Razor picks Ferraris to race Fiats
PLUS: A look at three Plunket Shield batters vying to be Generation Next, some Rafa love, feeling sick about the Podmore inquest... and a photo of my cat.
Count me among the few that will be pleased to see the back of the rugby year.
The entire season devolved into a referendum on the Razor Gang — and I’ve been as guilty as anybody on that front.
It has been compulsory to make at least one mention of win ratios in every story, which is a crude statistic at best and, as Paul Lewis pointed out this week($), almost meaningless as a short-term indicator unless you’re playing the same opposition in the same places as to who you’re comparing to.
So rather than mention the record, let’s get slightly more technical and declare that the All Blacks season, with a win against Italy in Turin, will be okay to pretty good. With a loss, it will be only slightly better than a disaster.
There you go. Easy.
It might well be that Scott Robertson himself recognises the value in public opinion because it is obvious he is not treating Italy as an end of year jolly. Far from it.
While I would have spent my week drinking espresso in various piazza while taking in the Baroque architecture, then making a pilgrimage to the Basilica Superga, where the all-conquering Torino football team was wiped out in an air crash in 1949, it appeared Robertson is more interested in winning a rugby test.
He wants to win it in a way that will stick, too, because this is no experimental side, as noted by Radio NZ’s Jamie Wall, who is at best nonplussed by the selection of all the big guns.
Robertson has repeated the line that “we’ve picked the best team to win this test” this season and it’s been difficult to argue against that logic — until now. Robertson, who scored his first test try against Italy 25 years ago, could’ve conceivably pulled on the boots himself and the All Blacks would still win this one easily.
I find it difficult to get worked up about a selector picking his best team, maybe because I’m old enough to remember when we used to get outraged by test caps being sprinkled around like confetti. I also recall the days when the thought of Argentina (or even Ireland) beating the All Blacks in a test was vaguely ridiculous — and that Japan coming within seven points was impossible.
There are simply not many Italys of the rugby world left to crush, so crush them we must.
After all, 71 percent makes for a far better summer than 64 (couldn’t help myself!).
All Blacks: Will Jordan, Mark Tele’a, Rieko Ioane, Anton Lienert-Brown, Caleb Clarke, Beauden Barrett, Cam Roigard; Ardie Savea, Sam Cane, Wallace Sititi, Patrick Tuipulotu, Scott Barrett (c), Tyrel Lomax, Codie Taylor, Ethan de Groot. Subs: Asafo Aumua, Ofa Tu’ungafasi, Fletcher Newell, Tupou Vaa’i, Peter Lakai, TJ Perenara, David Havili, Damian McKenzie.
Italy v NZ, Turin, Sunday 9.10am, Sky
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Robertson better hope all those Richie Mo’unga appreciation notes he’s left on the fridge door at NZR get noticed because he’s fast running out of flyhalves.
Writes Liam Napier:
Losing Harry Plummer to France won’t immediately shake New Zealand Rugby’s foundations to the core but it is a more significant blow than many may grasp at first…
The impact of Plummer’s imminent departure is best illustrated by the fact the Crusaders, Highlanders and Hurricanes would all welcome him with open arms.
This is why his exit represents a greater erosion of depth than many realise. The same is true for Fergus Burke’s departure from the Crusaders to English club Saracens.
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Robert Kitson has run the rule over the breakaway rugby proposal (featured here) and declared it… dead on arrival.
There is an overwhelmingly good reason why these schemes never come to fruition and it is this: the people behind them fail to grasp what rugby union is ultimately about.
In particular, they ignore the essence of the game’s appeal to fans and players. Money is nice, obviously, but rugby is also about heartfelt passion, genuine communal pride and following in a grand tradition. It is about giving everything for the team, region or country you represent and embracing a cause bigger than yourself. And, if you are good enough, playing in competitions and jerseys that matter hugely to yourself and the paying public.
What it is not about is organising plastic Mickey Mouse leagues, financed by people with more money than wise judgement, aimed at fans who might be gullible enough to think they are witnessing something vaguely meaningful. The Arizona Muskrats v the Paris Musketeers, anyone? Allianz London against the Emirates Kings? With all fixtures staged in different cities around the world? Let’s just say the concept has one or two logistical hurdles to clear first.
While the Bounce believes a lot of what Kitson writes he tends to forget that here in the Southern Hemisphere that is exactly what we did: We shunted competitions with genuine communal pride and grand traditions to the margins in favour of a tournament with teams called things like Crusaders and Hurricanes and Highlanders and Rebels and Moana and that’s been a… (answers on the back of a postcard).
Intriguingly, and perhaps in contradiction to his column, in those same Guardian pages, Kitson carries an interview with Francis Baron, who led the RFU for 12 years, who opines that rugby cannot continue on its current course.
“The game has got to wake up to the fact we’re not in a great position, to put it politely.”
In no particular order Baron points to a combination of mediocre management, over-priced funding agreements with the Premiership clubs, insufficient investment in stadium maintenance and the RFU’s supposedly game-changing deal with the private equity firm CVC Partners. He describes the latter “as an appalling deal” and believes surrendering almost 15 percent of the union’s future broadcast revenues to a finance company will have increasing long-term effects exacerbated by declining TV rights values.
Echoes there as to how many already view NZR’s deal with Silver Lake — not as a windfall but as a cautionary tale.
As England’s cricketers go through their paces while hitting various golf courses around the Central Lakes, our greatest batter was contemplating his cricketing “mortality” ahead of the blue-riband series of the summer (and, infuriatingly, New Zealand’s only test series of any note until we tour England in the winter of 2026).