A fan of the French team shows his support for his team during the first week of the Rugby World Cup in France. PHOTO: REUTERS
Strange scheduling ...
By the time you read this column — EVERY LAST WORD — the All Blacks will have wiped the floor with plucky but out-gunned Namibia.
Leicester Fainga’anuku will have scored four tries, Damian McKenzie will have run amok, and the ageless Sam Whitelock will be one step closer to breaking the great Richie McCaw’s record for All Blacks caps.
Ian Foster will be smiling. All Blacks fans definitely won’t be getting carried away with an 85-point win over Namibia.
And then we will wait TWO weeks to watch the men in black play again.
Eh?
... stymies tournament
A good world cup — any good sports tournament, really — understands everything works better in a shorter timeframe.
Netball gets it, football gets it and even cricket sort of gets it.
Tension at this level should crackle in the air. Things should happen at pace.
Instead, the Rugby World Cup basically lurches over the early weeks, losing any momentum gained by an opening game that is usually relatively exciting.
The All Blacks opened with that booming clash against world-champions-in-waiting France. Then they face a run of Namibia, bye, Italy and Uruguay, each separated by a week. Oof.
It has never really made sense, much less now teams have such big squads.
You could very easily shorten the Rugby World Cup by 10-12 days and avoid these long fallow periods when nothing much happens.
Anyway, enough grumpiness. That should really wait until the All Blacks get knocked out of the quarterfinals, I guess. SORRY.
Up the Wahs?
It seems your beloved Warriors’ chances of winning the NRL are up the wah-zoo.
They were tonked by the defending champion Penrith Panthers last weekend, and it is hard to see them getting past the red-hot Newcastle Knights tonight.
Still, it has been a fine season, and there is a sense the club is finally heading in the right direction.
It’s always an odd time of year for me as my allegiance is not actually to the Wahs.
I have been a Panthers fan since 1991 and they will always come first. As, indeed, they have in the NRL for the past two years.
Up the Pahs!
A question of integrity
An Otago sporting great is the new face on a group that has flown well under the radar.
I first met Adine Harper when she was an 18-year-old university student and could not stop smiling as she was surrounded by some legends at the Otago Rebels. (Side note: bring back the Rebels.)
She duly became a Silver Ferns captain, turned into Adine Wilson when she married some bloke who was quite handy on the sporting field, and forged a career as a sports lawyer and commentator.
Wilson has been appointed to the establishment board that is overseeing the creation of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission.
The commission is a new independent Crown entity responsible for (take deep breath) "protecting and promoting the safety and wellbeing of participants and the fairness of competition in New Zealand’s sport and recreation sector".
Wilson, who joins Don Mackinnon, Tim Castle and Traci Houpapa on the four-member board, replaces Alexis Pritchard, the former international boxer, who stood down to take up a position with the New Zealand Olympic Committee.
I know little about the commission, but will be watching with interest to see what role it plays in the future.
The NFL returns I
The Last Word is known primarily for his love of football — and the greatest club in the world, Liverpool Football Club, you’ll never walk alone, Klopp for president etc — but the American version of football also gets him going.
Putting aside the rather inconvenient matter of concussions leading to brain damage, and some of the more outrageously over-the-top elements of the show, the NFL is almost a perfect sporting competition.
The storylines are relentless, there are heroes and villains everywhere, there are mechanisms to help every team compete, and the game itself — once you understand it — is full of intrigue and skill, power and pace. And that’s before we even get to fantasy NFL.
Apart from my beloved Rams getting a victory, the best thing about the opening round was the finish to the game between the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills.
In overtime, undrafted rookie Xavier Gipson returned a punt for a touchdown to lead the Jets to a walk-off victory.
If you don’t understand what that means, imagine the Highlanders calling in a club rugby player, who promptly kicks a drop goal in the 80th minute to beat the Hurricanes.
The NFL returns II
American sport is never far away from racial issues.
Jim Trotter, a former reporter at the NFL Network, has filed a discrimination lawsuit this week alleging his contract was not renewed because he spoke out about the league’s lack of diversity at head office.
Trotter also refers to racist comments he heard from Bills owner Terry Pegula and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
The immense power wielded by the owners of American sports teams has always jarred, and it is disturbing how many of them get embroiled in racism scandals.
