When dynasties teeter
Best links include Southee getting a right old Stuffing, and more Maadi madness
I’ve been thinking a bit about dynasties over the weekend. When I say thinking, what I really mean is that I watched the final episode of The Dynasty: New England Patriots after watching the Hurricanes beat the Crusaders 14-10, followed by Penrith beating Parramatta 26-18 on Friday night.
One team was the greatest dynasty in NFL history, one the greatest dynasty in Super Rugby history and the other has dreams of being the greatest dynasty in modern NRL history1.
As mentioned on Friday, the Patriots documentary is far from flawless. The further you get into it, the further you suspect it is being used to lionise team ownership and demonise coach Bill Belichick, although the man does himself no favours with his stone-faced, arrogant responses to nearly every question thrown at him.
The man either does not care one jot about his legacy or he is saving it all for a page-turning, JR Moehringer-assisted biography. Either way, by the end of the 10 episodes you can kind of see why no team wanted to take a risk on hiring him this year despite his unprecedented success.
You suspect Rob Penney cares a little more about his immediate legacy having succeeded Scott Robertson at the Crusaders. In an interview with the Irish Examiner during the pre-season, Penney claimed not to feel the pressure of following the wildly successful Robertson because he had “no ego”.
To which the snide might say, just as well because the first month has been a soul-crushing exercise. The Crusaders showed real fight to take the Hurricanes to the edge in Christchurch but on another day could have been 20 points down at halftime.
“It’s not ideal. But you don’t win the cup in the first four rounds. I think we proved that we are eminently capable and very competitive. Let’s see what happens in two months’ time,” Penney said.
Let’s first see what happens in two weeks’ time. By then the defending champions would have played the Blues and Chiefs.
(Over at RNZ, Jamie Wall was also contemplating the fall of an empire.)
With an injury list that includes Scott Barrett, Will Jordan, Braydon Ennor and Tamaiti Williams, and a recent exodus of leaders in Sam Whitelock and Richie Mo’unga, this dynasty looks suddenly disoriented.
To be fair, I’m not how much of that should be sheeted to Penney, who got the job he’s probably always wanted and found the cupboard marked “talent” barer than it has been since 1997.
A massive part of the successes of the Patriots and the Crusaders lay in the relationship between the coach and the primary playmaker. Richie Mo’unga’s work at test level might have been unfulfilled, but he was a Super Rugby monster. His departure, along with Robertson, should not be underestimated.
For that reason, Penrith must be well placed to continue their dominance of the NRL. You don’t get much closer than Ivan and Nathan Cleary.
They’ll need both to be at their peak.
Since the ARL and Super League merged in 1998 to form the NRL, no team has won three titles in a row and only Easts, in 2018 and ’19 have gone back to back. It’s so hard. The salary cap and the fact other teams want to import some of your success makes it fiendishly difficult to keep winning cores together.
Some 39 percent of Penrith’s players from the 2022 Grand Final win are now with other clubs. They already know they’re losing Jarome Luai next year to Wests.
Trying to keep a dynasty together must feel like trying to keep a brick house intact without mortar. When they crumble, they tend to do so spectacularly.
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You would never describe the Black Caps as a dynasty, but whatever they had does appear to be crumbling, with more pain in store for the former world test champions when they tour the subcontinent later this year.
Some of these themes were touched on a week ago here, but Stuff has highlighted both Tim Southee’s precipitous fall from grace this summer.
Southee didn’t just have a bad summer with the ball.
He had one of the worst home summers by any Kiwi seam bowler in the country’s 94-year history of hosting tests, using the common metrics of average (runs per wicket) and strike rate (balls per wicket).
[From] a group of 177 bowler-seasons, from Ted Badcock in 1929 through to Southee, Henry and Will O’Rourke in 2023-24… Southee’s average of 71.33 this summer was the third-worst mark and his strike rate of 127.1 was the sixth-worst mark.
Oof!
Stuff also looked at the recent trend of messy exits for the heroes of ’21.
Just three played in the final test of the summer - Southee, Kane Williamson and Tom Latham - and although Devon Conway will return soon enough, it is understood the prognosis for Kyle Jamieson2 is far from rosy.
While Southee might no longer have an ironclad case for the captaincy, one person closely connected to the camp told me it was nonsense to suggest he wouldn’t be a huge part of their plans for tests in Sri Lanka and India given his record in the subcontinent.
***
What is going on in Wellington? Not since Coronation Street’s Tracy Barlow has a lead character undergone as dramatic a personality change as the Basin Reserve wicket.
Fresh from spinning like a top for Nathan Lyon and Glenn Phillips, 22 of the 30 wickets in the latest Plunket Shield match there fell to spin, with Michael Bracewell taking 8-41 in Otago’s second inning en route to a Wellington’s innings victory.
If you haven’t seen Xavier Coates’ finish to break the Warriors’ hearts, you’re missing out. The athleticism required to finish that transcends team and code allegiances. It even wowed them in America, because that matters to Fox.
I’m not in the least bit concerned about the Warriors… yet. Though, worryingly, my two most reliable NRL scouts, Peter Urlich and Dai Henwood, have gone very quiet.
Every story I hear or read about secondary school sport in modern New Zealand makes me shake my head and wonder how we got to this point. Like this Radio New Zealand in-depth report on the Maadi Cup obsession.
One tidbit I heard recently was of a school who was making calls on marginal seats in their crew boats based on how much the students’ parents were prepared to ‘support’ the programme. In not so many words, a pay-to-play scheme.
I understand RNZ has more stories on the lengths some schools have gone to for Maadi glory to drop during the week.
Over at Stuff, they’re live streaming it, because… oops, lost my train of thought there, but to return to my first sentence on this subject, maybe I do have a clearer idea of how we got to this point.
Paul Coll pulled off a comeback for the ages to beat squash world number one Ali Farag in London.
Was interesting to see that Malaysia has been offered £100 million to host the Commonwealth Games. That might cover the cost of taxis for all the trough-snufflers. Victoria, the state in Australia not the city in Canada, eventually reneged on their deal to host the 2026 event after determining that costs were going to blow out from the initial $2.6 billion projections to more than $6b.
The fact no city is keen to host what is a quaint, but third-rate event, should be a signal to organisers that it’s time has past, as tempting as it must be to go out with a bang in 2030, the centenary year.
Thanks for all the kind words regarding last week’s post on Billy Guyton, which followed my report on RNZ. There were sound reasons for not opening that newsletter up to comments that I won’t bore you with, but thanks to those who reached out to me via email. Always appreciated.
Here’s me talking about it on Checkpoint.
There will be no midweek Bounce this week. It will return on Friday.
Nobody is ever likely to match St George’s 11 in a row from 1956-66, or even South Sydney’s seven premierships in eight years in the 1920s, back in the days when it was a Sydney competition.
In hindsight, we should thank Mike Hesson for getting Jamieson his big IPL payday early.
Great points DC, confirmed what a good decision it was for me to re'up with the Bounce for another year! Although a longtime NFL fan (Bears), I haven't watched the Patriots doco but can imagine that there will be a degree of credit claimed by all parties - in reality it took them all. Robert Kraft to appoint Bill, and then effectively give him the keys and stay out of the way (good strategy) and enjoy the reflected glory. Bill's best decision was benching Bledsoe that first year - he was the highest paid player on the team at the time I think so a big call. Bill had form for getting rid of expensive QB's like Bledsoe - see his time in Cleveland (with the real Browns before they were moved to Baltimore! - the current Browns are an expansion team) and exiting long term local favorite QB Bernie Kosar.
Tommy's best move was never forgetting he was 199 in the draft; all the great ones need that fuel and then use it efficiently - and he almost perfected it during his run.
Sadly, as the Bears success has been limited in my lifetime, I have stronger memories of the runs of others - that first Patriot playoff run under Bill with the snow game against the Raiders, Bledsoe on in relief of Brady @ Pittsburgh, and Vinatieri's kick at the gun against the self-proclaimed 'greatest show on turf' St Louis Rams - great theatre and almost made me a follower - point being that great teams do pull in the casual fans though which I think is an underrated legacy of the Patriots run of excellence.
However, as the great Francis Urquhart (the original F.U!) said - nothing is forever!
On the theme of coach/player partnerships, my observation is all the modern (Superbowl era) great NFL coaches have had a great QB at some point in their careers, not many coaches win either 1 or multiple without someone really good under center - Joe Gibbs (Washington) was an outlier winning 3 x SB's with 3 different QB's - and it's even tougher to do now in the free agency era meaning Bill/Tommy's achievements are even more outstanding in my opinion; Bill's best trait was his absolute ruthlessness when it came time to let a player go - harsh in the saying but most of those players were well compensated.
I can see the similarities in other sports I follow; the influence of the NFL is quite pervasive in my view across NRL, AFL, SRP be it the coaching, the games rules, the marketing, the language etc etc.
Personally, I think Bill will get a shot somewhere that's either ready to win (Buffalo is my pick) or a return to the NY Football Giants (which will be a rebuild) but I suspect it will be a short leash wherever he goes as Father Time remains undefeated!
The Reid/Mahomes combination has a chance to emulate the Belichick/Brady partnership's success - the Hunt family ownership of KC is unbroken and on a par with the Rooneys in Pittsburgh and Mara's in NYG so they will give Reid and Mahomes room and resources to keep winning, then reflect in more glory!
If their arc of success continues, that will be worth watching over the next few years. I hope they do it - Mahomes is a special talent - it will drive up ratings and $$$. All competitions need that type of needle mover; a reason to watch - and the Swifties are certainly another factor!
Last point I would offer is the NZR+ could do worse than spending some time with NFL Films - the most influential part of the NFL machine in terms of content we see on screens; if you want to know how to package up a sport and sell it to the casual fan, look no further than there.
Keep up the great work!
Definitely nothing to worry about for the Warriors yet. What they have done poorly is dissapointing but fixable.
What they have done well is only being replicated by 2 or 3 other teams.
The only concern is starting 0-2 puts unneeded pressure on.
Canberra and Newcastle visit NZ the next two weeks - we must (and I think will) beat both to be 2-2 after 4 weeks.