Don't look now, but the All Whites are good and are going to get even better
PLUS: The Week That Was and the Weekend That Will Be features a death-defying Fijian and The Beatles.
The Road to Spain was a blast and then there was 2010 And All That, but now we’ve quietly entered the golden age of New Zealand men’s football and most of us are not even aware of it.
This All Whites team has one match against Costa Rica, a team it will not be favoured to beat, to match the feats of the aforementioned sides, but technically and depth-wise, they’re already better than those iterations.
While winning the Oceania qualifiers, sealed with a 5-0 romp over the Solomon Islands, is the least that should be expected, it’s the talent at coach Danny Hay’s disposal that excites ahead of bigger challenges.
The line is led by a Premier League star who has racked up €46 million in transfer fees over the past five years. Chris Wood told Chris Chang that he is on a mission to drag the All Whites to Qatar for the World Cup.
Wood is no one-man band. Fellow striker Alex Greive is just 22 and attracting attention for his performances in the Scottish Premier League. He even did a big Q&A feature with the Scottish Sun, where he confessed to finding golf boring - which is pretty brave in that part of the world - and that Richie McCaw was his hero. He’ll do.
Liberato Cacace is a year younger than Greive and is turning heads for Empoli in Serie A. Matthew Garbett is trying to make his way in Italy with Torino.
Ryan Thomas is in the thick of an Eredivisie title race in the Netherlands with PSV Eindhoven. Sarpreet Singh is in the Bayern Munich system (though out on loan this season). Joe Bell plays for Danish Superliga side Brondby.
Marko Stamenic is playing in the Danish second division, as are Elijah Just and Callum McCowatt. The trio are all under 23.
The defence is anchored by stalwarts Bill Tuiloma, who plays in the MLS with Portland Timbers and Winston Reid, who is 33 and might be currently clubless but has scaled the heights for club and country. Tommy Smith is still kicking around the lower leagues of English football, captaining Colchester.
The team is so deep and loaded with talent playing in strong leagues that Marco Rojas, less than a decade ago thought of as the dreaded Next Big Thing in New Zealand football, is a fringe player.
The one-off World Cup playoff against the Central Americans in Doha in mid-June is likely to be the biggest international match any New Zealand national side will be involved in this year and New Zealand Football should be selling that story big time.
With the talent they have at their disposal, the story can no longer be called a fairytale, that’s how far the All Whites have come.
(And hey, if it doesn’t work out in June, everyone that can field a team gets a go in 2026, when many of this gilded generation of Kiwi players will be coming into their peak.)
THE WEEK THAT WAS
I thought about doing one of those posts du jour where I try to get you to believe something outlandish, but how can I top Grant Dalton’s efforts at dissembling this week?
To paraphrase the Team Emirates CEO: It’s all the person who was trying to keep it in New Zealand’s fault for the America’s Cup not staying in New Zealand?
It’s pointless trying to top that April foolishness.
If I was charged with handling Dalton’s communications my advice would be to trouser your money, pack up the shipping containers and be off to Barcelona. You’re within your rights to do that and some might even say it’s the sensible move - but don’t subject the tax- and ratepayers who have propped you up to such asinine and petty commentary.
Another week, another transgender/ elite sport ethical maze to navigate.
British transgender cyclist Emily Bridges has been ruled out of the national omnium championships due to a ruling by cycling’s global governing body the UCI.
“We have been in close discussions with the UCI regarding Emily's participation this weekend and have also engaged closely with Emily and her family regarding her transition and involvement in elite competitions,” a statement from British Cycling read. “We acknowledge the decision of the UCI with regards to Emily's participation, however we fully recognise her disappointment with today’s decision. Transgender and non-binary inclusion is bigger than one race and one athlete - it is a challenge for all elite sports.”
Bridges’ entry was always going to cause controversy, particularly as it was just a month ago she won a race as a man at the British Universities Championships. It was also going to capture headlines because she was slated to face Dame Laura Kenny, the five-time Olympic champion.
As I’ve said before, what makes this incredibly difficult is that the principles of inclusion are important for a well-functioning society. In elite sport, the principles of fairness should be paramount. In the case of biological males transitioning and competing alongside biological females, I really don’t think you can uphold the latter by applying the former.
Just your friendly reminder that we might be getting on with life, but Covid hasn’t finished with sport just yet.
The virus ending stealing the fourth day of a Plunket Shield match - is nothing sacred?
(There is no truth to the rumour this match was abandoned due to boredom, with more than 1900 runs, including double centuries to Jeet Raval and Tom Bruce, for just 14 wickets.)
There is just so much wrong in this story that it is impossible to know where to begin.
It involves two NRL players, the ex-fiancee of one, a Valentine’s Day love triangle, a boozy party, allegations of assault, allegations of assault withdrawn, and allegations of assault reinstated.
Yeah, it’s really messy.
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
I have studiously ignored the other half of Super Rugby Pacific because, well, just because I can. I’ve tried to catch a bit of Fiji Drua and will make more of an effort, if only to follow Vinaya Habosi’s story.
Last year on a tour to New Zealand with the national side, Habosi felt a throbbing pain in his groin that refused to dissipate even after a painkilling injection1.
“In the morning my roommate Simi Kuruvoli was asleep but I woke him up and told him it was getting worse. I was crying out in agony, I couldn’t hold the pain, so we called the physio to come to the room,” he told Stuff.
The physio called the team doctor. After one look at Habosi, sweating on the hotel room floor, unable to move from a seated position, the doctor called an ambulance. Hospital staff treated the infection with antibiotics over a two-week stay in hospital. They told the young winger he was lucky to be alive and would not be strong enough to train for six months.
Habosi has been one of the players of the tournament to date.
Forgive me if I’m not particularly fussed by tonight’s southern derby, but I am intrigued to see the crowd they get to Eden Park for round two of the Blues v Moana Pasifika. It will be instructive. There’s a bit of Sunday arvo footy too, but I’ll be tuned into something else then.
Fijian Drua v Waratahs, Gold Coast, tonight 9.45pm, Sky Sport 1
Blues v Moana Pasifika, Eden Park, tomorrow 7.05pm, Sky Sport 1
A month after the White Ferns lost a nailbiter to kickstart the World Cup, the old enemy Australia and England will meet in the final.
Everything points to an Australian win and there couldn’t be a cricket fan in any country who could hold it against them. They are in the process of revolutionising the women's game and they’re doing it at such a pace it is difficult to see how any team can truly go toe-to-toe with them for the next five years.
The bat more fearlessly, they bowl more cleverly and they field the socks off any other team.
But this is a final and (cliche alert) funny things can happen in one-off games.
Australia v England, Christchurch, Sunday 1pm, Sky Sport 3
The last studio album the greatest band in history recorded was Abbey Road2, a rich and complex album that includes classics like Come Together, Something and Here Comes the Sun and finishes with a eight-song, 16-minute pop-opera medley that is close to being brilliantly executed.
Close, yes, but the fact remains that the last song The Beatles ever laid down on a vinyl album was “Her Majesty”, a thin and pointless ditty that ends with the lyric: “Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl/ Someday I'm going to make her mine, oh yeah/ Someday I'm going to make her mine.”
So there you are, the finest collective songwriters in history, going out with a whimper.
I have no idea why, but that thought just keeps popping up in my mind as I watch Ross Taylor, a giant of New Zealand cricket, a mighty collector of runs and milestones, and one of the greats of ODI cricket from any country in any era, saying farewell to the international game in a three-match series against the Netherlands.
I hope beyond hope that he can rise to the small occasion with some big runs.
New Zealand v The Netherlands, Hamilton, tomorrow 2pm, Spark Sport
There has been a bit of revisionist history going on that will try to tell you the Warriors 16 Wests 14 game wasn’t as bad as everybody was making out. I’d like to revise that revision by saying: “Yes it was.”
In a weird way, it’s kept me on the hook. If they’d turned in another middling performance like weeks one and two, my attention might have started drifting but that train-crash performance has raised the antennae again. There’s a sense that anything could happen against the Broncos and that’s how I prefer to approach Warriors matches.
I did like a comment made by Dai Henwood on the Mad Monday podcast, that this team is yet to develop an identifying game plan and that with the tools at their disposal, he’d like to see them become a shameless bash-the-front-door-in team. With Addin Fonua-Blake, Josh Curran, Matt Lodge, Euan Aitken and Jazz Tevaga in decent form, this seems like a sound tactic.
NZ Warriors v Brisbane Broncos, Redcliffe, tomorrow 5pm, Sky Sport 2
It’s not an amazing slate of Premier League matches to come back to after the international break, but the early kickoff does throw up the intriguing prospect of a team other than Manchester City leading the table for the first time since Adam was a boy. If the red team does win, the lead is likely to last less than two hours, with City taking on Burnley later.
Liverpool v Watford, Anfield, Sunday 12.30am, Spark Sport
I have serious question marks as to how a young player goes from training fully, to reporting a sore groin, to receiving a painkilling injection so quickly.
While Abbey Road was released before Let It Be, a troubled project recently made famous by Peter Jackson’s Get Back, it was recorded in the northern summer of ’69, whereas the bulk of LIB was recorded in January of that year.