Barrett's red mist a growing liability
PLUS: Warriors' bunker mentality, Moore-gone conclusion and... other stuff
Short of using the Hammer of Thor to help effect his tackles, it’s hard to see how Scott Barrett could have made it any more obvious that he needs to spend some serious time on the sidelines.
His shoulder to the head of Blues’ prop Alex Hodgman was the bright-reddest of red cards, one of the few occasions when it was pointless trying to offer even a skerrick of evidence in mitigation (though, of course, the crowd still booed the ref).
Four weeks seems like the absolute minimum for a collision that broke the laws of height, timing and technique. He needs the time away to start putting in some serious work on his tackling technique.
It’s irrelevant as to whether he has any intent. It would be moronic (and sadistic) in this day and age to try to intentionally injure a fellow professional with any number of high-definition cameras to catch your crimes.
Barrett is no moron, but he’s gaining a reputation as both careless and reckless. It doesn’t matter how good a bloke he is or how sorry he is, the next stage is to be recognised as a liability, and there’s not much future at this highest level for those.
The red card overshadowed a good game of footy that on balance the Blues deserved to win, though the Crusaders made it tougher for them than it should have been.
Covid restrictions have dictated that Super Rugby Pacific has felt like two very separate competitions. That, in turn, has meant that there has been little to no focus on what is happening across the Tasman.
So I say this in the knowledge it is a very one-eyed way of looking at things, but a repeat of Good Friday’s clash would be a very good final.
Especially if it stays 15 v 15 for 80 minutes.
The “No Vacancy” signs were warming up in the city of Dunedin according to the Otago Daily Times, but despite what the story says the out-of-towners clearly weren’t going to the rugby.
The stadium looked less than a quarter full to watch the Highlanders lose another nailbiter to the Hurricanes in a match featuring, you guessed it, another red card, this time to Josh Dickson.
Those that didn’t turn up didn’t miss much until a dramatic conclusion that saw Saula Ma’u ruled to have been held up in goal, letting the Canes escape with a 22-21 win.
Neither captain Aaron Smith nor coach Tony Brown seemed impressed.
Smith: “We’re getting robbed all the time... we had a red card [Dickson] for contact to the head and one of our guys blatantly gets a black eye and touchies and refs just walk it off like it’s nothing. All we want is consistency as players, and we’re just getting no rub of the green at the moment, and it’s pretty hard to swallow.”
Brown: “Nothing’s going our way, decisions aren’t going our way… At some stage we’re going to get the rub of the green, and we're going to turn these narrow losses into good wins… At the moment, we’re not getting the rub of the green. It’s not going our way.”
That’s a lot of green rubbing, a term that originated in either golf or lawn bowls, probably the former, which refers to the way the grass is mowed (the rub) affecting the course of the ball or bowl.
That’s your Tuesday cold, hard fact thrown in for no extra cost.
You want to hear about more greens being rubbed adversely? Let me tell you about the Warriors.
They were brave, committed, a bit average and, truth be told, the second-best team on the Sydney Cricket Ground in their match against the Sydney Roosters.
They were also on the end of some atrocious rulings from the officials - on field but particularly in the bunker - at the most pivotal points of the game.
The Warriors have chosen to stay above the fray, perhaps knowing that the NRL will be able to point to a couple of “make-up” calls that appeared to go in their favour late in the match (by which time it was too late to any bearing on the result, however), but I’d question that move.
The “no-strip” of Reece Walsh that effectively ended up being a 12-point play in a 22-14 loss was the most crucial call, but it wasn’t the most farcical. That came when the Warriors challenged a Addin Fonua-Blake knock-on decision. The replay had the ball being blatantly pushed out of his hands by Rooster Angus Crichton but the man in the bunker said, presumably with a straight face, there was no clear evidence. If that man was on the bench for the trial of Will Smith, he would have found no evidence of a slap at Chris Rock.
If there was an opportunity to go troppo this was it, but Nathan Brown clearly has a clearer head than me.
It just feels like until somebody at the Warriors really throws their toys, this is going to keep happening…
In some of the least surprising news of the weekend, Glenn Moore resigned as coach of the Black Ferns, an inevitability once his reputation was skewered by the report into the Black Ferns culture.
There has been an ugly cynicism to the process; a sense of narratives being retrofitted for convenience, of grievances magnified and any voices that ran counter to the narrative being unheard or ignored.
To make it clear, I don’t know Moore, I have no idea how good or otherwise he is at the task of being a head coach of a rugby team other than his win-loss record at various sides he has led. I suspect that in terms of his suitability to coach the Black Ferns in their World Cup campaign of 2022, he was, in every sense, a man out of time. The right result may have been arrived at, but in the wrong way.
I’m can’t speak his truth. He did that himself on Saturday (in which, for the first time, he rejects the way he was framed in the untested social media post that kickstarted all this), but I can say that I don’t think I have seen a coach’s reputation so torched with such a scarcity of evidence of wrongdoing.
If he’s been used to deflect from the appalling lack of coherent resourcing of women’s rugby, that’s abhorrent.
NZR’s treatment of women’s rugby was again put under the spotlight, this time by World Cup winner Kristina Sue on Breakdown, who made the point that Super Rugby Aupiki provided New Zealand rugby with a great opportunity to open coaching pathways for women.
With Paul Coll’s rise to the top of the world squash rankings, we can be forgiven for forgetting that Joelle King is pretty damn good too. The world No5 proved that point by beating a strong field to win the Manchester Open this morning.
What Coll and the 33 year old King have been able to achieve on the world circuit is fairly remarkable when you consider how isolated they are. While all minor or niche sports like to tell you how sneaky popular they are across the globe, squash is really only popular in pockets of the world. While the Brits, the French and particularly the Egyptians have compatriots in the world top 40 they can lean on when they’re far from home, Coll and king do not.
The next highest ranked New Zealand men’s player is Zambian-born Lwamba Chileshe (92), while Kaitlyn Watts is ranked one place higher in the women’s.
It should never be underestimated what an incredible job King and Coll do of flying the New Zealand flag in the sport, especially during these, the toughest of times.
Said King upon winning (per NZ Herald): “It’s been three years since I’ve seen anyone in my family, and I love them, this is what all the sacrifices are for. I wanted to give my squash everything that I have and this one is for them and to everyone who stood by me.”
This is a lot of fun. It’s a feature story about an obnoxious drunk guy who threw a slice of pizza at another obnoxious drunk guy in baseball’s holiest cathedral, Fenway Park.
It covers the buildup (morning drinking was involved), the physics of the throw, the reaction and the aftermath. It ends with this nice pay-off line.
“I regret the whole thing,” Kelly says, and his voice lowers a bit. “But not really.”
WEEKEND PIC
Manchester City and Liverpool played out another cracker, this time in the FA Cup semifinal at Wembley Stadium. Liverpool won 3-2 but the match will forever be remembered for City’s back-up keeper Zak Steffan dawdling on a back pass, being tackled by Sadio Mane and watching the ball balloon into his net.
Chelsea be at Crystal Palace 2-0 in the other semifinal, so the final on May 15 (NZT) will be a repeat of the League Cup final in February, won by the Reds in a penalty shootout.
WATCH OUT FOR
With all the excitement of the Easter sports lineup I completely forgot that we’re in the heart of the best week on the 2022 cycling calendar, which started with the gruelling Paris-Roubaix, the most captivating of cycling’s five “Monuments”, before tomorrow’s midweek classic Fleche Wallonne and ending with another Monument, the Liege-Bastogne-Liege this weekend.
George Bennett will line up alongside Tadej Podacar for UAE Cycling in the FW and LBL, but New Zealand has even more representation in the femme versions of the races, with Michaela Drummond, Georgia Danford, Niamh Fisher-Black and Mikayla Harvey all riding.
La Fleche Wallone Femmes, tomorrow 9.10pm, Sky Sport 3
La Fleche Wallone, tomorrow 11pm, Sky Sport 3
THIS WEEK
Unless something truly groundbreaking, controversial or dramatic happens, The Bounce will cut down to two newsletters per week during the school holidays. The BYC has also been put into hibernation for the rest of autumn until the Black Caps start their campaign again in England in June, so no pod tomorrow.
