Is lowering the tackle area a waist of time?
And many more talking points from a busy weekend.
This was a hard-hitting take, if you’ll excuse the pun, on rugby’s latest attempt to reduce concussions.
From next season, tacklers will be penalised for any contact above the waist of the ball carrier in the community game in England. If “successful” and implemented more widely, it would represent one of the more radical reimaginings of a sport.
It is also, according to Michael Aylwin, utterly futile.
I tend to agree, though on one level I give World Rugby marks for trying to take contact with the head out of play.
At some point the penny will surely drop that this relentless demonisation of the tackler will never result in anything more progressive than to make rugby an impossible sport to play. We are still sending players off six years on not because they are delinquent lunatics who must be punished but because some situations are impossible to avoid reliably in such a fast-moving sport. We can expect to discover the same, and then some, with this new tackle height.
Mostly though, the problem is the flawed thinking: by convincing the public that the obvious, symptomatic concussions are the bogeyman, you can also convince them that you’re doing something about it (and by association you’re convincing them that you can reduce later-life neurodegenerative diseases and, by further association, reduce the fear factor of parents of prospective players).
It feels like a broken record but the issue is volume: it’s volume of rugby, it’s volume of training, it’s volume of barely perceptible subconcussive hits you accumulate in games and training.
Professionals play too much rugby. Reducing that is not the complete answer, obviously, but it should be the first part of the equation to address, then you think about the rules.
Speaking of heads in the firing line, Joseph Parker’s boxing career is heading into problematic territory following his dull victory against an overmatched Jack Massey.
The common phrase is to say somebody’s career is at a crossroads but it feels like Parker’s is at a cul-de-sac.
He is rapidly losing drawcard status because he can’t knock opponents out, as crass as that sounds, and it’s doubtful whether he has much interest in becoming a division gatekeeper a la Dereck Chisora.
One of the reasons Chisora keeps getting paid despite an unflattering 33-13 record, is that promoter’s know he’ll stand in the middle of the ring and take a hammering.
Parker (31-3) is a much better boxer than that, yet he is slipping too far down the rankings to make a case for another world title shot.
There’s also been an increase in the sort of sentiment seen in this tweet.
With a young family at home, I hope Parker, at 31 still quite young for a heavyweight, is thinking seriously about his future beyond the cliched and often out-of-reach heavyweight curtain call of “one last big pay day”.
I didn’t see the Silver Ferns this morning, but I quite enjoyed progressively moving through the headlines this morning to get a fuller picture.
NZ Herald: “Silver Ferns pipped by Australia.”
Me: “Oh well, close game, never mind.”
Stuff: “Silver Ferns give up big lead in Quad Series loss to Australia.”
Me: “Uh oh, what happened?”
Fox Sports: “Master coach’s big move backfires as Diamonds star ‘cuts rival up’ in win.”
It took a baffling move by New Zealand coach Dame Noeline Taurua for the game between the Diamonds and Ferns to break apart, with 192cm Kelly Jury pushed out to goal defence.
And the big shift didn’t pay off as the almost 20cm smaller Steph Wood used her speed to “cut” through Jury’s defence in the fourth quarter as the match went on the line.
Me: “Oh dear Noeline.”
An interesting stats-analysis tennis piece from coach Craig O’Shannessy the Sydney Morning Herald. Think the baseline is your friend? Think again.
The baseline is a statistical nightmare, with the average win percentage for men and women less than 50 per cent over the first two rounds.
Anything under 50 per cent is a losing strategy, yet players are drawn to the back of the court like moths to a flame. The infatuation with taking on opponents overwhelmingly from a losing position seems crazy, yet it is the current norm at Melbourne Park.
The net gets a bad reputation, partly because it stings more in a player’s psyche when they lose a point there versus the back of the court. Yet the net provides win percentages vastly superior to the baseline.
Players are overwhelmingly staying at the baseline chasing grand slam glory in Melbourne this year. That decision is turning out to be the proverbial albatross around their necks that ensures defeat, not victory.
Also on the Aussie Open, I had an interesting fireside chat with a neighbour over the weekend. To paraphrase, he said: “Man I hope Novak Djokovic wins after what they did to him last year,” referencing his removal from the country ahead of the 2022 tournament over his vaccination status.
If a couple of years ago you’d told me that we were on the cusp of canonising St Novak, I’d have raised an eyebrow but it’s 2023 and bugger all makes sense to me now.
As hard as I try I can’t work up much sympathy for Djokovic, the human, but he is a monstrously talented player and ahead of his clash with Aussie Alex de Minaur tonight, it’s hard to see him being beaten in Melbourne.
I won’t begrudge him a 22nd grand slam title, but I won’t be waving his flag either.
The women’s draw remains wide open.
A few big stories from the world of football over the past few days.
Italian giants Juventus were docked 15 points in the Serie A after a wiretap operation discovered they were rigging over-inflated transfer deals and knew what they were doing was wrong. The Athletic ($) outlines that it is disastrous not just for the Turin-based club, which has nearly twice as many league titles as their nearest rivals, but for Italian football in general, which is lagging a long way behind the Premier League in terms of financial clout.
The reputation of Serie A as Europe’s pre-eminent league was already in its twilight in 2006 when Calciopoli, a scandal about power and influence and how that was brought to bear, ended in a first-ever relegation for Juventus and the punishment of clubs including AC Milan with points deductions.
It damaged Serie A’s credibility. Disillusioned fans began staying away, unsure whether they could believe what they were seeing. Crumbling stadiums made going to games unappealing, as did the threat of fan violence.
Too many owners, high on power trips, got wrapped up in playing politics rather than reforming the game and the league very quickly lost touch not only with the Premier League but Spain’s La Liga and the German Bundesliga. The Melandri Law, which limited the sale of international broadcast rights to short-term deals, meant Serie A jumped from channel to channel in foreign markets, losing visibility and disincentivising its partners from investing in building an audience.
Once owners including Milan’s old patron Silvio Berlusconi and city neighbours Inter’s former benefactor Massimo Moratti stopped cutting cheques and sold up, the two San Siro giants also began to drift and, just when the cost of football was going through the roof, the league had to reckon with its dependence on sugar daddies and player-trading in light of the stunning neglect of commercial and match-day revenues.
Unsurprisingly, Serie A hasn’t had a Champions League winner since 2009-10.
Everton, another grand old club but one without Juventus’ recent domestic successes, is only goal difference from being bottom of the Premier League. It has an unpopular owner and board who have spent big money on bad players, a manager with no track record of success and are slated to move into a shiny new stadium they may not be able to afford to complete.
They are on the brink of civil war, says Andy Hunter.
The Everton doom loop continues… The Everton Shareholders’ Association, hardly a hotbed of revolutionary fervour in the past, said relations between the owner, board and fanbase were “at an all-time low”. The association, also angered by the removal of AGMs, has launched an online petition calling for a vote of no confidence in the board. It attracted almost 11,000 signatures in the first 24 hours.
An understrength Football Ferns were utterly outclassed by the USA, but the crowds were encouraging with a view to the World Cup being staged here later this year.
Arsenal might just win this thing, says former Gunners legend Martin Keown.
I only caught the end of the men’s sevens on highlights, but from an initial eye test it looked like the New Zealand TMO made the right call to deny New Zealand the title.
It’s been a good couple of months to be an Argentine sports fan.
My interest in sevens is now limited to the Olympics, but it sounds like it was a decent way to end the series, for the foreseeable future anyway, in New Zealand. I was, however, a little confused by this report in Stuff.
All Blacks sevens coach Clark Laidlaw says World Rugby might be rethinking their contentious call to cut New Zealand as World Series hosts after Sunday’s dramatic finale in Hamilton.
However, he accepts they won’t, after the governing body decided in December that New Zealand will not be staging its World Series from next season…
So he thinks they might be rethinking, but accepts they won’t be rethinking.
I’m all thunk’ed out.
The cricket analysis can wait until midweek, by which time the ODI section of the India tour will be complete. This summer’s subcontinental diversion can’t end fast enough both for fans starved of seeing the Black Caps at home and, you suspect, the players.
The top order sans Kane Williamson has been wretched and I’m not sure that Indian top order is spending too many hours in pre-match analysis fearing what a seam attack with Henry Shipley and Blair Tickner might do against them.
I do want to address a couple of great pieces of correspondence.
First, this from Nick Goodall:
“Surely Boult could have been granted a sabbatical, similar to what the All Blacks allow long serving players? A home series to an in-form England team, coached by a Kiwi no less, surely warrants a unique adjustment for one of our best and longest servants of the game?”
I see your point Nick and while I’m not on your side on this one, I don’t disagree with any vehemence either.
Once you go down the route of “one-off” special exemptions they quickly become “two-off”, “three-off” and then become a minefield. What’s the one issue that has caused the most unrest between New Zealand Rugby, the Super Rugby clubs and the fanbase? The sabbatical, and that’s in a sport with untold more high-performance depth to cover star player absences.
Plus, New Zealand Cricket doesn’t need to go down this route because they already have one of the most flexible contracting systems in professional sport. They effectively have an annual sabbatical in-built, saying to their players if you’re good enough to get picked up in the Indian Premier League, or any other T20 franchise tournament that doesn’t clash with Black Caps’ commitments, we won’t stand in your way. They also say: “Hey, if you don’t want to commit to a central contract because you want to maximise your earning potential, we’ll still consider you for Black Caps’ selection but it’s on our terms.”
There are several legitimate team culture and preparation reasons why Boult falls short of the NZC terms required for this upcoming England series and only one good one for why he should play.
The reason you want him to play is because he’s a really good bowler and it’s New Zealand’s blue-riband series of the summer.
The reasons he shouldn’t include the fact he’ll likely be available for the second test only; because he’s had no red-ball cricket for a long time; because he missed the Pakistan series by choice and has signalled that playing for New Zealand is no longer his priority; because despite the “glamour” of the series, this Test Championship cycle is a write-off and NZC desperately needs to develop some depth for the next cycle as Boult has one foot out the door, Neil Wagner is creaking and Tim Southee and Matt Henry are both the wrong side of 30.
This is a subjective call and in some ways an emotive one. You can guarantee that senior players’ thoughts would have been canvassed. It requires some touch and feel and even though there is no definitively right or wrong answer, my gut feel is Gary Stead and NZC have made the more sensible call.
From Barry Larsen:
“Recovering from surgery these last 5 weeks I have watched a lot of cricket! I cannot understand the logic of the reverse sweep, the main culprits being Tom Latham and Daryl Mitchell. I can’t recall either batsman scoring from one, while they expose themselves to getting out in a number of ways. Unlike the ramp shot that regularly ends in a 4 or a 6, this relatively new cricket shot is very frustrating to watch.”
Nice to hear from you Barry. The first point I would make is that the modern cricketer, brought up in a T20 world, doesn’t consider the reverse sweep to be a novelty. It’s just a normal part of the batting repertoire, with some players more comfortable with it than others, just like some players hook and some players duck (I’d argue there is less risk in the reverse sweep than the hook). Mitchell, for example, is very comfortable playing it and I have recollections of him scoring heavily with the shot in England last year.
As for the logic in it, it’s all about manipulating the field and forcing the opposition to have a fielder where they don’t want one. For example, if you’re an orthodox right-arm spinner bowling to a right hander, you don’t want to “waste” a fielder at point or backward point because the only way a batter can get the ball there through a traditional MCC coaching manual shot is if you bowl a rank bad ball. Instead you load up your front-of-the-wicket positions and make scoring very difficult. Reverse sweepers, who are taking good balls and sending them through the vacant backward point region, mess up that orthodoxy and either score frequently in that area or force the captain to plug that gap and open up another, more easily accessible area, for scoring.
While it’s jarring to see a batter dismissed playing a shot that barely existed when I was playing, overall I love what it has done for cricket. It has opened up the game and while there is risk attached, there are way more dismissals from attempted cover drives that get nicked into the cordon than there are from reverse sweeps - the only difference is Colin Cowdrey never attempted the latter.
As an aside, I can remember the days when commentators tut-tutted when batters played conventional sweeps. The norms of the game move on.
Thanks for the notes.
READING THE ROOM
Thanks so much for all the sports book suggestions. I’d read many, but there are some titles I haven’t, so plenty to get stuck into.
When rugby administrator's various organisations are found to be on the wrong side of the litigious action headed their way, they will be fined enormous amounts. The degree of damages will be heavily dependent upon what they, the rugby authorities, did to mitigate the damages incurred on players, once they became aware that player's welfare was under threat.
Most of the rule changes designed to limit head contact are driven by legals scheming to provide evidence of mitigation when the day of determining damages finally arrives, as it will.
If rugby really cared about player welfare, whilst retaining the essence of the game most supporters love, they would simply bar all replacents. No bench in other words. Except for an independent doctor-approved one-off injury replacement.
This would have the effect of reducing player weight markedly. Less weight, less power, less bulk. Less collisions that do significant damage.
The game would increase as a spectacle as well.
On the thoughts about Boult, could a T20-specific contract be a potential solution for the future?
It wouldn't affect any players who regularly play more than one format of the game, but could be used for players who are only likely to be picked regularly in the T20 team in the next 12 months or the most promising players in the Super Smash (eg. Cam Fletcher, Josh Clarkson, Ben Lister etc).
Those players would have an NZC retainer on top of their domestic contract, but they only need to be available for, say, T20I's and the Super Smash - they would be free to sign with any foreign T20 league that didn't clash. They could of course still play ODIs and Ford Trophy/Plunket Shield if they wanted.
It seems odd to 'force' them to play FT and PS if they're unlikely to ever play ODI or Test cricket (or don't want to) - this way NZC can still keep hold of them while they also get to supplement their income overseas.
It would also:
1) Create more room and money on the NZC contract list for Test only players (eg. Ajaz, Wagner, Blundell) and ODI players unlikely to get an overseas T20 contract (eg. Henry, Latham etc)
2) Keep more T20 players available for NZ
3) Perhaps create a pathway for young promising players to get more experience and develop their game