VIPs and other very important things
If all the world cups turn to dust, we'll still have golf to fall back on
Sport was coming out our ears over the extended weekend in multiple codes. Yesterday, The Bounce took a closer look at a near-perfect Black Caps performance ($ subscribers).
I’m going to mostly park the All Blacks and their second-cousin twice-removed All Blacks XV until later in the week, but it would be remiss not to acknowledge the disruption the team is facing. Today, Leicester Fainga’anuku became the seventh player to withdraw from the squad, following Folau Fakatava (knee), Sam Whitelock and Will Jordan (‘inner-ear’ issues), and the three Barrett brothers Beauden, Jordie and Scott (family bereavement).
Four players have been drafted into the All Blacks from the XV: hooker Asafo Aumua, halfback Brad Weber, utility Damian McKenzie and lock Patrick Tuipulotu.
It is also worth noting that Wellington achieved a notable double in finishing the season with the Ranfurly Shield-NPC double.
There is a thought that Wellington won one for the neutral when they defeated Canterbury 26-18, and maybe to a certain extent it’s true but I’m inclined to think that if you’re cheering for Auckland, Canterbury or Wellington (and to a lesser extent Waikato and Otago) to win the NPC, you’re basically cheering for Countdown to put your local greengrocer out of business.
Still, I’m happy for Jamie Wall, whose defeatism shone through in this preview piece that doubled as a tribute to Sam Doyle.
I miss the days of Sam Doyle and Athletic Park, like every tragic bloke my age that believes rugby truly reached its zenith during the 1990s. It’s hard to see them ever coming back, as the provincial game faces a desolate future unless something truly massive happens in the next few years. If the same Wellington effort that dismembered Auckland in their semifinal is on show against Canterbury on Saturday night, then maybe we’ll get the bask in the special glory that can only come with an NPC title win and draw a direct line to the good old days.
Just an emphasis on the word ‘maybe’. Wellingtonians never get ahead of ourselves.
Doyle, who died recently from leukaemia aged 52, also graced the field as a fullback for Manawatu and the Freyberg club while I was studying at Massey University. “Studying” might have been a dubious choice of words, but “graced” wasn’t.
Another landmark moment in the concussion-Big Sport debate that has both practical and political implications.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest funders of biomedical research in the western world, has formally acknowledged a causal link between repeated blows to the head and the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
The timing is deliberate, with the Concussion in Sport Group, authors of the influential consensus statement that guides the world’s largest sporting organisations including World Rugby and Fifa, meeting in Amsterdam later this week. So far their statements have refused to draw a clear link.
If that changes - the next statement will be published early next year - it could have enormous ramifications for sports that feature repeated head contact, such as rugby and football. The governing bodies have a defined duty of care to their players, which means they either will have to change the rules to prevent head contact - simply not possible in the oval-ball codes or football if heading the ball is to remain part of the game - or warn its participants at all levels over the risks associated with that sport.
Under that scenario, indemnity forms to play sport would become a very real prospect and would also raise questions as to what age participants should be able to make decisions around playing sports that carry a risk of repeated contact to the head.
In other words, there is a very real possibility that organised contact sport before a determined age of consent is consigned to history.
Another astonishing week for New Zealand golf, with Lydia Ko and Steven Alker winning on the LPGA and Champions tours, and Ryan Fox finishing in a tie for fourth on the DP World Tour, despite slipping down the leaderboard in Mallorca following a difficult final round.
Ko’s victory was special, her first in the country of her birth. It was also the 18th of her LPGA career and gives her a handy lead in the Race to CME Globe Season. The 25 year old has moved into the top 30 all-time winners on the LPGA Tour, though with the startling rise in depth and quality of the fields, nobody is going to threaten Kathy Whitworth’s record of 88 wins any time soon.
She also climbed up the career money winners list to seventh, with US$14,678,016. She could nudge into the top five shortly, with Suzann Pettersen and Lorena Ochoa both less than $200,000 in front of her. Annika Sorenstam leads with $22.6m, which is less than the purse of a single LIV Golf tournament just to put into perspective how the breakaway circuit has skewed golf’s balance sheet.
Ko recently did a podcast with Henni and Hally that’s worth a listen.
Alker won for the fifth time on the Champions Tour following his remarkable transformation from PGA journeyman to Champions Tour beast.
He also has a career on the pantomime circuit when he retires judging by his expression when he dropped the trophy after winning the classily named Dominion Energy Charity Classic.
Fox, despite the pain of a faltering final round, has moved to second in the DP World Tour rankings behind Rory McIlroy and ahead of Matthew Fitzpatrick and Victor Hovland, who all split their time with the PGA Tour.
Fifa were in town last week and held some meetings, the contents of which were at best mildly interesting, including the confirmation of a transfer clearing house in Paris that should ensure small clubs get what’s owed to them when players move onto bigger and brighter things.
Of most interest, however, was the draw for the World Cup, co-hosted here next year, that saw the Football Ferns drawn with Norway, Switzerland and the Philippines.
In a holding pattern of interest in both the rugby and rugby league world cups, particularly the latter.
The Black Ferns were sensational in the first half against Scotland in Whangarei and have so much depth in the three-quarters that it’s almost unfair. The 57-0 win was a fairly stark reminder - as was England’s 75-0 hammering of South Africa - of the yawning gap between the best and the rest.
Paul Cully addresses this with a sympathetic lens, noting that the disparity between weak and strong remains stark in the men’s version of the World Cup, too.
Japan, for example, were highly competitive for large parts of their loss to Italy on Sunday, and both South Africa and Fiji showed enough in the pool stages to suggest they can be big improvers in future tournaments. And don’t forget World Rugby is launching the three-tiered three-tier WXV competition next year, which should keep the momentum going. In some ways, the actual structure of the women’s test game is going to be better than the men’s game.
This is all true, but I’m more than ready for the quarter-finals now, even if it involves the super-weird scenario where Canada and the USA play each other twice in a week. New Zealand at least gets a week’s further distance from Wales, who they meet in Whangarei.
Saturday:
France (4) v Italy (5), Whangarei, 4.30pm
New Zealand (1) v Wales (8), Whangarei, 7.30pm
Sunday:
England (3) v Australia (6), Waitakere, 1.30pm
Canada (2) v USA (7), Waitakere, 4.30pm
Meanwhile, the Kiwis again flattered to deceive in their 68-6 pool romp against Jamaica.
I was electronically communicating with a league fanatic in the weekend and they mentioned how difficult they were finding it to “get into” the world cup due to the mismatches and the time zone, and I can understand where they are coming from.
The quarter-finals on Guy Fawkes’ weekend can’t come quick enough, until then we get the Kiwis meeting Ireland in what should be another romp.
At least the Taniwha can bask in the glory of being the last team to defeat the shield holders and champs!