Then there were 33
All Blacks load up on wings (and prayers for Brodie), PLUS: Silver Ferns prank us, some shootout drama and cycling gold.
There you have it. A couple of minor surprises but there’s no one of the 33 selected to play at this year’s Rugby World Cup where you could say, “In the name of Shayne Philpott1, I did not see that coming!”
There are no earth-shattering selections, not even the hint of a tremor, though if you look closely for an angle you might question the wisdom of an 18-15 forwards-backs split when there is so much versatility in numbers 10 to 15.
Perhaps, though, with the tournament a week longer and the gaps between pool matches greater, the usual worries about attrition in the pack are not so acute.
If I’d been given the keys, I would have selected one less wing (probably Caleb Clarke) and picked one more loose forward (definitely Samipeni Finau), but the tournament is hardly going to hinge upon that hair-splitting. Oh, and I would have picked Brad Weber ahead of either Cam Roigard or Finlay Christie, but that’s just a personal preference thing and it was pretty obvious he was on the outside looking in when he missed selection for the Rugby Championship.
Weber, Finau and uncapped hooker George Bell will travel to Europe and train in case of injury.
Braydon Ennor is the unluckiest to miss, his knee injury coming at the worst time, with Ethan Blackadder and Joe Moody also left to rue fitness issues. If the intention was to pick utility Ennor, it would be intriguing to know who benefited from his absence. Was it midfielders David Havili or Anton Lienert-Brown, or someone out wider in Clarke, Emoni Narawa or Leicester Fainga’anuku.
It’s hopelessly speculative, but I suspect Clarke was the 33rd name pencilled in and it says something about the potential of this squad that he is a guy who has (inconsistently) flashed match-winning potential in his 18 tests.
There are four centurions in the squad - Beauden Barrett, Brodie Retallick, Sam Whitelock and Aaron Smith - and a further nine who have played at least 50 tests. A lack of experience is not going to be an issue.
What I especially like, however, is just how unknown some of these players are going to be to opponents. Ian Foster has exercised the Nehe Milner-Skudder clause but he’s done it in bulk, with six players having played fewer than 10 tests. Most of them are likely to be peripheral figures but there is still a lot of “(insert name here) has announced himself to the world” potential there.
On auxiliary matters, it was a nice touch to take the naming and first camp to Napier to acknowledge the hardship faced by many in that community since the devastating February floods. I was in the region in June and the devastation was still very raw.
There was one unintentionally funny moment when the presenter breathlessly exclaimed that it was “crazy here in the Hawke’s Bay”, as the cameras panned to one of the least craziest-looking crowds in televisual history. Such is life.
It was also long overdue that the naming of the team was taken out of the hands of the board chair and handed to a legend of the game - somebody like Richie McCaw. The two-time Cup-winning captain chewed his way through the names efficiently enough, but with the air of someone who deep down wishes it was him having his name read out by someone else.
Can this World Cup thingamajig now just hurry up and start already?
FURTHER READING:
Per Newshub: Tears flow as All Blacks rookie Emoni Narawa learns World Cup dream has come true.
Touching down from their return flight from Dunedin on Sunday after the final Bledisloe Cup test, coach Ian Foster approached Narawa and his partner at baggage claim to deliver the news of a lifetime…
“We got off the plane and were just walking to grab our bags when [Foster] pulled me and my partner aside and pretty much just told us that I’ve made the squad,” Narawa said. “Me and my partner started tearing up straight away… it was quite emotional.”
Per Sky Sport via Stuff: Brodie Retallicks knee injury throws scare into All Blacks ahead of Rugby World Cup squad unveiling.
The Bledisloe II knee injury to senior lock Brodie Retallick will see him miss the Rugby World Cup opener against France and potentially more All Blacks matches…
Scans in Dunedin revealed the knee injury that forced Retallick from the field 25 minutes into Saturday’s comeback 23-20 victory over the Wallabies was more serious than first thought.
Retallick himself was optimistic, saying he could potentially be fit for the second pool match against Namibia on September 16, a week after their opener against the host nation.
A more realistic return target may be Italy on September 30.
“It’s not ideal timing, obviously. It is a bit sore, I’m not going to lie about that. But I’m going on the timeline the doctors have said and hopefully be available for the second pool game,” Retallick told Sky Sport. “I will miss maybe two games, three at worst… there’s a plan there and hopefully it goes to the timeline.”
Retallick’s injury does have one knock-on effect: barring injury himself, Whitelock is now certain to pass McCaw’s New Zealand record 148 tests. He was always likely to even without Retallick’s injury, but it’s now impossible to imagine a scenario where he won’t be in at least four match-day squads.
Up the Wahs with Pete
Delayed match report from superfan Peter (with a couple of news quotes courtesy of NRL.com thrown in).
I’ve sat through tough watches during my Warriors fandom and Friday night’s 28-18 win against the Gold Coast definitely had all the elements of it being another nailbiter.
There is no such thing as a guaranteed win in the NRL and the Titans had enough strike power to grab the points if we turned up even a touch off the pace.
And we were.
The passing game lacked timing, the ball retention was loose and the go-forward went sideways as a result of a ferocious Titans’ defence. They took no prisoners with their line speed and brutal hits but that backfired on them when they lost their best prop, Moeaki Fotuaika, for a nasty head-high on Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, which ruled the fullback out of the rest of the game with concussion.
This didn’t please Gold Coast interim coach Jim Lenihan.
“I don’t think Mo is coming out of the ground or coming recklessly out of the ground, Mo is pretty much bracing for contact,” he said in his post-match press conference. “Yes there may have been a bit of contact to the head and maybe 10 minutes was probably sufficient. I don’t know it justifies at that point to probably ruin the game but it put us under a hell of a lot of pressure and pretty much the game was over at that point.”
I’ve often suspected that losing a man to a send-off can make the offending team grow another leg and this seemed to be the case.
The subsequent sin-binning of Warriors Marata Niukore was a laughable square up and for a while there, referee Ben Cummings struggled to keep charge of two fired-up teams.
Shaun Johnson again exhibited his old skills with an effortless right-foot step to even the score and I hoped that our boys would concentrate on the footy because they were a superior side.
A miracle pass from Dallin Watene-Zelezniak saw Johnson cross the line again but we didn’t go on with it. The pressure was not built and I was hoping that coach Andrew Webster would fix it at the break but, despite an early try to Jackson Ford, the second half was an excruciating exercise of missed tries and tackles.
“Our boys tried hard again and when you are a coach and you know that you are proud of it, but the way we executed and the way we played is not where we want to be or what we want to do,” Webster said.
Ultimately, Johnson took control of the game and he did his Dally M Medal chances no harm with a masterful display of direction and kicking. Most of the league world had consigned him to slow retirement but the Hibiscus Coast kid has us reaching for superlatives as he leads the Warriors on a surprise run to the finals.
When the final whistle sounded I collapsed in relief, wondering where we would be without him.
***
Thanks Pete, now for some table talk.
Twelve into eight won’t go. The top two have guaranteed playoff spots and numbers three to five five would have to play pretty badly to miss from here, though Canberra’s ropey points differential makes them slightly vulnerable. Sitting in 12th, Easts are probably gone - even if they finish equal eighth on points, their differential is hideous.
There is no drama in sports quite as engrossing and voyeuristic as a penalty shootout.
Football has occasionally toyed with the idea of using a different system to decide drawn matches - golden goal being the most obvious and painstaking example - but always turn back to public humiliation as the best form of entertainment.
There are players whose entire careers are best remembered for blazing the ball over the crossbar or having their shots palmed away by a goalkeeper that guessed correctly. England has an especially tortured history, with big names like Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddell, David Batty, Gareth Southgate, Paul Ince, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Ashley Young, Frank Lampard and Bukayo Saka all missing in shootouts in big tournaments (Harry Kane also missed in normal time their quarter-final against France last year).
After an absorbing 0-0 draw last night between the XI of USA and Sweden’s goalkeeper Zećira Mušović, the game moved to the spot and Megan Rapinoe became the latest player to etch her name into penalty folklore for all the wrong reasons.
The American’s final act as an international footballer was to blaze the ball high and wide during last night’s jaw-dropping shootout. She wasn’t the only one to miss and wasn’t even the last one to miss - Sophia Smith and Kelley O’Hara followed and fluffed their lines too - but the outspoken Rapinoe has become a touchstone for all those who love and loathe the team, so the focus has fallen on her.
It’s such a brutal indictment and yet, as a neutral, I secretly hope all games end 3-3 and it goes to a shootout, because the theatre is unmatched.
Tonight: Australia v Denmark, Sydney, 10.30pm (all Sky Sport 1)
Tomorrow: Colombia v Jamaica, Melbourne, 8pm; France v Morocco, Adelaide, 11pm
The entire Silver Ferns’ campaign feels like an elaborate prank.
Four years of ‘preparation’ and it seems Plan A was to throw it to Grace Nweke and Plan B was to throw it anywhere but inside the circle.
My competing netball correspondents were in rare accord when they acknowledged how poorly midcourt connected with the attacking circle, and how questionable some of the selections and in-game substitutions were.
Radio New Zealand’s Bridget Tunnicliffe had a fairly thorough wrap, and while you never want to condemn coaches and captains for what they say in the immediate aftermath of a crushing loss (in New Zealand’s case an inexplicable draw and three crushing losses to end the tournament), some of these quotes caused a querulous arching or two of the eyebrow.
Ekenasio was part of the 2018 Commonwealth Games when the team failed to medal but didn't believe it was history repeating.
“It is really tough but I would definitely count these two campaigns as polar opposites. The heart and the ability for us to be really united - this one is a whole different kind of feel…
“I think our ability to demand more from each other to continue to pull tighter rather than pull apart as the campaign went on.”
To which it’s fair to ask, does it really matter how it “feels”?
Was there anything that Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua would change about the last 10 days?
“Probably what I would change is Grace not getting injured, that would have been great for that not to happen. I think that would be a starting point.”
A mighty effort from Ellesse Andrews to win keirin gold at the world track champs in Glasgow.
I haven’t seen the race in its entirety but even from the clips on the news, it looks like she was the frontrunner from a long way out and that’s a hell of an effort to make yourself big around the final bend and to hold off those in the draft.
Andrews is a genuine chance for a medal/s at Paris next year, as is…
Hayden Wilde who had to endure some genuinely shitty conditions to finish on the podium at the latest round of the triathlon world championship, which he leads.
At least 57 people have fallen ill and are suffering from diarrhoea after swimming in the sea during the World Triathlon Championships in Sunderland, health bosses have confirmed.
A test run by the UK’s Environment Agency just three days before the event revealed that there were 3900 E. Coli colonies per 100ml, which is nearly 40 times higher than typical readings from June…
Top Australian athlete Jake Birtwhistle, who has won several triathlons across the world, said in an Instagram post earlier this week:
“Have been feeling pretty rubbish since the race, but I guess that’s what you get when you swim in s***... the swim should have been cancelled.'
Other athletes who said they were also at Roker Beach last weekend agreed, with one person saying in a commented response: “That now explains why I spent Monday night with my head in the toilet after racing Sunday morning!”
That was a reference to the surprise I remember feeling when he made the 1991 squad as a genuine bolter, not a sleight on his ability. He once wrote movingly about the toll criticism of him took.
Two many underperformed Blues for mine. Foster has long shown illogical loyalty to Blues players. The Blues front row pairing have failed constantly over many years. Their continued selection under Hansen and now Foster is so frustrating. Bower? Anyone else?
Webber should be there over Christie, and Stephenson over Clarke. Crusaders have 9, Blues have 8 ffs! The above reduces that total by four, which sits more in sync with our domestic rugby results.
Wishing the ABs all the best at the RWC. Great to see some good performances at the front end of the Rugby Championship but I still feel there is some prep to do. The scrum has been great with EDG & Lomax, but otherwise I wonder if it has the mongrel and physicality to boss the big teams - a few names there in 2019 still feature but are another four years older. Maybe a new front row and next level S Barrett can make a difference? The backline probably still needs some time to develop cohesion, but the two Barretts and Will Jordan are the type of players I’d want in my team in tight, knock out football. I do hope the forward pack can provide good protection to our bantam weight halfbacks.