Batman without Robin
Call it local bias but The Last Word is struggling to see how anyone other than Jamie Joseph can be the next All Blacks coach.
That is assuming he wants the job, which seems a fair bet even if Joseph is not giving too much away at the moment.
Joseph was overlooked despite possessing vast international experience with Japan and having Tony Brown, the world’s most in-demand assistant, ready to join his staff.
Robertson was the populist pick. Joseph would have been the better pick.
While it seems clear the All Blacks will have to wait at least two years before getting Springboks-contracted Brown on board, that does not mean Joseph is not the right choice.
Give him the job now, put Dave Rennie or Joe Schmidt or both around him, and get Brown back the second his contract in South Africa is up.
It may be that Joseph does not have the magic recipe, that deep-seated issues around the All Blacks and New Zealand rugby are going to take time to address.
But he is the right man at the right time.
United they stand
There is, as everyone knows, too much sport happening at any given time, and that has major ramifications for the ODT sports editor.
Our newspaper has limited space and limited resources, and covering everything as much as we would like is simply not possible.
Which is a roundabout way of explaining why you are not reading much about the new South Island United football team in these pages.
It is an odd one, this OFC Pro League that has been established thanks to a four-year Fifa investment of $70 million and features eight teams — two from New Zealand and one each from Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.
It also felt odd when Christchurch United won a place ahead of the Wellington Phoenix, and when those crafty Cantabrians then called their team South Island United.
A cynic would question their right to lay claim to representing the entire island, and I am happy to be proven wrong, but I do not see a great deal of Otago interest in their inaugural squad.
Nevertheless, South Island United are regularly pushing the message that they represent 76 clubs from Picton to Invercargill, and they played their first game in a black strip containing logos from all over the island.
"The slogan for this shirt is ‘All For One, One For All’ because we want to represent every club, every player and every football fan in the South Island, and our black strip is a unique visual way to bring that community together," chief executive Ryan Edwards said.
South Island United — no nickname, interestingly — made their debut in a 3-0 loss to Auckland FC, and their scheduled second game was postponed due to a waterlogged and unplayable pitch. But they got a win on the board in their third fixture yesterday, beating Vanuatu United 2-1.
The circus expands
Ye gods. How many franchise-based T20 competitions does cricket need?
The latest entrant to the merry-go-round is the European T20 Premier League with six teams from Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands.
Black Caps white-ball captain Mitchell Santner has been unveiled as the first signing for the Edinburgh Castle Rockers, the questionably named franchise co-founded by former Otago cricketer Nathan McCullum.
Australian great Steve Waugh is backing the Amsterdam Flames, Australian veteran Glenn Maxwell is playing for the Irish Wolves and three other teams have not been launched yet.
On a vaguely related note, there has been minor angst in English cricket circles as their teams in the Hundred competition have been sold to the IPL billionaires and rebranded.
The Oval Invincibles are now MI London (MI standing for Mumbai Indians), the Northern Superchargers are now Sunrisers Leeds and the Manchester Originals are now the Super Giants with an elephant logo and all.
Just a taste of what seems likely to happen if "NZ20" gets off the ground. Dunedin Super Giants v Sunrisers Napier, woohoo.
From the archives
The recent hooha over batters being retired out in T20 games to allow brisker hitters to get to the crease led me down a fascinating rabbit hole.
You are not able to declare an innings closed in limited-overs cricket but it turns out that was not always the case.
The game that forced the lawmakers’ hands came in a one-day game between English counties Worcestershire and Somerset in 1979.
There is not enough space to explain fully the complicated scenario, but it boils down to Somerset knowing they were better off losing the game and protecting their strike rate in order to progress to the knockout rounds.
So that’s what they did.
Somerset scored one run from one over before declaring, and Worcestershire duly won by 10 wickets.
There was a massive uproar and lots of wailing about the "spirit of cricket", Somerset were kicked out of the competition and laws were quickly altered to ban declarations in limited-overs cricket.
One day in November
To the polls we go on November 7, then, after which point some bloke called Chris will be in charge depending on which way Winston leans. Is that how it works?
More importantly — what does November 7 mean in sporting terms?
It was the day of the first Melbourne Cup (1861, eight days before the first edition of the ODT), the day Lakers star Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive (1991), the day Liverpool great John Barnes (1963) and former Black Caps all-rounder James Franklin (1980) were born, and the day former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier (2011) died.
