Category: New Zealand

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New Zealand rugby has something going for it

NEXT weekend, teams from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa will begin battling it out in the knockout phase of the 2016 Super Rugby tournament.

From 12 teams in 1996, the tournament now has 18 teams: six from South Africa, five each from Australia and New Zealand, and one apiece from Argentina and Japan.

New Zealand’s overall population is just a shade over four million. Yet half the teams in the playoffs who play for honours will be from those two islands they call the shaky isles.

It is a remarkable phenomenon.
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After nine years, Wayne Barnes still cannot tell a forward pass

BRITISH rugby referee Wayne Barnes is well known as the man who helped France defeat the All Blacks in the quarter-final of the 2007 World Cup, failing to spot a blatant forward pass that led to a French try.

France won that game 20-18, a match that was remarkable also for the fact that Barnes did not find a single infringement by the French in the second half worthy of a penalty.

In the World Cup final of 2015, Barnes was a linesman and failed to see that a pass from New Zealand winger Nehe Milner-Skudder to flanker Jerome Kaino was miles off the horizontal; New Zealand benefitted by three points as a result of a penalty shortly thereafter. And when Wales played South Africa in the pool games of that same World Cup, Barnes could not spot a conversion that would have given Wales victory.
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One-sided cricket matches are here to stay. Why would you attend?

World cricket is in a parlous state, not in terms of the money it makes, but in terms of the contests it provides. The games are one-sided to the extent that patrons at the grounds are few and far-between.

There is no better illustration of this than in the ongoing Australian games, where the home team is playing New Zealand and the West Indies in three Tests apiece. The first Test against New Zealand was won convincingly, and the second looks like going the same route. As to the West Indies, they are not expected to last beyond four days in each of the three Tests.

The man who is responsible for this farcical outcome, where Tests are mostly one-sided, died recently. Jagmohan Dalmiya was the one who set in motion these unending Test matches, where cricket goes on round the year, and the same bunch of players have to play, and play and play.
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All Blacks keep their calm – and the World Cup

In the end, just the points that Dan Carter scored off his boot would have sufficed for New Zealand to beat Australia in the final of the Rugby World Cup. The final scoreline was 34-17 and Carter got 19 of those.

One of the truly great standoffs world rugby has seen, Carter only missed one kick on the night; he converted four penalties, kicked a drop-goal and converted two of the three tries that the All Blacks scored.

It was a truly mature performance, with the No 10 kicking astutely, defending with great courage and never panicking when it looked like Australia were getting close to levelling the scores. (He has played better games; for instance, in the second Test against the British and Irish Lions in 2005, he scored more than 30 points as New Zealand won 48-18.)
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Australia can surprise the Kiwis in the final

It is doubtful whether many people expected Australia to lose to Argentina in the second semi-final of the Rugby World Cup. There was a period last year when this could have happened, a time when the Wallabies were being described as the Wobblies, but under the new coach, Michael Cheika, things seem to have changed.

But the scoreline — 29-15 — flattered Australia. The last try that blew out the score came off a forward pass from Drew Mitchell to Adam Ashley-Cooper, a pass that went unnoticed by referee Wayne Barnes. But that is not surprising because Barnes does not seem to know how to spot a forward pass. He has form in this regard.
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Pity things didn’t end on a better note for Habana

No matter where your allegiances lay in the the first Rugby World Cup semi-final, you’d have to feel for Bryan Habana, one of the great South African wingers, who is unlikely to be seen at this level again.

No doubt Habana was hoping to have a major impact on this game. But it wasn’t to be and all he can play for now is to decide third and fourth place honours. Equalling Jonah Lomu’s record of 15 World Cup tries is poor consolation because he will never be talked of in the same class as Lomu.

Habana had the worst of games, a real nightmare. Early on, as the All Blacks rumbled towards the South African line, Habana chose to advance early to try and effect an interception but he ended up tackling Richie McCaw after he had passed the ball. As a result, he left young Lood de Jager as the last bastion of defence to face two All Blacks forwards, Jerome Kaino ball in hand, with Dane Coles running in support on the right.
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All Blacks fans, don’t forget what happened in 2003

No doubt, all New Zealand rugby supporters are over the moon with the way their team entered the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup, transforming themselves at one stroke from favourites to red-hot raging favourites.

Many people are, however, forgetting ahead of the semi-final clash against South Africa that this is not the first time New Zealand have been in this position. Hark back to 2003 and an eerily similar situation presents itself.

That year, after a long hiatus, New Zealand regained the Bledisloe Cup from Australia. The team had a new coach, John Mitchell, who, after seeing the success of the Auckland Blues in the Super Rugby competition, decided to structure the national team around four players who won the title for the Blues.
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Australia still feels guilty about stealing the country from the Aborigines

More than 200 years after white people stole the Australian continent from its Aboriginal owners, they still feel threatened when there is a public display of black culture.

Nothing else can account for the reaction of people after Aboriginal Australian Rules footballer Adam Goodes broke out into a war dance after kicking a goal last Friday.

The dance came during one of the games in the so-called Indigenous Round, when the Australian Football League celebrates the contribution that Indigenous players have made to the game.
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A man who gets a blowjob lacks integrity. The NRL thinks so

A rugby league player is driving along with a woman when they both get a bit randy and the girl sucks him off. Both are adults; the man is 22, the woman 39.

The man films a small portion of the process (else he has to be the world’s fastest ejaculator) as a lark, with the woman in full agreement. Months later the clip is sent by the man to someone via SnapChat; that someone (who remains unknown) apparently puts it on social media.

The video itself runs for all of 10 seconds. It shows the man’s face and the back of the woman’s head. If anyone is titillated by it, then they’d have to be a real weirdo.
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