Sunshine and shadow
A disorienting weekend for NZ sports fans (free)
If you watch sport in large part to watch New Zealand teams and athletes winning on the world stage, that was a weekend of light and shade.
THE GOOD
In California, the ageless Scott Dixon picked up his third win in the final four IndyCar races of the season. It was a wild one, as a grid penalty then a controversial track penalty put Dixon at the back of the field, but a series of incidents, clever strategy and a near-flawless drive put him back at the front with a quarter of the race to go and he never looked like relinquishing the lead. As a bonus, fellow Kiwi Scott McLaughlin came in for second. Another New Zealander, Marcus Armstrong, was having a good race until taken out late, but can console himself with his Rookie of the Year award.
Alongside Liam Lawson’s forays into F1, Shane van Gisbergen’s Nascar stunner and Courtney Duncan’s fourth WMX title last week, this is a golden age of NZ motorsport.
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Erin Routliffe (pictured above on knees), the New Zealand-born Canadian who went to college in the US and who switched her allegiance back to New Zealand in 2017, won a grand slam doubles title.
As a discipline, doubles is often sniffed at as few of the best singles players take it seriously, though it still plays a pivotal role in the Davis Cup, Fed Cup and every four years as an Olympic medal sport. I tell you what most of us would not sniff at - the US$350,000 ($593,000) prize money Routliffe picks up.
Headlines like “Routliffe proud to win grand slam title for New Zealand” always read a bit forced. I’m sure she’s just proud to win a grand slam, full stop.
Routliffe follows Judy Connor-Chaloner, who won the Australian Open doubles in 1979 with Dianne Evers, as being the only New Zealand women to win a grand slam…
“If you’d told me like a month ago or two months ago that this year I was going to win a slam, I would have been, like, ‘You’re insane. You’re an actual crazy person.’”
Routliffe and [Canadian Gaby] Dabrowski only partnered up together last month. Routliffe had realised her partnership with Alexa Guarachi wasn’t working and she had suffered first round losses at the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon.
Coco Gauff is not a New Zealander, but this was a nice piece from the New Yorker about how she flipped the script to beat Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka to win her home-court slam.
Defense is perhaps the least-talked-about aspect of tennis. It’s not quantifiable, like the number of aces. It’s not readily captured in the highlight videos that tend to get uploaded on social media. In an era in which the game is ever more athletic, and punishing offensive shots are struck under pressure from almost anywhere on the court, it can be hard to tell just when it is that a player is actually defending. At its starkest, great defense is simply—but not so simply—the ability to get one more ball back over the net which has no business getting back over the net, and to keep doing it. That, more than anything else, is what earned Coco Gauff the US Open on Saturday. It bought her time to get the measure of Aryna Sabalenka’s formidable power; it gradually wore Sabalenka down, mentally and physically; and it bolstered Gauff’s confidence, the self-belief that she’d need to finally prevail, 2–6 6–3 6–2.
It might be time for me, a self-confessed Roger Federer tragic, to concede that it doesn’t matter how much I wish it not to be true, Novak Djokovic might well be the Greatest Of All Time.
Coming from Serbia, a country with limited resources and lacking a lengthy tennis tradition, it's more than just individual accolades for Djokovic. He wants to be the greatest on the court -- and he also wants to use that power to improve the sport.
“I know what it feels like to come from nowhere and nothing,” Djokovic told ESPN. “I come from a war-torn country. [That struggle] is ingrained in my mentality and I won’t forget it.”
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Ryan Fox (tied for 3rd) and Daniel Hillier (tied for 12th), had great weeks in a strong field at the Irish Open putting them in great position in the Race To Dubai standings. Collecting cheques of $484,395 and $161,032 respectively, both should be nursing a Temple Bar hangover when they wake this morning.
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There were three medals at the world rowing championships in Belgrade, including a bronze for Thomas Mackintosh in the men’s single and a silver for Emma Twigg in the women’s. The men’s four also secured a bronze.
THE BAD
Have to confess that as soon as Shaun Johnson was ruled out and Nathan Cleary was seen at the ground with both legs intact, I would not have backed the Warriors to win that even if the bookies were offering 50-1.
They might be the embodiment of outer west Sydney, but there is a ruthless, almost Teutonic efficiency about the way Penrith break down opponents.
The Warriors had to dig deep to keep the score to 32-6. There were times in the first half when keeping the panthers under 50 seemed improbable.
They did win something, however, an apology from the Panthers after they engaged in a bit of childish “Up The Wahs” pisstakery.
“I’ve spoken to the Warriors and issued an apology on behalf of the club,” [CEO Matt] Cameron said. “It has since been taken down.”
The qualifying finals were a bit of a wash, but the elimination matches were epic, with Easts charging down two late field goal attempts to hold on to win 13-12 over Cronulla, and Newcastle withstanding a furious Canberra comeback to win 30-28 in extra time.
The Warriors now get Newcastle at Mt Smart on Saturday evening. It will be the hottest ticket in town.
The “Up The Wahs” signs will be out in force, and on that subject, nobody has ever gone more subterranean to try to find the origin story than Duncan Greive. After an exhaustive investigation Greive settled on the idea the phrase was coined by a group of Otago students in the late-’00s, in part to gently mock commentator Peter Ropati’s struggles in getting his tongue around Rs.
It’s plausible, but without wanting to diminish the fine work on this matter of critical importance, I’m sure I first heard the use of Wo-wos and Wahs way back when I was covering the team in the late-90s. My memory is not infallible, but I swear Joseph Los’e, league fanatic, former cops reporter at Sunday News and the brother of late rugby star and broadcaster Willie, used to call them the Wos and Wahs.
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I know nothing about UFC (and don’t pay for it), but Israel Adesanya was a heavy favourite and has a massive following in New Zealand, so his comprehensive loss to American Sean Strickland must have come as a shock.
According to UFC owner Dana White, Adesanya looked like he was in “slow motion”.
“There are a million things that could go wrong. Some days you wake up and you’re just not there... He looked bone-dry tonight, standing up really tall. He looked very slow. He looked like he couldn’t get off at all. Even in the fifth round when everybody knew he needed a knockout to win the fight, there was no sense of urgency to try to finish the fight.”
THE INDETERMINATE
The Black Caps destroyed England in the first ODI before giving back those gains in a rain-affected second match this morning. The series moves to London where it is set nicely for an Oval (Wednesday night start) and Lord’s (Friday) finish.
Of equal importance was the announcement of the World Cup squad. This will be tackled more thoroughly on the BYC on Wednesday. It was short of shocks, but there were a couple of significant talking points.
1. Finn Allen dropped.
This feels like a decision based on the selectors’ frustration at Allen’s lack of development, rather than them being 100 percent sold on Will Young. They’ve invested a lot in Allen over the past two years but keep seeing the same mistakes. It means that they’ll be switching tack and not employing a pinch-hitting opener, which is probably the right call even if it could leave them exposed when chasing big scores.
Said Gary Stead: “We had to make a decision, ultimately, for the opening batting position and it came down Finn and Will Young. “We just felt that when we looked through what the potential game plan was looking like in India, looked at the grounds, and also looked at the form of the two players as well that Youngy was the right guy to go with.”
2. Lockie Ferguson over Adam Milne.
While I think Adam Milne is bowling better than Ferguson, they cannot rely on him to get on the park consistently.
3. Mark Chapman over Henry Nicholls.
They’ve gone for the more dynamic player, who at a pinch can bowl a bit of left-arm filth. It makes sense, though the leaders do like having Nicholls around so it wouldn’t have shocked me to see him picked.
4. Rachin Ravindra gets the nod.
Can’t see him getting a lot of games unless they’re presented with a Bunsen burner of a wicket. Shane Bond once said it takes 30 ODIs before you work out how to play the game: Ravindra has played just 33 List A games, let alone ODIs.
5. Ish Sodhi selected.
Once the announcement was slated for Papatoetoe High it was obvious Sodhi had earned a place, though it’s fair to call this a horses-for-courses pick. As an ODI bowler, Sodhi has neither been a particularly prolific wicket-taker, nor economical.
The squad: Kane Williamson (c), Trent Boult, Mark Chapman, Devon Conway, Lockie Ferguson, Matt Henry, Tom Latham, Daryl Mitchell, Jimmy Neesham, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee, Will Young.
RWC CHRONICLES
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It was an opening that promised more than it delivered. Yes, there were some outstanding performances - most notably from England’s George Ford and the Springbok defence - but using a crude measuring stick, as an entertainment product it made the NRL playoffs look great.
It’s an unfair comparison in most respects. The NRL is down to the cream, whereas the RWC is still at its mismatch phase, although there were potentially enough great opening weekend match-ups to get the blood pumping.
France v New Zealand kind of delivered. It was an impassioned French performance in front of an expectant crowd, though the All Blacks’ shortcomings were laid bare in a worryingly predictable second-half collapse. The All Blacks were ordinary, as discussed ($) at The Bounce on Saturday.
Further reading: Rugby Pass has an interesting deep dive into some of New Zealand’s woes, including the interesting observation that Mark Telea’s discomfort off the ball on the left wing is creating issues that outweigh his value as an attacking threat.
With both Will Jordan and Beauden Barrett in situ, Mark Telea was pushed on to the opposite wing and it did not suit either the Blues man on the left or the Crusader on the right. Most of New Zealand’s contestable kicks went right, and Jordan up-ended French fullback Thomas Ramos in the air on three separate occasions, earning him a penalty and a yellow card. For all his many outstanding virtues with ball in hand, Will Jordan is a very clumsy chaser of high kicks. The switch went even worse for Telea out on the left. A change of wings can be subtle-but-significant: you find yourself defending on the opposite shoulder in defence and cutting off the ‘wrong’ foot in attack. It can be a disorienting experience. The Auckland man was victimised twice at attacking breakdowns as the game reached its tipping point.
England v Argentina, won 27-3 by the former, didn’t really deliver because Michael Cheika’s Pumas, who played the majority of the match with a man advantage after Tom Curry’s early red card, displayed a collective rugby IQ inferior to Ford’s alone. Coach Steve Borthwick now has a big decision to make when Owen Farrell returns from suspension. This needs to be Ford’s team now.
Further reading: I covered three games at Marseille during the 2007 World Cup, including two quarter-finals, so was interested to read of the shambles that awaited crowds there some 16 years later. From Brian Moore in The Telegraph ($).
This was not a case of ticketless fans trying to get into the stadium or fans who turned up last minute and tried to barge their way in. We arrived at the ground more than two and a half hours before kickoff, to try and avoid any problems. At that point there were thousands of fans, of both teams, hemmed into the road that led to the main steps of the stadium. Some tried to disperse to adjacent streets, bars and shops to stop the crowding getting worse, but, given that many of the streets were blocked by police and barriers, they could not do so and had to stand in what became an ever-denser crowd.
The gates finally opened, just an hour before kick-off, by which time there must have been nearly 20,000 fans around the entry steps. It took nearly an hour to get through security which, whilst boring, would not have been a problem had the gates opened earlier. As they did not, it was a problem and one made worse by the frankly obtuse numbering system which meant many fans, and indeed stadium staff, did not know where fans’ seats were to be found.
I expected more from Scotland v South Africa, won 18-3 by the Boks. Well, to rephrase, I expected more from Scotland; I got exactly what I expected from the Boks.
Further reading: A heroic but predictable ending as Scotland fall to South Africa’s size. From The Guardian.
Everywhere you looked people seemed to be bleeding, or sporting fresh wrap, strapping, and bandages and the doctors were off and on like a couple of cuckoos popping out of a broken clock.
All these stoppages meant the first half stretched on the best part of an hour. It had everything you would want in a game of rugby if you’re a front-rower.
Wales v Fiji, won 32-26 this morning by the Six Nations team, had a lot of good. It was the best game of the round but referee Matthew Carley’s performance was baffling. How he found a yellow card for Fiji for their first offence when defending their line, having previously given Wales multiple warnings at the other end of the field, really needs to be explained by World Rugby.
Further reading: Referee controversy and Wales brilliance deny Fiji win in thriller, from The Independent.
Refereeing in rugby is incredibly hard, and often used by coaches and supporters as an excuse for their side’s deficiencies. On this occasion, however, Matthew Carley will face justifiable scrutiny for his lack of consistency.
Try Steve Borthwick as England coach. Stuart Lancaster was a couple of RWC's ago.
Very interesting analysis here. Question is, what do the ABs do to counter it?
https://x.com/jimhamilton4/status/1701609837510238649?s=20