An eyewitness to history
Matt Heath joins me for a chat about the most important book released in this country since, well, Michael King's Penguin Book of New Zealand History.
A Google.doc chat between two middle-aged men who love cricket, love talking about cricket, love writing about cricket and still find hilarity in jokes about ‘downstairs operations’. Oh… and they have a Christmas cracker of a book to launch!
Dylan Cleaver: Right off the bat let me say I bloody love this format, but this first bit is always a bit awkward. It’s the whole “who should take the lead without sounding bossy” thing and how do we introduce each other to our diverse and erudite Substack audiences without it reading like a curriculum vitae? With all that in mind (puts on best MC voice), the next person you’re going to hear from has been in the news a fair bit recently with the release of a best-selling book A Life Less Punishing: 13 Ways to Love the Life You’ve Got and a move from the whitewater mayhem of Hauraki breakfast to the calmer seas of afternoons on NewstalkZB. Welcome to the stage, Matt…
Matt Heath: Thanks Dylan Cleaver. It’s an honour to be writing back and forth in this weird way with New Zealand’s Premier Sports Journalist (right up there with Paul Ford). The Bounce has been my go to source for my sports opinions for years now. Unfortunately your publication has gotten so popular that when I steal one of your opinions, someone always texts my show with, “that was in the Bounce yesterday you muppet”.
Cleaver: We’ve got a book to flog and boy will we flog it, but just before we get there, have you stopped and thought for a minute about what your shift to NewstalkZB ‘means’? Because I have. We now have two of New Zealand’s most punishing media iconoclasts ensconced within two of the country’s most cherished institutions. If you wound the clock back a couple of decades and announced that Newsboy would become a key cog in the state broadcasting machinery and Dick Johansonson would be commanding the airwaves at the Most Holy Cathedral of Centre-Right-Common-Sense, who would have believed you?
Heath: Yes I have been thinking about this a lot. I have a lot of skeletons in my closet. Too many to be a mainstream broadcaster. Actually my skeletons aren’t even hidden. I have done so many terrible things. My skeletons are piled up everywhere. In fact, this ACC book we are releasing is full of them. But Jeremy getting away with his terrible behaviour with me in the morning on Hauraki and the ACC then cleaning up, putting on a suit and delivering Seven Sharp is an inspiration. Most people out there think Jeremy is a wholesome bastion of decency. When you only have to spend a second online to find out he’s a depraved reprobate. If he can get away with it, surely I can?
Cleaver: I have faith in you. I’ll give you a full week before you become the headline. Let’s talk about the ACC… how do we really feel about no-fault, personal injury compensation? Yeah, yeah, lame joke, but there is a semi-serious point to it: if you’re under 35 I reckon as many males would automatically apply the ACC acronym to the commentary collective as they would to New Zealand’s groundbreaking accident insurance scheme. If nothing else, that tells you something about Jezza and G Lane’s vision?
Heath: Yeah, both ACCs have been a lifeline to me at different times. The Accident CC one when I broke my spine boxing and they paid for all the metal I now have in my back. The commentary one has healed me spiritually. Ten years of hanging out with my best mates, travelling the world, doing what we love most watching, talking about and sometimes playing sports together. We have been less successful at the latter, the ACC XI being winless after 8 years of competition. Now Dylan, you were around the ACC when Jeremy and G Lane got together and conceived it. In some way you have looked in from the outside and then out from the inside. You’ve had a worm’s eye and a bird’s eye view. What did you think of the endeavour when it was birthed? What do you think of it now?
Cleaver: Shit, that’s a great Hydra-like double-headed monster of a question. As a small history lesson, I was kind of on the ground floor of the ACC, although technically it was the third floor of the legionnaires-infested TRN building on Nelson St, dangerously close to gentlemen’s club Femme Fatale. That’s where Jeremy, G Lane and I produced an iteration of the BYC podcast on Thursday afternoons and it was when they started seriously talking about the concept that would morph into the Alternative Commentary Collective. In one of those sliding doors moments, I wasn’t so much dismissive of it as I was uninterested because my business card at that time would have read “Dylan Cleaver, deadly serious sports journalist”, or something like that. I look back now and wonder if I should have tried to display a few comedy chops to get on the team, but you know what, I think there are those who can and those who would like to but can’t. I’m definitely in the latter camp. I guess I could have done stats, but Hart bulldozed his way into that role. Jeremy picked his team brilliantly and I’ve remained in awe as I listen to you guys shift seamlessly between commentary and collective stream-of-consciousness nonsense.
What was your origin story in terms of, for want of a better term, falling into the Wells-Lane orbit? Some of the names Wells was recruiting were instantly recognisable in a comedy cultish sort of way, but did you have much of a background with the likes of Hart, Baker, Hoyte and Ford.
Heath: Yeah I knew Hart well in a drinking capacity and Baker a bit from various TV jobs. I was a fan of Hoyte but didn’t know him. Not sure when I met Ford but loved him from the second we met. He’s an impressively smart dude. I met G Lane at an event a long time before the ACC. I didn’t know he had been to school with Wells. I just met him at a bar. We stole a plate of 50 tequila shots and handed them out. I remember waking up the next day and telling my partner at the time that I had just met the funniest, best guy ever.
Cleaver: I’ve always seen G Lane as not so much an evil genius, but a slightly warped one and the way he has expanded the ACC’s reach into other sports and sports-related events has been a true business success story, but I have to confess I remain a bit of an ACC purist. I love the cricket product and the way you guys have locked into its rhythms, but I don’t engage as often with the winter codes. I think Lane is the first to admit that it took longer to find a “voice” in rugby, where do you see the ACC’s relationship with the national game now, and where can the concept go next?
Heath: Yeah we fell arse backwards into butter with the cricket. The rhythm of the game is perfect for the crap we wanted to talk about. Rugby is harder but I think we have got it now. It’s just a matter of getting a few comments in as the game flows. Rather than starting a story that would run for five overs in cricket. We might make an observation that no other team would bring up while a scrum is being packed down. The ‘ball-by-ball’ in rugby is perfect now. G Lane and Manaia and others are so good at it. The nicknames still crack me up when I am watching. Prince Telea! Also I love that we take text feedback. No other comms team is reading out the abuse. Out of interest what is the worst ACC broadcast you have heard? G Lane and I doing that America’s Cup was ropey. We have committed some on-air crimes.
Cleaver: I picked up the commentary from Bay Oval once and I think you and Leigh Hart were discussing barbecuing human flesh. You and Mike calling the Paralympic bowls was a low point that probably requires more context (the book provides it!), while you were also both responsible for calling an America’s Cup replay live. I’ve just attached your name to most of the low points. I feel bad about that — you’re nice. Redeem yourself here by telling our audiences what single event you covered that still makes you go, “Holy shit, I was there and I commentated on that great slice of New Zealand sporting history”.
Heath: Well it has to be the 2015 Cricket World Cup semifinal. The famous “Steyn to Elliot’ moment. We may have been kicked out of the grounds and forced to commentate from a concrete supply room below the TRN building in downtown Auckland, and we may have all screamed so loudly and unprofessionally into the mic when the Hairy Jav hit that legendary six that the audio is almost unlistenable, but I put it to you that not many if any commentary teams around the world have hit those levels of pure joy, passion and love for their team. The transcript of that moment in this book is a truly beautiful read. I am proud to have been part of the commentary team who were wrongfully banished for a crime we didn’t commit but instead of sulking or giving up, stood tall together as a brotherhood and howled heroically at the moon for our beloved national cricket team.
Cleaver: What I particularly enjoy about The Alternative Commentary Collective Almanack: A Decade of New Zealand Sports is that oral history-type, behind-the-scenes look at how the ACC morphed from niche curiosity to an important part of the modern NZ sports fabric. When you’re inside it, did you ever feel like there was a point when you realised this was slightly bigger than getting paid to talk some shit with your mates?
Heath: I travelled to Melbourne for the Boxing Day test in 2019 as a fan. Walking into the ground there were Kiwis everywhere singing our ACC songs and in the MCG there were thousands of people wearing our Steady The Ship captain hats. I remember thinking at the time this thing may have gotten bigger than us.
Cleaver: There are too many anecdotes I love in this book to list, including psilocybin misadventures in Amsterdam, the epic Baker-Wells sexual inquisition of the Rt Hon Gerry Brownlee and Dai Henwood’s stirringly beautiful monologue explaining how important the Warriors were during his chemotherapy. Is there a page or a section you’ll keep pointing people to?
Heath: There are so many great bits to point to. But first I would like to point people away from the aforementioned Paralympic bowls low point if I can.
Strangely for me, the bit I love re-reading the most is the 2020 ACC Super League. The country was locked down, there was no sport. This is a bad state of affairs for a commentary team. So we create a world first. A completely made up tournament. No other sports organisations backed themselves to record and broadcast a full and fabricated rugby tournament. We had Spongebob Squarepants coming up against Nigella Lawson. At one point Batman put Winston Churchill on his arse. It was the only sport happening on Earth at the time. The final was a cracker. The work Kurt Cobain did to set up Mick Jagger to score in the corner late in the second half will live in sporting memories for a long time, as will the Speedy Gonzales try for the cartoon characters. I was a big fan of the Cartoon XV going in but at the end of the day the repeated ill-discipline of Homer Simpson cost his team. The 1st XV of Rock capitalised. 18-7. End of story. What are you pointing people towards?
Cleaver: It would be easier for me to answer this if G Lane had the common courtesy to send me an advanced copy. I only co-authored the thing for crying out loud. It says so on the inside page! Even Ford got sent a copy… he sent me a photo1.
The Alternative Commentary Collective Almanack: A Decade of New Zealand Sports is available for pre-order here, and is in stores from tomorrow.
Lane as since sent me a damaged copy. It looks great!
 | A guest post by
|
I've always wondered if the ACC guys think they'd have had the same success if they'd emerged at a time when the Black Caps weren't as successful? I think you could probably make a decent argument either way. The black humor of an ACC during the 90's would have been great but the joy you get listening to them talk about success is part of what makes it so fun.