
Don’t let that fact fool you; they’ll be massive underdogs - like Crystal Palace away to Manchester City in the fifth round of the FA Cup-type underdogs.
The one big thing Palace might have going for them in that scenario is that City could rest a lot of their best players and it just so happens India will be without Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami.
With no red-ball warm-up matches on local surfaces before the tests, some players - Ross Taylor for example - are going to be seriously underdone. There’ll be a makeshift opener to partner Tom Latham at the top (probably Will Young) and with 24 hours to the coin toss, little indication of the seam/ spin bowling split. Whatever spin combination they go for, it will numerically pale in comparison to Ravi Ashwin, Ravi Jadeja and Axar Patel.
If you’re a test cricket nut like me, you can’t wait but this will be the toughest test New Zealand will face this year - and then some.
Niall Anderson in the NZ Herald says, simply, “get used to losing”, or the headline does at least.
India v NZ, 1st test, Kanpur, tomorrow 5pm, Sky Sport 1
THE BYC
On today’s show, we sweep the 0-3 series loss under the carpet, preview the test series starting in India and bring the Tim Paine sexting scandal into a very murky light.
TOMORROW
The Bounce will tomorrow feature a guest essay from Paul Lewis, who has enjoyed a long and colourful career in the sports media and PR. Lewis was the chief rugby writer for the New Zealand Herald when the All Blacks won the inaugural World Cup in 1987 but I know him best as the original sports editor of the Herald on Sunday, in all likelihood the last major print masthead to be launched in New Zealand.
You wouldn’t know it now, but the early HoS sports sections were weekly miracles, a liftout that at times pushed out to 36 pages, most of which were filled by a small team driven (just once or twice up the wall) by the force of nature that was Lewis.
Here’s a little taster:
“I was the first person in Herald history to file by laptop. Had I known what damage the digital age was about to inflict on sports writing, I might not have been so impressed – either with the technology or myself.”
Midweek Book Club will also appear tomorrow.
