Build the walls before you hang the art
ABs lack prettiness, but the foundations are in place, PLUS: Goodbye Southee, hello Smith; the Tyson travesty; and a grim few weeks ahead for high-performance sport.
The commentariat seems to be in accord: a win in Paris and Les All Blacks season will have been a roaring success1.
This is not a bad spot to be in and I might be going against the grain here, but after turning over Ireland and England in hostile environments over the past fortnight, I’d go even further and say that a win in Paris would put the All Blacks in a better place than they’ve been since pre-2017 Lions tour.
That is a sentiment based heavily on gut and pays scant regard to win ratios, points differentials or anything that requires an intimate knowledge of Nash Equilibrium theory. Instead it is rooted in the idea that the All Blacks are trying to get somewhere, they’re not necessarily even that close yet, but they’ve shown enough on the way there to beat every team they’ve met not called South Africa.
They’ve become really quite good at the parts of the game that don’t get many flowers: like the setpiece and defence. If they could just keep 15 men on the field a bit more often, who knows how good that ‘D’ could truly be.
It hasn’t been that pretty. You could go further than that and say the past fortnight has been pretty ugly, but I’m sure there’s a saying in there somewhere about ugly wins being of more value than pretty losses.
The aesthetics don’t matter at this point. It will be soon enough, because we’re New Zealand and historically we’ve shown to be fairly intolerant of rugby that’s rooted in pragmatism, but for the time being the four walls are more important than the art that adorns them and those walls are looking quite sturdy.
Part of that is creeping realisation that while we on the non-contact side of the sport still obsess about who starts games, Scott Robertson and friends are more interested in who’s ending them. It took them a while to get there, with the finishing quite woeful in the Rugby Championship, but they’ve reached a point where they can look at players like Asafo Aumua and Damian McKenzie, excellent in jerseys 2 and 10 in Dublin, and be confident they can fulfil critical roles in Nos 16 and 23 in Paris.
Andy Goode: “The impact of the bench… Ireland off the bench bring on Peter O’Mahony, 35 years of age, Conor Murray, 35 years of age, Cian Healy, 37 years of age. Not a slight on them because they’re all very good players, but as the Southern Hemisphere seems to be getting stronger, are the northern hemisphere clinging on to players who have had their time.”
Jim Hamilton: “The bench is everything now, especially with how close these one, two, three, four, five teams are now.”
There was a gaggle of voices about them that made it difficult to determine exactly who was saying what, but they were bound by the idea that Patrick Tuipulotu and Cam Roigard were the pivotal figures in the final half hour of the win against Ireland.
Hamilton: “A big shout out has to go to Razor… a six-day turnaround, a coach under a bit of pressure during the Championship… you can see now. He’s turned that team around, the strength in depth, beating England, beating Ireland, of course they want to go to France and win, but if they go home having beaten England and Ireland, they’ve done well.”
If they go home having beaten England, Ireland AND France, they’ll have done even better than that.
MORE READING:
Dupont set for surprise role in All Blacks clash, from 1news.co.nz
The versatile Dupont, who is one game back from a sevens sabbatical, during which he won an Olympic gold medal in Paris this year, will be expected to slot into first-five should Thomas Ramos, the likely No 10, suffer an injury.
The French media have already reported this week that Matthieu Jalibert, the other playmaker option in the injury-forced absence of the incumbent Romain Ntamack, will not be named in the match-day squad.
What we have since discovered is that Jalibert refused to play if he wasn’t starting. Zut alors!
France v NZ, Paris, Sunday 9.10am, Sky
After the south virtually shut out the north last week, including crushing wins to Argentina over Italy, Australia shocking England who melted like white chocolate in the final minutes at Twickenham, and Fiji winning in Cardiff, there is a heightened sense of expectation for this weekend’s round of matches, starting in Dublin (all Sky)…
Ireland v Argentina, Dublin, tomorrow 9.10am
England v South Africa, London, Sunday 6.40am
Wales v Australia, Cardiff, Monday 5.10am
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“Brett Robinson elected chair of World Rugby as Beaumont era comes to close”, from the Guardian.
Australia’s Dr Brett Robinson has been elected as the new chair of World Rugby. The 54-year-old, who succeeds Sir Bill Beaumont after the end of the former England captain’s eight-year term, is the first chair of the international federation from the Southern Hemisphere.
***
Interesting get from Liam Napier here on the potential names for the NZR board, including a familiar face or two.
Outgoing International Cricket Council chairman Greg Barclay and former All Blacks captain Taine Randell are among the applicants for the revamped New Zealand Rugby board.
The Herald understands that Barclay received multiple approaches, both from within and outside New Zealand Rugby, to apply for the soon-to-be-formed board since the scathing Pilkington review at the start of this year.
Barclay, an Auckland-based commercial lawyer by trade, finishes his two-term, four-year stint as ICC chairman at the end of November and is understood to have accepted the invitation to apply for the nine-person NZR board.
Barclay would be a great get even if he, as an Auckland-domiciled lawyer, at first glance falls into the Northern Club demographic rugby administration is trying to distance itself from. He should be a shoo-in, but as one man familiar with the inner workings of organisation said to me: “Greg is perfectly qualified for that board, so they’ll find some way of keeping him off.”
Tim will take his bow, Smith primed to bat at 8?
You don’t tend to go with this sort of angle unless you’re working off rock-solid information, but still there was a small sigh of relief when this press release dropped and I didn’t have to explain why I had made the mistake of retiring Tim Southee early.
“Representing New Zealand was all I ever dreamed of growing up,” Southee said. “To play for the Black Caps for 18 years has been the greatest honour and privilege, but the time feels right to now step away from the game that has given so much to me.
“Test cricket holds a special place in my heart, so to be able to play such a big series against the same opponent my test career began against all those years ago, and on three grounds that are incredibly special to me, seems the perfect way to end my time in the black cap…
“It’s been an amazing ride and I wouldn't change a thing.”
I’ll have more to say on Southee when we roll up to Hamilton, but for now I’m just holding out for the hope of one or two more outside-edge hunting spells, and at least one more cameo where we all tut-tut about about how if he applied himself a bit more he could have really been a factor with the bat (while secretly just wanting him to hit more sixes).
As for the squad, one wrong. Not bad.
The squad: Tom Latham (c), Tom Blundell (wk), Devon Conway, Jacob Duffy, Matt Henry, Daryl Mitchell, Will O’Rourke, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner (2nd and 3rd tests), Nathan Smith, Tim Southee, Kane Williamson, Will Young.
I did consider Nathan Smith, along with Zak Foulkes, but thought they’d go with Mitchell Santner in Christchurch due to a combination of his recent heroics and batting record against England (albeit from a small sample size). Mostly, I thought the ego-free Santner would not really play a specialist spinner’s role as such but act as a Bazball shield, using his white-ball skills to prey upon the batting conceits of the likes of Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett and Harry Brook. Last time out, New Zealand got it mostly wrong when they pitted Neil Wagner’s vein-popping, bouncer barrage against Brook, but we tend to forget that in the wash-up of the Basin Miracle.
Having said that, you have to be pleased for Smith. Every now and then you get a selection that ticks nearly every box as the right man for the right time, and Smith, 26, is that.
He’s just 26 but has a decent body of work behind him, and worked hard to not only return from back surgery, but to come back better and quicker.
Speaking to various sources who have seen much more of Smith than I, the collective thinking is that he is a high-octane guy who makes batters play a lot, is accurate and can swing the new ball both ways at a pace that is a little quicker than you might think.
Over the past 12 months he has also looked to increase his value with the old ball, developing his bouncer game to a point where he wouldn’t be uncomfortable bowling to Wagnerian fields if required. One domestic veteran said Smith’s skillset could see him in the rare position of being able to play two roles: either as a straight-up new-ball strike bowler, or as a fourth-seamer with genuine batting credentials.
As for the third string, Smith’s athleticism should go some way to filling the void left in the field by Southee. You don’t have to try very hard to make the argument that the retiring Northlander is the greatest fielding fast bowler New Zealand has produced — and there are few around the world who can lay claim to be better2.
Smith might not be a threat around the bat, but he moves superbly in the outfield and catches well.
It could be that his skills with bat and in the field elevate him above the perpetually unlucky Jacob Duffy for that first test. With Southee and Matt Henry in slogging mode and Will O’Rourke a genuine rabbit, Duffy would have to offer an obviously superior bowling skillset to justify a tail that could very well represent six-out, all-out.
This is still the chance that the match-day selectors opt for three seamers in Christchurch and rely on Glenn Phillips and a few overs from Daryl Mitchell (and possibly Rachin Ravindra) to fill the gaps. It would certainly lengthen the batting, but I would remain surprised if they go down that route, even, as one of my erudite subscribers noted, England tend to bat for a good time, not a long time, so the quicks are not necessarily as taxed as they would be against other teams.
Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, New Zealand’s pseudo-Champions Trophy buildup continues largely unnoticed.
Sri Lanka v NZ, 2nd ODI, Pallekele, Sunday 10pm, Sky
As most of you will know by now, I have remained immune to the charms of combat sports. All apart from boxing that is, which remains a guilty pleasure. I feel especially conflicted this weekend ahead of the fight between one of the greatest heavyweights in history versus a YouTuber with a truly terrible drinks brand.
First the positive.
In an age when boxing has lost a lot of its audience and much of its prestige to snappier, more youth-focused MMA productions, in particular UFC, this Mike Tyson v Jake Paul bout has put the ancient sport back in neon lights. That it is being streamed via Netflix and its 282,700,000 subscribers, rather than a closed pay-per-view platform, means this is almost certainly going to be the most watched fight in modern history (though it will fall well short of the estimated one billion who watched the Rumble in the Jungle during the golden age of both boxing and free-to-air TV). The card is being hosted at the Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas, so scale is something this fight is not lacking.
The fight is sanctioned, , so there is a veneer, at least, of legitimacy.
Finally, in a win for small mercies, it is not an exercise in Saudi sportswashing.
Then there’s the rest, which is less positive.
Tyson is 58 years old. He has done some stuff in his time not limited to boxing, which have put strain on most of his major organs, particularly, but not limited to, his brain, his heart, his liver and kidneys. When he was actually doing this regularly for a living, he started losing. I mean, he lost to a man named Kevin McBride, who lost to cruiserweight named Zack Page, who is not even famous within his own extended family. As Eddie Hearn said in the leadup to the fight, Tyson was utterly spent as a fighter then, and that was 19 years ago. Bigger gloves and two-minute rounds might help, but the very fact they’re using these tools suggests there is a heightened element of risk.
Which begs the question, what modern medical miracle, supplement or training regime has got Tyson back to a point where he was sanctioned as fit to fight?
It also begs the question: is there ever a right time to put a fit, albeit annoyingly attention-seeking, 27 year old in the same ring as someone on the cusp of being a sexagenarian? Pretty easy answer, you would have thought.
Unless the entire fight is a sham. While the fight is sanctioned and odds are being offered by the bookies, there are rumours swirling about contract clauses that mean Tyson can’t try to hurt Paul early. So far there seems to be no evidence to back these claims, but I guess we’ll see tomorrow.
Mike Tyson v Jake Paul, Arlington, tomorrow from 2pm, Netflix
A sports preview with a grim difference.
The next few weeks will likely paint a bleak picture of the pressures of top-level sport and the inability of national sports organisations to sufficiently cater to the health and wellbeing of its most vulnerable athletes.
On Monday, coroner Luella Dunn will open an inquest into the death of Rio Olympian [Olivia Podmore]. More than 25 witnesses are expected to be called during the three-week hearing, including Podmore’s former coaches, past and present leaders of Cycling NZ and High Performance Sport NZ (HPSNZ) officials…
The inquest is expected to revisit the events that led to [KC Mike] Heron’s first review into Cycling NZ in 2018, which uncovered examples of bullying, a lack of accountability and other cultural issues.
This will be a very specific inquisition into the causes and circumstances of the death of a young athlete, but at its heart is a single question that the sector’s government agencies have glib answers for but no genuine desire to address:
What do we want sport to look like in New Zealand?
To me, there is a rottenness in the heart of a critical level/ strata of New Zealand sport that permeates into everything beyond… but you’re going to have to wait a year and about eight days for me to write more on that.
With all due respect to Italy, for if they should cross the Alps and fall in Turin on the final week, the year will most assuredly not be considered in the same light.
I’ve racked my brains about this and even among fast-bowling allrounders (and I’m not classing Southee as an allrounder), I can’t think of a better fielder. Jacques Kallis and Ian Botham were brilliant slippers, but they didn’t cover the ground in the outfield like Southee. Great movers like Michael Holding couldn’t occupy the catching positions to both pace and spin like Tim. Jimmy Anderson was renowned as a very good fielding fast bowler but in his later years he was more of a liability, whereas Southee never reached that point.
No mention of Hadlee in the great fielding list? He was excellent in the gully, had a rocket arm, caught well in the outfield and moved like a panther in his early days.
Obviously there was a solid rumour going around re the Southee retirement Dylan..?!! I remain a little uncomfortable at the language being used to imply his active involvement in the series ahead and outside chance of a WTC final (a berth is no one’s by right, especially someone light on form) but what a stellar career.
After seeing Smith the other night and seeing the speedball radar consistently hover at ~140 I’d like to see him share the final seamers spot with Southee across the three tests.
Well, you've got my attention with that comment about rotteness at the heart of top level NZ sport. Hyperbole? I look forward to the reading the justification for it.