The return of the prodigal son and hopes of a Warriors masterpiece
PLUS: Chelsea take the lead in The Week That Was and the Weekend That Will Be, and a BYC CWC special (feat. Katey Martin).
Winter sport seasons are long enough as it is, so I make it a practice to steadfastly ignore pre-seasons.
How has your favourite NRL team been faring in the practice matches and exhibitions? Couldn’t even tell you the results, sorry, let alone tell you who’s fit, who’s not and who’s “poised to make a big splash in 2022”.
Having the opening competition match sneak up on you is an underrated sporting sensation heightened further when your ‘local’ team hasn’t been home since August 2019, around about the same time something was stirring in Wuhan.
Which leads me clumsily to the Sunshine Coast tomorrow, where the Warriors will start their campaign against the team that is as close to being their good luck charm, the St George Illawarra Dragons.
They usually beat the Dragons - well, five out of the last six clashes at least - and their recent history is littered with fine opening day performances, which inevitably ratchets up the optimism.
The prodigal Shaun Johnson is back too, hoping to inject his experience into a side that hasn’t made the playoffs since he left for Sydney’s southern beaches three years ago. Reece Walsh still has another week to stew on the sidelines but he’ll be back soon, again just tickling the tastebuds of hope and anticipation.
Johnson comes back, according to him, a better and more rounded player than he was when he left but there’s a suspicion that he’s more comfortable being a cog in the wheel of an Australian team than the gearbox, drive shaft and starter motor that he’ll be expected to be at the Warriors.
The forward pack looks strong. A league sage that I leaned on for guidance suggested that getting into the red zone will not be an issue, but without “A-list centres” and a top-drawer hooker, an awful lot of pressure is going to fall on the halves to get them over the line.
Those who invest more of their emotional bank balance in the Warriors keep telling me the club is heading in the right direction and yet I can never pin down the key details of what that direction is, or whether Nathan Brown is the right coach to hold the compass.
Brown has always seemed more functionary than visionary.
I’d love to be proved wrong, but in the meantime here’s Stuff providing Brown with the platform to state that the top eight is the target. I think.
“We’re quite hopeful that a top eight spot will be a target for us, especially because we got some great learnings last year,” Brown said.
This makes me anxious and not just because “learnings” was used instead of “lessons”. Are the Warriors hopeful of making the top eight or hopeful that the top eight is a target? There’s an important distinction to be made here.
Yes, I know, it’s waaaay too early in the season to be this cynical. I need to get with the programme, so here we go…
This will (nearly) be the Warriors year.
Just you wait and see.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
Nobody has managed to stop Putin, but they’ve come for Chelsea FC!
Extraordinary times in the football world as the United Kingdom made good on their threats to sanction the oligarchs that have made London their home, freezing the assets of some of the world’s richest men, including Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.
While the club will be allowed to continue operating - and in fact won comfortably in the Premier League this morning - it is under strict conditions.
It would take too long to list all the ways in which this affects the club, but it cannot be sold, the club shop cannot operate, they cannot sell tickets beyond those already sold including season passes, they cannot buy and sell players in the next transfer window and they cannot renew player contracts. They are allowed to spend only the bare minimum on travel costs for the team and home match concessions, security and stewarding.
Here’s all your questions answered by the Beeb.
Here’s a slightly more doomsday take on it by the Daily Mail, who claim that unless Abramovich is given special dispensation to sell, Chelsea, the world club and European champions (and Carabao Cup runners-up, ha ha), could fold within weeks.
Abramovich is not the only Russian sporting figure to suffer, but don’t spend too long crying for F1 driver Nikita Mazepin, who was unceremoniously dumped by the back-marker Haas team.
You’ll discover here that he was a bit of a prick anyway, and only got his drive because his father’s a fertiliser billionaire who sponsored the team through the company Uralkali.
The start of Super Rugby Aupiki was so much more than just another match, but if you were to judge Chiefs Manawa v Matatu purely on the footy, how would it rate?
All things considered (and there are a lot of things to consider) it was pretty good, but somewhere short of great. The first half had plenty of snap and crackle - and a little controversy with the first ‘try’ - but the balloon went pop in the second half and it was a bit of a slog.
Matatu, who shaded the match, had a conversion to send it to golden point so drama wasn’t lacking, even if the quality control slipped as tiredness kicked in and the super-short preparation runway began to show.
With such a short tournament and Hurricanes Poua and the Blues unable to play their match, the Chiefs now have a massive advantage with two to play in the sprint for the inaugural championship.
Her father didn't care that Jean-Pierre was Black, but her mother sure did. She made Bernadette choose. Bernadette chose Jean-Pierre. They got married and had Laurent. Jean-Pierre rose level by level in the football world until he found himself a regular member of the French national team and a fierce center-back for Paris Saint-Germain. They went to famous nightclubs. They drank champagne. Their home in the Paris suburbs had a wide balcony. They saw James Brown in Lyon and Aretha Franklin in Paris. They danced. Their lives were filled with music. She can still see Jean-Pierre walking out of record shops with both arms wrapped around his stack of purchases. Frank Sinatra. Lou Rawls. Otis Redding. They watched the sunrise over the south of France. Pastel mornings in Saint-Tropez and Cannes. Her country brothers and brothers-in-law loved going out to clubs with her husband and breathing in the air of his celebrity. Even her mother came around and eventually adored Jean-Pierre.
Radio New Zealand’s The Detail focused on the sad unwinding of Manu Vatuvei’s post-professional life.
Sadly, it’s not a particularly unfamiliar tale - the sporting hero with feet of clay - but Vatuvei’s fall was more spectacular than most.
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
There’s been a lot of bad cricket played around the world over the past week but barely any of that has been in New Zealand, where the World Cup has got off to an outstanding start.
In Rawalpindi two good teams - Australia and Pakistan - played a test on a lifeless dung heap; in Antigua, two bad teams - West Indies and England - are playing a test on a lifeless dung heap; and in Mohali one good team, India, thrashed one rubbish team, Sri Lanka, by an innings.
Meanwhile, the White Ferns are back on track after a surprising opening loss to the West Indies and meet in a sell-out transtasman blockbuster at the Basin. Stay away rain. The West Indies take their unbeaten record into a crucial clash with India.
We at The BYC had the great fortune to catch up with the hyper-engaging Katey Martin. She is well worth listening to.
India v West Indies, Hamilton, tomorrow 2pm, Sky Sport 2
NZ v Australia, Wellington, Sunday 11am, Sky Sport 2
It’s the Warriors, of course. See above for the classic Warriors range of hope, anxiety and cynicism symptoms.
Warriors v St George, Sunshine Coast, tomorrow 7pm, Sky Sport 4
The NBA season is starting to get to its pointy end, so tune in for your Steven Adams eight points, 12 rebounds fix for the impressive Memphis Grizzlies as the take on the not-so-impressive New York Knickerbockers.
In other NBA news, Ben Simmons was exactly embraced in his (non-playing) return to Philadelphia.
At the time of writing his Brooklyn Nets teammates were destroying his former team, leading by 29 with five minutes to go in the third quarter.
Grizzlies v Knicks, Memphis, tomorrow 2pm, Spark Sport
Chiefs at the Crusaders would normally be box office and it might still be, but Omicron has been putting its hand up for selection this week and the visitors’ preparations have been badly disrupted. Still the match of the round, however.
Crusaders v Chiefs, Christchurch, tomorrow 7.05pm, Sky Sport 1
This week I linked to a Newcastle United fan site that defended Kiwi striker Chris Wood after the greenshoots of criticism started to appear following his scoreless start to life at Newcastle started to appear, such as this from football365.com’s Ian King:
Not all of the new transfers have been successful; we continue to wait to see what the tangible benefits of spending £25m on Chris Wood might be; his arrival doesn’t seem to have strengthened their attacking options very much and, if their intention in signing him was to weaken Burnley, that doesn’t seem to have happened either.
Wood got off the mark today with a classic centre-forward’s goal in an away win against Southampton and he’ll be looking to add to it in this suddenly fascinating clash between the two teams with toxic ownership.
Chelsea v Newcastle, Stamford Bridge, Monday 3am, Spark Sport
Is it too early to say that Nathan Brown is not the answer? No? OK then, Nathan Brown is not the answer. (No offense Nate). Too many sets where the first four tackles were one off the ruck, no support, no dummy runners, no short passing. We got picked off easily as a result and never established any go forward. It looked to me that the all too familiar error's in the last 20 minutes were largely due to a team that didn't have faith in the Coaches game plan - not a great start.