The rights (and wrong) of Wood's big move
PLUS: The BYC talks Ross Taylor, the NFL's brutal coaching carousel and the Midweek Book Club makes an ass of itself.
New Zealand striker Chris Wood is going to Newcastle it seems.
This is amazing, exciting and disappointing all at once. The Guardian have today reported that Newcastle will meet Wood’s release clause of £20-25 million (price varies according to various reports), meaning Burnley will make a tidy profit on the 30 year old who went from Waikato FC to West Bromwich Albion in 2009.
Wood has agreed personal terms and if he passes a medical will make his debut this weekend at home against Watford in what is shaping as a classic, cliched, relegation six-pointer.
This is great news for Wood and probably for most New Zealand football fans. Newcastle might have spent the past few seasons as an embarrassment, but they’re one of the so-called “big” clubs with passionate support and an impressive home ground that holds 52,405 screaming Novocastrians.
It has a pub across the road from St James’ Park, The Strawberry, that immortalises Newcastle’s best players on its walls, serves a decent Newcastle Brown Ale and a cheesy chip butty. Its Facebook page is already excited about the news.
And yet… for all intents and purposes, Newcastle is now a state-owned entity of the Saudi regime. It’s a football club, yes, but also a sportswashing tool.
Saudi Arabia murders journalists, it uses torture as a punishment and publicly beheads those found guilty of serious crimes. It imprisons dissidents and discriminates based on gender, sexuality and religion. The country is, in short, a human rights hellhole.
But it has a lot of oil money.
None of this is Wood’s fault so it’s impossible to begrudge him a move to a neon-lit club. His goals are down this season but he’s been a consistent producer for Burnley - a club in the lower reaches of the Premier League’s glamour scale - scoring in the double figures and being the leading marksman in each of the past four seasons at Turf Moor.
Football365.com rates him the fourth-best record signing in the Premier League behind only Danny Ings (Southampton), Youri Tielemans (Leicester) and the Rolls-Royce that is Liverpool’s Virgil van Dyk.
He’s really good. He should be really proud.
I just wish he was going somewhere else - anywhere else really.
Spark appear to be close to a deal that will see them offer alternative commentary for their cricket in the form of the ACC NZ1. While no details are yet available, this is obviously one of the biggest stories in NZ sports history2.
None of this is discussed on the latest episode of BYC, but we do talk about Ross Taylor, the Black Caps and South Africa. We also discuss Jason Hoyte’s infamous “tranny” commentary and Mike Lane tells us why he feels compelled to fly to Australia just to assault Marnus Labuschagne.
Sticking with cricket, here’s an interesting yet utterly unconvincing story from The Age (metered paywall) via The Telegraph about how Pat Cummins has cancelled Australia’s sledging culture. Heard it all before. It’s easy to be nice when everything is going your way. The real test will be when someone really takes it to Australia, like India.
This is one of the most brutal weeks in professional sport.
It’s the week when the NFL separates its wheat, the 14 teams that enter the playoffs, from its chaff, the remaining 18 teams.
Being part of the latter group is suboptimal from an employment point of view.
In the past 48 hours the Chicago Bears (6 wins, 11 losses) have fired coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace; the Denver Broncos (7-10) removed coach Vic Fangio; the Minnesota Vikings (8-9) said sayonara to coach Mike Zimmer and GM Rick Spielman; the New York Giants (4-13) sacked coach Joe Judge while GM Dave Gettleman “retired”; the Miami Dolphins (9-8) didn’t let a winning record get in the way of packing coach Brian Flores’ bags.
The Jacksonville Jaguars jumped the gun and sacked their coach, the hapless Urban Meyer, three weeks before the season petered out, while the Las Vegas Raiders had their hand forced midway through the season after coach Jon Gruden’s disturbing emails were uncovered.
Ignore for a moment the GMs and concentrate on the coaches. Seven out of 32 were wiped out - 21.9 percent of the head coach workforce and, on top of that, you can guarantee most of their staff will go with them as the new hire brings their own people in.
As a facile exercise, I randomly compared the turnover of head coaches at the flaky Raiders (which has existed as a franchise in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and most famously Oakland) since 1996 with that of Super Rugby franchises.
The Raiders have gone through 14 head coaches since Super Rugby began, including Gruden twice. The Highlanders are on their 12th head coach this year, the Blues 10th, the Chiefs ninth, Hurricanes have used seven, while that model of consistency, the Crusaders, have churned through just five.
I have no idea what that exercise taught me except that professional sport is tough. Don’t be a coach if you’re expecting a sinecure.
MIDWEEK BOOK CLUB
What is it? Running With Sherman: The donkey who survived against all odds and raced like a champion
Who wrote it? Chris McDougall
Publisher: Profile Books (2020)
Genre: Sports and animals non-fiction crossover
Reviewer: Dylan Cleaver
I love getting books for Christmas. Love getting them anytime really, whether it’s birthdays, public holidays, the first Tuesday of every month or just for the hell of it.
So when I saw the familiar rectangular shape and felt the solid yet flexible weight under the wrapping I couldn’t wait to rip into it.
From under the wrapper staring out at me from the cover was a donkey. What the actual…?
I’ve been warned many times never to judge a book by its cover but surely there are limits to the value of this idiom, especially when said cover is, as I might have mentioned, a donkey. This burro is not juggling, he’s not dressed up and smoking a cigar, he does not even appear to be on the move - he’s just standing in a field.
Well then, I’d nearly finished it before the close of play on Boxing Day, probably would have if my barbecue skills weren’t so sought after.
The first half of the book is great as they rescue an ill-treated donkey, Sherman, from an animal hoarder and first save its life and then try to convince it to take up running. The last section is a page turner as Sherman and its new carers, the author and his family, travel from Pennsylvania to Denver to enter the donkey racing world championships.
In between there are fascinating slices of life from southern Pennsylvania, Amish country, and a colourful cast of characters in both human and animal form.
There are times in the middle when it gets a little muddled, when the focus shifts from Sherman’s rehabilitation and progress to the quirks of the other donkeys in the picture, but even when you’re trying to work out who’s running with which donkey now and what character traits Flower and Matilda have brought to the table, it’s never less than entertaining.
The author’s attempt to turn everything into a meditation on life can be exhausting, but for the most part it works and you’re just willing that donkey to run.
It will one day be a movie.
Seriously, never judge a book by its cover.
The BYC is an ACC product.
This is not one of the biggest sports stories in NZ history.