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Couple of quick cricket comments.

Firstly that was a serious achievement from NZ A. I don’t know how strong Oz A truly was but to go over there and win two red balls games on their turf is outstanding.

On Tom Bruce an anecdote: I happened to be in Hamilton last summer when England were playing the NZ XI captained by Bruce. I was staying at the same hotel as England and stepped into a lift full of their players and asked how their day had gone - they’d had a hard day in the field and one of them (didn’t recognise him) said “Bruce batted well, he’s a proper player”. A few nods suggested this was the consensus among the English boys.

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I watched a bit of the second game and we played well from what I saw. The Oz A team was a good one too. May it bode well for the upcoming home summer!

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A very well written article by Marc Hinton on the assessment of Ian Foster. A change from the sycophantic BS coming from the Herald's Grigor Paul and the talking heads at Sky. Not sure how welcome he will be with the “senior” AB’s but it is a breath of fresh air to get a bit of honesty for a change.

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Not particularly surprised by the Cormack review. Its interesting that someone so caught up in different PR interests likes to frame himself as some objective arbiter of morality and truth. Guyon Espiner had a good series on lobbyists on RNZ a few months ago, strange how so many are used by the media as pundits but with minimal disclosures or transparency.

As for the Warriors, I like to be optimistic but it just can't be done without SJ. Neither Walker nor Martin have a long distance kicking game which is vital to stay in the game against a team like Penrith. They will pin us in our own end. Hoping for the best but calf injuries tend to linger unfortunately.

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Cormack is not credible for this sort of work. He emerged over the last six years as someone on the “correct side” of the political spectrum. He has no knowledge or love for sport as far as I’m aware. A very, very political person.

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Yep agree. Think the proliferation of PR people and lobbyists as pundits in the media contributes a lot to the polarisation of our political environment. So many vested interests, they just end up pushing particular agendas under the guise of objective commentary which is laughable.

I'm sure the book has its flaws but its pretty hard to read that review and not come to the conclusion that it's essentially a PR response from Cormack. After all that is his literal job. Newsroom has been particularly poor with their opinion writers and inconsistent disclosures.

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Is it sacralige to say it's a tough decision between the rugby and tennis tomorrow morning? Alcaraz vs Medvedev has all the makings of a classic (weather permitting) and maybe Joko gets upset... A bit of a coup for ASB classic in getting a current US open champ or runner up locked in.

As for the rugby it could be a cracker or a blanket hider. Bring it on.

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