Clock is ticking
Happy New Year to all regular readers of the column.
Hope you had a lovely Christmas and a most enjoyable New Year, and have had plenty of opportunities to watch some good sport and read some good books.
January means rugby season, obviously (Jesus wept). Soon my weeks will be consumed with Highlanders and Super Rugby business, as well as sports editor duties, so the column will go on hiatus.
Wipe those tears away.
Razor cut
Wow. What a crazy couple of days for New Zealand rugby.
The All Blacks have had drama before — we are unlikely to witness anything on the scale of the 1981 tour again — but there has never been anything surrounding the coach to compare with what went down with Scott Robertson.
Many feel he had to go: that performances on the field were so uninspiring, that the departure of assistant coaches so concerning and that reviews from senior players were so (reportedly) alarming.
Still, it was a heck of a shock when it became clear he was set for the boot.
The All Blacks simply do not sack coaches in the middle of their contracts. This is, make no bones about it, an incredible development.
Whatever happens, this is a week that will live in All Blacks infamy.
Jamie Joseph for coach, obviously.
Absent with leave
You may have noticed an unusually high number of cricket stories in this publication recently WITHOUT the byline of New Zealand’s best cricket writer.
My long-serving colleague Adrian Seconi, as he mentioned in his final Notes From Slip column for 2025, is off walking great swathes of the Te Araroa trail with an old friend.
I can report blisters have been sustained, toenails have been lost and (I am making this up but there is no doubt it is true) Seconi has barely thought about the Super Smash.
It is a life-changing experience, and while both Kayla Hodge and I are eager for our cricket writer to return, we wish him the best for the endless miles to come.
Babe Ruthe
There is no doubt the one to watch in New Zealand sport is running sensation Sam Ruthe.
He has been breaking records for fun, and last week delivered the first real heart-warming story of the year when he stepped in to help a young visually impaired runner.
Those who know Ruthe have been certain for some time that there is something special about the kid.
I also bow to the superior knowledge of athletics guru Paul Allison, who points out even the athletics greats of the past were not "winning national senior titles, breaking multiple world age bests and running times that would have won Olympic gold medals — all before getting a driver’s licence".
Paul, and doubtless others, feel we are actually not getting excited enough about the new golden boy.
Should be a thrilling few years ahead if Ruthe stays on this path.
Happy Hoosiers
That was the year the Tall Blacks stunned the basketball world by finishing fourth at the world championships in Indianapolis.
But there is a new miracle in Indiana, and it has nothing to do with hoops.
Indiana University’s football (as in American football) team have qualified for the college national championship final.
The Hoosiers — the university’s sporting nickname as well as a more generic name for folks from the great state of Indiana — will play the Miami Hurricanes on Tuesday.
What you may not know is that this is basically like the Buller rugby team playing the Crusaders, and some are calling it the most unexpected rise in the history of American sport.
Indiana University literally had the most losses in the history of college football. It was historically a basketball school — Indiana is hoops heartland — and its football programme was really a bit of a joke.
A new coach, new rules that make it easier to bring in better players and a touch of magic sporting dust have Indy on the cusp of something quite surreal.
I visited Indiana University some 22 years ago, and actually watched a football game, so this story has special resonance for me. Go Hoosiers.
Greatest show on turf
My experience of covering top-level hockey is rather dusty but I am looking forward to being back on the tools on Wednesday night.
It really means a great deal to the southern community to get test hockey back in Dunedin, and hopefully plenty make the most of this opportunity to see our Black Sticks in action.
There is no All Blacks test in Dunedin this year, the Silver Ferns abandoned the city years ago and many other sporting codes stick rigidly to venues north of the Waitaki.
Hockey has come back and we should show it some love.
Eins, zwei, drei
Imagine being a fan of the VfL Wolfsburg football team in Germany’s Bundesliga.
"Die Woelfe" — the wolves — just got tonked 8-1 by Bayern Munich.
What made it really newsworthy was that Wolfsburg conceded two own goals. Which, you know, is bad enough. But it gets worse!
It was the third consecutive game, a Bundesliga record, in which the club had conceded an own goal. Scheisse.
