Tuesday mash-up: Rugby action moves on field - temporarily
Eyes turn to Wellington on Thursday, but at least there was plenty to look at elsewhere over the past three days.
F***ing Rob P****y gets his revenge on b***ards in the media with a deserved 29-27 win over the table-topping Blues. Imagine a world in which you’re sitting 3-10 in a bang average Super Rugby field and two of those three came against the Chiefs and Blues.
The ‘plucky’ Crusaders have still got a chance of making the playoffs and that’s not a team you want to come up against in the first week, especially if you’re one of the aforementioned sides.
“I think we’ve got a wee chance there still, that’s huge for us,” Codie Taylor said. It’s been a tough season for us obviously. We connected on Monday, we knew what we were up for, you could feel it all week.”
There will be a lot of people cheering on Fiji Drua when they meet the Rebels in Lautoka this weekend, including Vern Cotter and Clark Laidlaw.
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The midweek rugby action is not taking place on the field however, as the Special General Meeting of New Zealand Rugby convenes in Wellington.
To recap:
A vote for Proposal 1, tabled by the current NZR board, means wholesale adoption of the Pilkington Report.
A vote for Proposal 2, tabled by the provincial unions (ie, the voting members), means the players’ union will withdraw the right for NZR to govern them via the Collective Agreement and will instead form a separate entity to preside over professional rugby.
The players reiterated that stance in a last-ditch email appeal to members yesterday. It was long, but contained the following:
We explained this to voting members late last year – forecasted losses for NZR well in excess of $100 over three years – and yet you still choose to sell down more net revenue when there was no need for further reserves. History is already demonstrating what a mistake that was. History has also already demonstrated what a disaster the original proposed Silver Lake deal to sell down 12.5% would have been. You are now being asked to make another decision on behalf of the game – please this time get it right, the stakes are high.
This following bit not only cuts to the bone, but straight through it without any anaesthetic for the PUs (emphasis is mine).
That leaves $250 million to invest in and run the community and professional game [yet] we have more than 34 ‘rugby’ boards, 350 board members (more board members than our full-time professional player base), 34 CEOs and respective management teams all working in that space. We are overhead heavy and lacking in clarity and alignment at a strategic, operational, and roles and responsibility level. We are inefficient and ineffective, misaligned, and frankly losing our game.
Against this we have a participation problem that has no answer in sight beyond pockets of good work being done within some communities; a fractured relationship with schools rugby that continues to undermine the games potential; a professional pathway that is confusing and misaligned between PU, Super and national teams; exceptional international 7s teams about to complete in the Olympics but no meaningful domestic 7s pathway, participation or competition at all; domestic and international professional competitions that are struggling despite what is some fantastic rugby being coached and played; a game plagued by a lack of clarity around its on-field identity in the modern day and confusing interpretation and application of rules that frustrate even the most ardent rugby supporter.
We believe we need to rediscover what we stand for, and how we will move this game forward together. That will require [a] context of a best practice governance model as outlined in the Pilkington Report, with a world class independent NZR board with a mandate to operate in the best interests of the game, as opposed to any particular stakeholder.
Just brutal.
Support for the players stance has come from an unlikely source - their bête noire in the UK, Stephen Jones, who wrote the following in the Sunday Times under the headline: “New Zealand players’ attack on buffoons in blazers may save rugby ($)”:
In New Zealand, the players have reacted in anger to Proposal 2, a proposal following still the smug and vision-free route most trodden throughout the rugby world — the world where everything, slowly, rots in hell. All hail, the All Blacks.
I hope Thursday is the last time we speak of this business. I suspect it won’t be.
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Didn’t see all of the Black Ferns 67-19 crushing of the Wallaroos, but saw enough to wonder how the hell they lost to Canada the week before and to also fear for the game in Australia, as they stunk.
Jamie Wall watched a lot more and had thoughts:
The world champions are now looking forward to a showdown with England at Twickenham in September, so how are they tracking? The answer is complicated because when the Black Ferns are good, they’re unstoppable. But when they’re not, it’s incredibly frustrating to watch.
It wasn’t great footy if you’re just into league for the aesthetics, but the Warriors might have put together the grittiest fortnight in their history.
By my calculations, and when I say my calculations I actually mean Dai Henwood’s calculations, half of their entrire salary cap was missing from Sunday’s 24-20 win over the high-flying Dolphins.
Oh, and Addin Fonua-Blake is doing his penance in the gym and Mitch Barnett made the New South Wales Origin squad and didn’t it warm the cockles to see how happy his teammates were for him.
“He works so hard. Some people are made for Origin, he’s made for it. That is his arena, it’s tough, it’s hard. There’s got to be a lot of detail. You’ve got to understand the game plan and get together quick, and you’ve got to be a good person and mix well. He just honestly ticks all those boxes,” coach Andrew Webster said of Barnett.
Bye week has come at the perfect time for the Warriors. There’s two weeks for bodies to mend and that renewed sense of hope to percolate around Warriors Nation.
Some extremely quick hits…
The prospect of a Aimee Fisher v Lisa Carrington K1 500m showdown in the Paris final fills me with anticipation. Fisher might have a couple of brilliant cigarette-paper thin wins achieved with different tactics, but I’m still putting my money (not actually real money, it’s a figure of speech) on the GOAT in the boat. Either way, it’s fantastic sport.
It is astonishing that Sir Peter Snell’s national 800m record has stood so long though when you watch YouTube footage of him running, you can see why. The guy was perfect. Still, well done James Preston.
Preston clocked 1 minute 44.04 seconds in winning the men’s 800m at the Merck Running Festival meet in Pfungstadt, Germany on Sunday, eclipsing Snell’s 62-year-old New Zealand record of 1:44.30.
I did not see that, but I watched Geordie Beamish in the prestigious Bowerman Mile at the Prefontaine Classic. He came within a cat’s whisker of breaking Sir John’s national mile record and ran well for eighth, but I do wonder if it gave him pause for thought ahead of the Olympics.
The metric mile can be a cagey event and you can get surprise winners and medallists (2016 for example), but with Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the field, I’m not sure we’re going to see any “tactical” races. They’re just going pedal to the metal.
The Indianapolis 500 won by Josef Newgarden over Pato O’Ward provided amazing last-lap drama, and Scott Dixon snuck onto the podium, also on the last lap. As for pole-sitter Scott McLaughlin, as would be familiar with anybody who owned a car made in the 70s, he had clutch problems throughout.
“That’s just how it is… We were up there all day, but just didn’t quite have enough.”
The third Kiwi, Marcus Armstrong, did not get a full lap of racing in before his engine blew.
Said Paolo Pescatore, a media and technology analyst:
“Without a shadow of a doubt, sport is the next battleground among streamers, especially in the US. Sport is one of the few genres that actually drives people to want to watch something live and tune in at a specific time and day of the week. The challenge for streamers is their business models are not geared to live sport — if they are really serious about sport, this is a long-term commitment.”
Pretty sure Geordie has stated he's setting himself for the steeplechase. With his scintillating finish he's more of a chance to medal in that of he can hack the pace of the Africans early on.
With regard to streamers and live sport...
It's a two edged sword, as it gives minor sports at least some kind of platform (in my case MotoGP, Moto2 & Moto3) but we're seeing / have seen a push back in Oz against streamers like foxtel & stan owning the rights to 'Aussie sports' like international cricket, international rugby and tennis. Some of the FTA organisations partner with streamers for some of the games, but the die hard supporters are stuck with a choice of some events on FTA with ads, or paying for streaming on Amazon, Netflix etc (with ads !!).