The wait for RTS is nearly over
PLUS: An Eastern European nightmare, a Tuigamala memory, a book giveaway, a brief Notes from the Oval, and The Week That Was and the Weekend That Will Be.
In one of the most highly anticipated, drawn-out debuts in professional rugby history, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck is set to take the field for the Blues wearing the No12 jersey tomorrow night.
It’s been 13 months since his switch from league was confirmed and a lot has happened in that time. One thing that hasn’t happened is Tuivasa-Sheck playing a proper game of rugby.
He started the 2021 NRL season but returned early to beat the end of the shortlived transtasman travel bubble and prepare for an Auckland NPC campaign that never eventuated. Neither did last week’s planned Super Rugby opener against Moana Pasifika.
He could be forgiven for wondering if his big move was cursed but he’ll finally get a chance to impress alongside Rieko Ioane in the midfield against the Hurricanes in Dunedin.
A brilliant broken field runner and brave defender, there is little doubt RTS, 28, has the talent to be a code-hopper but he has made the switch relatively late in life - Brad Thorn and Sonny Bill Williams, New Zealand’s two most successful converts, were 26 and 24 respectively - and the technical elements that can be befuddling might be that little bit harder to ingrain.
There has been talk that in pre-season work RTS was making elementary errors in the tackle situation. Admittedly, many veterans struggle with the ruck laws, but any mistakes RTS makes there will be magnified.
With a tighter timeline for his apprenticeship, it’s important to find form fast if he wants to fulfil his goal of playing for the All Blacks at the 2023 World Cup.
What he won’t lack is goodwill. There’s a whole reservoir of it out there. Super Rugby was as flat as a punctured bike tyre last year; a dazzling Tuivasa-Sheck debut could be an important part of the repair kit.
NOTES FROM THE OVAL #11
Just one note, but it’s important.
Having been bowled out for 95 and 111 a week ago, South Africa captain Dean Elgar - who himself scored 1 and 0 - won the toss and batted! That’s a hell of a gutsy call and it paid off in spades.
This is being written at tea on the first day, but with the tourists 163-1 and Sarel Erwee bringing up his maiden test ton it’s been a slam-dunk so far for Elgar and co.
Apart from Tim Southee, the attack has looked a bit flat, particularly when the ball stopped swinging so prodigiously. There’s only two sessions gone of a possible 15, but it feels like New Zealand are a long way behind already.
Notes from the Oval will return in proper, director’s cut form tomorrow evening, for paying subscribers.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
My WTW consisted mostly of alternating sleep with Netflix. The most powerful movie I watched was Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.
Having watched what the country’s democratic-minded citizens went through in 2014 to overthrow president Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian stooge, it’s been wrenching to see the invasion play out in real time.
There will be sporting elements to this:
The Champions League final won’t be played in St Petersburg;
Sebastian Vettel and others will refuse to drive in the Russian GP;
Andriy Shevchenko and Oleksandr Zinchenko have directly appeakled to the west for help;
For now, though, it’s a humanitarian tragedy and the rest of the world can only hope Putin’s autocratic madness subsides.
This is not a geopolitical newsletter, so please excuse the grim diversion, but I did appreciate the Economist’s assertive, no bullshit editorial on the subject.
By the time it began, early on a gloomy grey morning on February 24th, the onslaught against Ukraine ordered by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, had acquired a sickening inevitability. Yet nothing about this war was inevitable. It is a conflict entirely of his own making. In the fighting and the misery that is to come, much Ukrainian and Russian blood will be spilled. Every drop of it will be splattered on Mr Putin’s hands.
The sadness of Va'aiga Tuigamala’s death aged just 52 was amplified by the fact that he had acknowledged he had to prioritise his health after being recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Following hard on the heels of the loss of Kiwis legend Olsen Filipaina, it’s been a tough time for the Samoan community.
I had a loose connection to the cross-code winger. For one season I relieved Chris Rattue from ghostwriting duties for Tuigamala’s New Zealand Herald column.
It was an interesting experience. Not the column-writing part, which was fairly mundane even by the standard’s of ex-All Black columns, but the very act of reaching him was a weekly challenge.
Tuigamala’s attitude to training was often described as lax, which would also apply to his understanding of deadlines. Tuigamala ‘wrote’ for the Friday Super Sport edition and Thursday morning would quickly turn into afternoon and sometimes evening before he would return calls.
It was strangely endearing, especially when you knew that the reason he was often cutting it fine was because he was dealing with dead bodies as part of his role as a funeral director.
On one occasion he was driving to meet Rattue when he called to say he couldn’t catch up with him because he’d been called in to oversee a situation where a cherry-picker was required to remove a 300kg deceased man from his house.
It was impossible to be mad at him. When he’d finally ring back he’d follow an inevitable apology with a laugh that was immediately disarming.
Some have described him as Jonah before there was Jonah. Maybe, they were blockbusting, skilful wings after all, but I always thought rugby was far more important to Lomu’s self-identity than it ever was to Tuigamala.
Rugby was just part of who he was and probably not even the most important part.
Perhaps that’s why intensely focused players like Sean Fitzpatrick would become frustrated with him. You could argue that the All Blacks never managed to get the best out of Inga.
One team did though: Wigan.
They love him there.
Va’aiga Tuigamala 1969-2022
You never like to lose the last one, so White Ferns coach Bob Carter will have some misgivings about the way his team logged off early from the Indian series in Queenstown.
Yes, you’d take a 4-1 win if offered, but on the eve of a World Cup, you definitely want the ‘1’ to happen early and then to finish on a roll.
On the plus side, Amelia Kerr is playing out of her skin, particularly with the bat.
She has a lot of veterans around her - Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine, Amy Satterthwaite, Katey Martin and Lea Tahuhu - but Kerr has emerged as the key piece of the puzzle. Her 353 runs at 117.66 was the difference between the otherwise evenly matched teams and her seven wickets put her second equal with sister Jess and behind only Deepti Sharma.
The World Cup starts next Friday against the West Indies at Mt Maunganui.
It also starts with this bizarre shadow hanging over it.
As someone mentioned to me, could you ever imagine a world where the ICC said that matches could go ahead with nine players at a men’s world cup, with male members of management making up the numbers if needs be?
No is the answer.
The Formula One testing season began this week at Barcelona. Some tripe followed.
There are times when criticism directed at the media industry is grossly unfair, particularly the accusations of “clickbait” that have come to encompass any story that somebody doesn’t like. Then, because you have an interest in Formula One you click on a news.com.au story headlined, “McLaren teammate is ‘livid’ with Ricciardo after testing performance” and you get why we’re our own worst enemies.
Did Daniel Ricciardo run Lando Norris off the Barcelona track? Did he block his exit from the pits? Did he lose his car keys?
I mean “livid” is strong language.
In paragraph seven we get to the ‘meat’ of the issue.
“Lando Norris was annoyed to be P1 yesterday because people will talk McLaren up, so he’s going to be absolutely livid at Daniel Ricciardo right now as he tops the morning session,” Formula 1 reporter Chris Medland light-heartedly posted on Twitter.
Oh FFS.
Baited. Clicked.
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
I’m a cricket-pitch conspiracy theorist. It seems awfully fishy to me how a strip on the same Hagley Oval wicket block can be so green at 0-0, and so brown at 1-0 to the home side. I don’t like it when overseas teams manufacture pitches to explicitly suit the home team’s needs and I don’t like it when a New Zealand team that only needs a draw to win a series against South Africa for the first time does it. Hope I’m wrong.
NZ v South Africa, Hagley Oval, tomorrow-Tuesday 11am, Spark Sport
Might have to toggle a bit, as it would be great to see the in-form Ross Taylor carry CD to a deserved trophy in the final of the horribly disrupted Ford Trophy.
CD v Auckland, Queenstown, tomorrow 10.30am, Spark Sport
I won’t be watching as much rugby as I did last weekend in what a fairly limp opening round, but as explained above, I will be tuning in for RTS.
Blues v Hurricanes, Dunedin, tomorrow 7.05pm, Sky Sport 1
I’m guessing the understrength Tall Blacks will find more resistance from the Philippines than they did India, who they beat 101-46, as their FIBA Asia qualifying campaign continues.
NZ v Philippines, Manila, Sunday 11.50pm, Spark Sport
The first piece of silverware in the English football season will be handed out as we head off to work on Monday. While the quality of cup finals is often questionable, the quality of the opponents in the League Cup final is high.
Chelsea v Liverpool, Wembley, Monday 5.30am, Sky Sport 7
The IndyCar season featuring the ageless Scott Dixon and Scott McLaughlin begins on the streets of St Petersburg (NOT the Russian one).
Grand Prix of St Petersburg, Tampa, Monday 6am, Sky Sport 5
GIVEAWAY
A neighbourhood friend was doing a bit of a Swedish death clean the other day and came across Mana, a coffee-table book documenting the 2011 All Blacks and, more broadly, New Zealand’s connection to rugby. It’s a little different from most attempts at the genre in that it is shot by photojournalist Nick Danziger on black and white film and comparatively short lenses.
Mana retailed for $100 back in the day and although the dust jacket has a couple of small nicks and scratches the book is in near-perfect condition.
I will post a picture of the cover on my Instagram feed tonight. If you’re a paying subscriber, all you have to do is push like and you’ll go in the draw. Winner will be announced on March 11.
