Aussies milking the drama like clockwork
Controversy might have cost Bledisloe Cup but it has been a boon for the sport, PLUS: The best of the links from around the sports world.
The fallout from the controversial Bledisloe Cup ending in Melbourne last week still dominates the sports news headlines here.
Which is not that surprising coming as it did on one of the quietest sporting weekends of the year (unless you’re a Wellington rugby fan which, judging by the banks of yellow at Sky Stadium most weeks, isn’t many of you).
Coming as it did during the heart of the AFL and NRL playoffs, Mathieu Raynal has been an absolute godsend for Rugby Australia, stealing column inches from Parramatta’s return to relevance and a similarly incendiary conclusion to the Sydney Swans AFL preliminary final win.
The latest angle, if you can call it that, is RA either sending a “please explain” or a formal complaint to World Rugby, or possibly both.
The whole situation is moving into high farce territory, with RA essentially complaining about a correct decision when there were a whole bunch of incorrect ones - Bernard Foley’s forward pass, the uncarded tip-tackle of Tyrel Lomax and the yellow card for Darcy Swain’s horrendous assault on Quinn Tupaea - they could have taken aim at.
Yes, the timing of Raynal’s decision to take a stand against time wasting was bonkers when you consider the “gamesmanship” was worse at the end of the first half, but it doesn’t make it wrong.
Tim Horan’s ridicule, which he expressed to D’Arcy Waldegrave on NewstalkZB is either misinformed or just plain dishonest.
“The referee was standing out that side, near the two centres, and that’s why they were screaming, because they could hear him but Bernard Foley, who’s 15, 20 metres away, he couldn’t hear him,” Horan said. “In a closed stadium, 50-odd thousand people, the referee’s got to communicate that better: run over to Bernard Foley, stop the clock and say, ‘Bernard, you’ve got to kick this out in the next second otherwise I’m gonna give a penalty’.”
Footage clearly demonstrates that the ref is close to Foley and if he doesn’t hear him, it’s because he doesn’t want to listen.
Perhaps the most on-point analysis of the whole affair came from Mark Stafford, who did what in fact every pundit should have.
Andrew Mehrtens, meanwhile, has called for official timekeeping in rugby, which makes a lot of sense.
If I was an Australian rugby fan I’d have been filthy about how it ended but if I was an administrator, I’d like to think I’d be a little more “blue-hatted” when presented with the facts.
Or perhaps this is just opportunism. The Bledisloe has slipped from the grasp again, but it’s been a while since rugby has felt so connected to the Australian sporting public. Perhaps they are right to milk this for all its worth.
All the while, there is drama of a different kind lining up around the Springboks, with allegations of recreational drug use.
Said coach Jacques Nienaber: “I’m literally stunned that allegations like that can be made about this team because again we are tested as any other team is tested regularly, sometimes three times a week in South Africa. There hasn’t been one positive case since we’ve been together all this year. So yeah, it is disappointing.”
I wrote for The Spinoff last week about the reasons for the lukewarm response to the paper that drew a causal link between repetitive head injuries in sport and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and why it fell short of being sport’s smoking = lung cancer moment.
In a similar vein, Stuff ran a piece about the impending results of a study that was a collaboration between New Zealand Rugby and the Department of Statistics. While studies in American and Association football have found rates of neurodegenerative diseases at three to four times the rate of the general population, I understand that figure will be close to one-and-a-half times more likely in the case of rugby here, which is certainly not an insignificant amount.
The Taini Jamison Trophy is on, but at significant cost to Netball New Zealand and even greater cost to the credibility of the sport.
Jamaica’s trip was delayed after complications with passports and visas. This led to NNZ cancelling the Hamilton leg of the series. This means the final game of the series will be played at Bruce Pulman Arena, which is a perfectly fine community facility.
There is no suggestion this shambles is in any way down to NNZ, but it is a shambles nonetheless.
Once they do get on court, Locker Room reports that two novice midcourters are looking to make a case for long-term inclusion.
Not sure what is the best story from the world cycling champs in Wollongong, Norwegian outsider Tobias Foss beating a roll call of the world’s fastest pedallers to win the time trial, or magpies attacking riders. I’m going for the magpies.
“A fairly large bird came very close and it just kept following me," said Belgian time triallist Remco Evenepoel. “It was terrifying. But that’s Australia, apparently. I hope it is the only time it happens, but I am afraid of it.”
As interesting as the spectacle and pageantry of the change from queen to king is, observing how organisations think they should act is almost as fascinating. In the Guardian, Sean Ingle writes persuasively that sport was too deferential to the institution of the monarchy.
No one was telling the sport to stop. In fact, when I spoke to senior officials on the night of the Queen’s death, their expectation was that most of them, including the Premier League, would carry on. Twelve hours later, the fear of getting it wrong had persuaded football, boxing and cycling to pull the plug.
Why? Partly it is due to a timidity and deference towards the royal family… that appear timeless. Perhaps the best explanation for what we have seen over the past 11 days was given by a senior BBC News executive, more than 25 years ago, when asked… about plans for the Queen Mother’s death. “The view is that the people you upset by not going over the top about her death would be upset for longer – and with more consequence – than the people you would upset by going over the top about it,” he said.
That has been the blueprint for every major royal funeral since.
In one breath, cover your arse. With the next, bow your head. The silent majority be damned.
THIS WEEK
Just a quick note to say for the next couple of weeks I’ll be dropping the midweek newsletter as I try to break the back of a book project I’m working on. I will be posting on Sunday following the Bledisloe Cup dead rubber/ Black Ferns double-header at Eden Park. This will be for paying subscribers only
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Aussies milking this alright. If it’d been the other way round I’m sure we’d have been unhappy too, but ultimately they just need to shut up and accept it. With refs you win some, you lose some, if you don’t know that you don’t know rugby.
Listening to the Australian panels discussing this I was hoping (not sure why) for some balance, but it was about as fair as Balanced as a Fox News political panel.