Omicron has bitten into Super Rugby and we're shocked!
Midweek Book Club breaks down the first half of Drive to Survive (it's a bit naff), plus Chelsea angst and the BYC grapples cricket's meatiest topics.
Well then, who could have possibly foreseen that Super Rugby Pacific would be at the mercy of a virus when the teams opted to leave their Queenstown bubble because they didn’t like a) Ferg Burger b) the proximity to Invercargill or c) or catching a bus to Dunedin?
I mean, how unlucky can you get? Omicron just snuck up on rugby like a Bondi Beach bag-snatcher. There was no prior warning that it would transmit quite quickly once it hit these shores; no easily accessible modelling that projected rapidly increasing case numbers.
Call me old fashioned, but if I was a Super Rugby CEO, I’d worry first about putting on a product before starting a letter-writing campaign to get crowds back.
But hey, each to their own.
Gregor Paul serendipitously pre-empted this in the Herald ($) and while I agree with the sentiment, I’m not totally buying the second paragraph (emphasis is mine).
Another year and another Super Rugby season has been rendered almost farcical, lacking in credibility and integrity and as a result the competition that was once the envy of the world may be about to [be] read its last rites.
This time it’s no one’s fault. The competition is a casualty of Covid – another victim of the Omicron wave.
I know what he’s saying. Nobody could have anticipated the first wave of Covid and few could have anticipated that it would still be making its ugly presence felt more than two years after it appeared, but that’s not the only reason Super Rugby is in big trouble. It’s not even the main reason.
On Monday, I asked for feedback about the state of Super Rugby in response to an Associated Press report that said the Crusaders-Chiefs match in the weekend was, despite the dramatic finish, a further example of the poor quality of the competition. The verdict in both the comments section and private email was damning. By consensus, the rugby has been poor and, despite the efforts to sex it up with new teams and format, unengaging1.
Later in his column, Gregor gets to the nub of why so many have turned off the competition.
Having mucked around with the format so many times and enabled teams lower on the table to host playoff games to appease broadcasters, Super Rugby has… morphed into an abstract series of games rather than a cohesive, serious competition. That pervading lack of faith has seen fans become more interested in specific contests rather than the overall competition.
This is persuasive and mirrors many of the conversations I have with friends who choose games to watch now for hyper-specific reasons rather than for the sake of the conversation.
Case in point: I was talking to a prominent rugby loving sports administrator this week who said they’d sit down and watch the Blues to see how Beauden Barrett and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck work together, but couldn’t think of another reason to watch a game at this point in the season.
New Zealand has a Super Rugby problem. Covid-19 is just one part of it.
On a small tangent, it was pleasing to see that despite all the difficulty in getting to the start line, Super Rugby Aupiki will essentially get the final it was not scheduled to have.
After last night’s results, the match between Chiefs Manawa and Blues will serve as a proxy decider in this inaugural competition.
I’ve digested a lot of Shane Warne tributes.
I’m endlessly fascinated by the situation at Chelsea FC and their blackballing due to the fact the Tory government suddenly realises the owner of 19 years is a Putin-o-phile. The Guardian can be brilliant but it can also be hand-wringing, and this piece veers towards the latter.
Yes, chanting Roman Abramovich’s name is iffy behaviour in the circumstances but you’re probably talking about an unsophisticated minority who live their lives Saturday to Saturday and whose entire social mood palette is predicated on whether their team wins (happy drunk), loses (angry drunk) or draws (drunk drunk).
I have a neighbour who’s been drunk at Stamford Bridge and the general Fulham Broadway area more times than he’d care to admit, who had this to say.
“You can’t deny what Roman has done for the club both in terms of on-the-pitch success and setting up the behind-the-scenes structure of the club, but to chant his name now is tone deaf when there’s a war going on with his benefactor propagating that war,” said Flame Adamski2,” but the hypocrisy of the whole situation is galling. Fifa (and governments) have cosied up to Putin and validated him for a long time. Obviously Abramovich has benefited from the dissolution of the Russian state industries and was a Putin ally, but let’s face it, if he openly chastises him then the FSB will be dropping some polonium into his tea.
“Meanwhile, the Premier league are happy to have Saudi money in the league despite atrocious human rights records and an ongoing war with Yemen. Then there’s the World Cup in Qatar, not to mention Boris going to Saudi Arabia on a business trip.”
Sometimes you just want to be a fan and forget the politics… but then again, sometimes you just can’t.
MIDWEEK BOOK CLUB
What is it? Drive to Survive, episodes 1-5
Where is it: Netflix
Genre: Fly-on-the-wall docuseries
Reviewers: Dylan Cleaver & Liam Cleaver
We’re getting to the point where it is reasonable to ask whether Drive to Survive serves to enhance the Formula One experience, or whether Formula One is just a protracted prelude to the DTS experience.
If that sounds ridiculous, cast your mind back to the stunningly controversial denouement to the 2021 F1 season and the repeated assertion was that it was going to make for a compelling season of DTS.
Much like many of the races that dot the calendar, the final product has so far failed to live up to the hype. Worse, Drive to Survive is in danger of becoming its own tribute act, shamelessly copying its greatest hits.
Granted, it still has moments of pure gold - Dmitry Mazepin, the billionaire sponsor of Haas Racing and father of substandard driver Nikita, getting caught sotto voce threatening to pull the plug unless they get his boy a better car is just wonderful - but it also has moments so cringy you find your toes curling involuntarily.
Usually these moments involve Red Bull boss Christian Horner wandering around his Oxfordshire estate being fed incisive lines by wife Geri, like: “In Monaco, I felt so proud of you the other day.”
That gives Horner the chance to reply: “It’s the first time Max has ever led a championship. He’s got nothing to lose. Lewis has got seven world championships. He’s got everything to lose.”
Ah yes, got to get that unobtrusive continuity in there; lucky there was a camera on hand for this insight.
My favourite character on the show is Haas boss Guenther Steiner. The fact he climbs mountains in the Alps to get away from the stresses of Formula One yet happens to have his ascent beautifully captured by DTS cameras is not quite a jump-the-shark moment, but it is a stretch.
DTS is a magnificent concept. Its success is measured in people like my son, who had no interest to F1 until this show came along and now watches every race religiously. The good still outweighs the cringe and, yes, I can’t wait to watch how this season ends. It’ll be a real cliffhanger - Dylan Cleaver
I really like it, apart from the second episode about the forced rivalry at McLaren. - Liam Cleaver
Thanks for that, Liam. Cheque’s in the mail.
FROM THE POD
It’s about 30 years too late, but finally a D Cleaver gets picked for a New Zealand cricket team. We at The BYC take credit for this and Michael Bracewell’s selection and discuss whether this Australian women’s team is the greatest cricket side of all time (spoiler alert: it probably is).
We also lament the damage being done to test cricket by the pitches in the West Indies and Pakistan and there’s even another scoring scandal in News or Ruse.
There is an inherent bias when you ask for responses on these sorts of topics in that most people moved to write will do so negatively. That’s human nature. Just check the Letters to the Editor in your average daily newspaper.
Not his real name.
That is a wonderful tribute to Shane Warne indeed, thanks. I seem to have some dust in my eye...
DTS season 4 far too contrived more a pastiche............I have been watching, reading, viewing F1 since 1953 so have seen many iterations of the "sport" but simulated emotions, competitive and others, is just rubbish........ on the sidelines, or let's say over the white lines, rather like Chelsea and Newcastle, F1's forthcoming race in Azerbaijan reeks given their recently signed Co-operative Security and Military Support Agreement with Russia, initialed just a couple of days before the Russians rumbled over the Ukraine border and started crushing all..........spoiler alert my mother was Armenian.........