It's all about the jersey
A quick peek at NZR+, and The Week That Was and the Weekend That Will Be
I’m an early adopter of NZR+, having downloaded the app and watched a few trailers and a small chunk of All Blacks | In Their Own Words, which I hope ends up being more interesting than the title.
The introduction to the app starts with a deep voice saying:
“Black is deep.
“Black is personal.
“Black is special.”
Black is actually the darkest colour owing to the absence of or complete absorption of light, but that doesn’t really have the same cinematic cachet, does it.
I guess it frames nicely who they want this app and this content to appeal to: All Blacks and Black Ferns fanboys and girls.
It’ll be intriguing to see how long they can stretch out content based around legacy and lore aspects that already feel overplayed. The All Blacks have never been good at telling their story so always tend to fall back on the mystique of the “jersey”, to the point where the poor “jersey” is suffering from overuse syndrome. Already we have Richie McCaw telling us how the “jersey” can squeeze you.
It’s way too early to make any sweeping judgements, those will come later, but I have fears for Tour de Rugby, the presumably expensively assembled travelogue. For a start, the blurb on it is barely intelligible.
“With the Rugby World Cup gearing up in France, Taika Waititi travels to the rugby-mad capital of Europe; France!”
OK then.
Secondly, convention dictates that you drop the catchiest bits into the trailer to leave you wanting more. After watching the clip provided, I was reminded of an assessment of The Beatles film Magical Mystery Tour that I once read. To paraphrase: “The idea was to take some cameras aboard a bus trip full of people and film what happened. The only problem was that nothing happened.”
As a fan of Waititi’s work, I hope this appraisal will look silly when it’s released to rave reviews next month.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
There is something seriously out of alignment in my world when I find myself nodding along to not one but two Clive Woodward columns in a single week.
The mindboggling decision to rescind Owen Farrell’s red card is yet another example of rugby shooting itself in the foot. It has made the game a complete and utter laughing stock.
It really has, and it has left World Rugby with no choice but to take the awkward step of appealing the independent judicial committee’s decision.
The decision by the panel was wrong on multiple levels. The mitigating factors in Farrell’s shoulder crashing into Taine Basham’s head were so slight as to make them irrelevant. Farrell was never in the right body position to make a legal tackle. It was the epitome of reckless.
Two, the judiciary completely undermined World Rugby’s new bunker system, which initially upgraded Farrell’s yellow to red.
Three, it makes a mockery of rugby’s commitment to player welfare, something Progressive Rugby’s Professor John Fairclough noted.
Four, Farrell has serious and recent form in this area, having been suspended three times for high tackles the last one coming in January.
Five, when placed alongside other suspensions handed out over the weekend - specifically a long ban for Tonga’s George Moala - it looks suspiciously like a two-tiered system of justice, a point many prominent Pasifika players were quick to pick up on.
Woodward’s second hot take:
I absolutely hate the incessant celebrating by England’s players each time the team wins a penalty.
It’s awful and has to stop. I could never, ever imagine coaching a side who did that because it does not reflect well at all on those involved, including the head coach.
Yes, this might be seen as classic grumpy-old-manism but it’s a creeping trend in the game and it irritates the hell out of me, too. Don’t get me started on players who rub an opponent’s hair or get up in their grille mocking after they’ve made an error.
Yes, the game needs more personality, but it doesn’t have to be bad personality, surely?
To paint the full picture, Woodward’s reason for hating it was as much about the fact it limited their post-penalty options as it was about it looking childish.
What England’s players should be doing when winning a penalty is instantly assessing the options available. Is a quick tap and go on? Can we kick to a winger in space?
Is an instant kick to touch possible with the opposition’s back three out of position?
There are so many immediate attacking opportunities and none of these options are available to England because everyone is gathered around the ball celebrating like it’s a birthday party!
You tell ’em Clive.
No motorcade for Gianni Infantino. That’s gotta sting. The sheer brass neck of the NZ Police not to recognise that Gianni is in fact a head of state, that Fifa is a real country and that he is just as much a president as President Tom Beck ever was.
Let’s just hope the snub doesn’t have a deep impact on our ability to host further tournaments.
On the World Cup. It’s been bloody good as a whole.
Some of the football has been spectacular, some of it so-so and some of it soporific. In other words, it’s been like pretty much every major football tournament - except closer to home.
I went to two games, which felt like enough, and both of them provided some good entertainment and plenty of talking points, even if the semifinal between Sweden and Spain was a whole bunch of nothing then 10 minutes of everything.
Football is often like that.
Could I sit down now and say the tournament has been one of the greatest months in the history of sport in this country? Possibly. Would it carry the air of authenticity? Probably not. I needed the Football Ferns to reach at least the first round of the knockouts for true captivation. Australia showed how all-enveloping it can be when you have hometown interest in the knockouts of the tournament (deep into the knockouts in the Matilda’s case).
As an aside, the crowds in Auckland were amazing, but that row of unused corporate boxes in the South Stand was strange. If they were unsold, couldn’t they have been used for a bunch of goodwill hosting?
Spain v England, WC Final, Sydney, Sunday 10pm, Sky Sport 1
There’s something quite delicious about the story that pits local kids who have been crying out for a skateboard ramp against a bunch of Auckland nimby bach owners. It doesn’t matter if there’s more nuance to the story or not, it’s delivered a perfect good vs not-good narrative and somehow even dragged Marist Rugby Club into the conflict.
An Auckland rugby club urged members to oppose a skatepark more than 200km away in Tairua to help out their holiday home-owning benefactor.
All this needs for a Hollywood treatment is for the kids to band together, form a ragtag team and have one of them win an Olympic medal… or something like that.
Which reminded me of the third film I ever went to the actual cinema to see after Star Wars and Grease. This one should have got sequels, too!
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
A small selection of what I’ll be attempting to watch this weekend.
The past month has seen a series of diminishing returns for the Warriors. That trend needs to be reversed to beat a Manly Warringah team that might not be playoff bound, but has more talent than the Titans and Tigers. Manly went toe-to-toe with Penrith last week, looking as capable of tipping up the overwhelming premiership favourites as anybody has recently.
Given the Warriors need to bring their A-game to Daniel Anderson Stadium tonight, it was alarming to see this headline on Fox Sports: “Warriors suffer horror training blow as Roosters leave Walker out.” I could barely look. What was it? Was Shaun Johnson or Addin Fonua-Blake, both nursing niggles last week, gone for the season? Has Wayde Egan’s year of living dangerously caught up to him?
Nah, it was Jazz Tevaga pulling a hammy. Tevaga is a fantastic player and a workhorse. Every club needs a Tevaga-type or two keeping them honest, but he’s barely played this season after rehabbing from a long-term calf problem. While I’m sad for him, this was not the news I feared when I read “horror”.
Speaking of actual horror blows, Mt Smart has been renamed tonight to honour Daniel Anderson, who, in 2002, coached the club to its first Grand Final.
The 56-year-old [Anderson] suffered a catastrophic spinal cord injury late last year following a body surfing accident on the New South Wales Central Coast and is in rehabilitation at the Royal Rehabilitation Centre in Ryde.
Tonight provides a good doubleheader, as one Sydney heavyweight will kiss goodbye to its playoff chances in the late game.
NZ Warriors v Manly Warringah, Auckland, tonight 8pm
Parramatta v Easts, Sydney, tonight 10pm, both SS 4
I’d love to hold a sweepstake for the live New Zealand viewing figures from last night’s opening T20I between the Black Caps and the UAE in Dubai. I reckon that we can probably count on a few family members, a few insomniacs and maybe 20 to 30 shift workers looking to unwind. If more than 100 New Zealand residents watched that in real time from first ball to last, I’d be amazed and if 100 did watch it, that would triple the number of people in the actual “crowd”.
There are no genuine cricket reasons for this tour. As preparation for two white-ball series in England, it’s only possible to conceive of a worse build-up if you stretch your imagination to include a hit-out against Greenland in Nuuk, or perhaps a tricky series at altitude against Bolivia in La Paz. It pays, however, not to be too sniffy about these things. There were times, believe it or not, when playing in New Zealand wasn’t considered the pinnacle of a player’s career.
What you hope for is that the cricket in Dubai is at least interesting. Game one was not. It was as free of excitement and entertainment as it was of atmosphere. T20 is not meant to be dull, but this was.
Tim Seifert, coming straight off a successful stint with the Galle Titans in the Lanka Premier League, batted nicely for 55, as did the UAE’s young keeper Aryansh Sharma (60). Tim Southee (5-25), was too good and took his T20I wickets tally to 139. He is poised to overtake Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan (140) and reclaim the world record. He is also starting to put a nice buffer between himself and Ish Sodhi for the New Zealand record.
Have I given you any reason to get up for game two? No, probably not.
UAE v NZ, Dubai, Sunday 2am, Sky Sport 1
If you have found yourself at the loosest of loose ends and are not ready to call it a night as the Black Caps put the finishing touches on what should be a routine win, then flick over to the fitba, where a couple of EPL crackers await.
Tottenham v Manchester United, London, Sunday 4.30am
Manchester City v Newcastle, Manchester, Sunday 7am, both SS EPL
It’s official: Shane van Gisbergen is leaving Supercars for the US, though it’s highly unlikely he will run a full cup season in Nascar as he tries to familiarise himself with oval-track racing. His departure adds some piquancy to his final season, for the foreseeable future, at Triple Eight Racing. He might find the racing “mind numbing”, but he’s one competitive bugger and he has some serious work to do to catch leader Brodie Kostecki if he wants to leave a winner.
Supercars Race 20, Tailem Bend, Saturday 7pm, SS 5
Even by your lofty standards, this is a banger of a newsletter and a great way to end a pig of a week at work- thanks. Oh, and you have my undying support for calling them the correct name: Easts.
I watched the T20 (even worse, not live - I had recorded it but didn’t know the result). My only excuse was that I was recovering from a migraine and needed to watch something that didn’t make my brain hurt too much. Fitted the bill. When Santner pulled off a terrific caught and bowled, there was virtually no celebration by the players and no crowd noise (courtesy of virtually no one there aside from ground staff and possibly people related to players) - I thought it was a bump ball. I won’t be worrying about the other games too much.
As for Mr Infantino, I direct anyone who may be interested in observations on his pronouncements to the following, penned by the glorious Marina Hyde of the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/18/lionesses-let-down-men-gianni-infantino-explain-fight-battles