Alternative Views
Defence wins championships, a bit of kiwi sports round-up, plus the shambles in the NWSL (and a few NZers caught up in it all)
Podcast
TNC Variety Show - Episode 34
The Niche Cast: Intensely Self-Deprecating
Reading Menu
Aotearoa Warriors Diary: No Young Halves Could Be Good (NRL)
How Gold Coast Titans Are Building A Kiwi-NRL Powerhouse (NRL)
Steven Taylor’s Retirement Is The Latest In A String Of Dark Portents For The Welly Nix (Football)
The All Whites Squad For Curaçao & Bahrain Has Been Named, Let Us Take A Wee Looksee... (Football)
Building 2021 Plunket Shield Fizz: The Blackcaps (Ross Taylor, Finn Allen, Jacob Duffy) (Cricket)
Touching Base With Kiwi-IPL Mahi (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
Apparently these are alternative views?
Not quite as much kai on the plate today, still plenty of kiwi sports funk to digest though. Panthers won the NRL Grand Final and I’m going to zone in on James Fisher-Harris tomorrow to wrap this all up from the Kiwi-NRL perspective. Generally, I’m amazed at the grit and mana of this Panthers outfit under coach Ivan Cleary as they have commanded headlines via their razzle dazzle but won the 2021 championship with defence.
I’ve explored the ‘defence wins championships’ idea a bit through these emails. We all know the premise and I was curious ahead of the NBA season how this would play out with Brooklyn Nets (under kiwi Sean Marks’ guidance). Brooklyn assembled an attacking force without the defensive prowess and Milwaukee Bucks won the NBA title thanks to their defensive efforts. Panthers won the NRL GF thanks to defence and they were not only the only team to concede less than 300 points during the regular season, they kept Eels and Storm to 6 points each in finals games.
In the biggest game of the season, Panthers dominated the early tackles and that’s influential when Nathan Cleary is in charge of the kicking game. Plug the footy down-field and win the first two tackles. Coach Cleary has instilled this grit in his Panthers group and Cleary’s connection to young polynesians is low key notable here; Cleary played for NZ Warriors, coached NZ Warriors to the 2011 GF and is doing a fine job in harnessing the polynesian heartland of western Sydney.
Lydia Ko popped up on the Korean LPGA tour with a tied-5th at the Hana Championship. This is not part of the regular LPGA tour and the only two non-Koreans on the final leaderboard were Ko and Minjee Lee (Australia) who are both Koreans. Not sure when Ko’s next appearance will be and we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Glenn Phillips played his first IPL game for Rajasthan Royals - who are aligned with Barbados Royals in CPL. Phillips hit 14* @ 175sr and I’m going to keep close tabs on Phillips as I reckon he is the most important Kiwi-IPL player ahead of the World Cup. Rajasthan play two more games and probably need to win both, so Phillips will hopefully get some high-pressure reps.
Tim Southee’s three IPL games: 1w @ 7.25rpo | 0w @ 10rpo | 2w @ 6.50rpo.
I wrote about NZ Warriors being in the market for solid NRL halves, while also having one young halves prospect in their three Redcliffe Dolphins teams. I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS IS A BAD THING FOR NZ WARRIORS. This might be good as Peter O’Sullivan may have sussed out that local NZ halves aren’t as NRL-ready as the abundance of depth in other positions. Good or bad, I dunno … it’s just something that is happening.
Been a puzzling week or so on the fringes of the kiwi sports media space. I have thoroughly enjoyed All Blacks vs South Africa and the challenge that SA offer. Kiwi media and even the commentators during the game have been up on their rugby throne, wanting everyone to play like All Blacks. I prefer the challenge of facing different game plans and doing what the All Blacks do is not a recipe for success for opposing teams.
How do you defeat All Blacks? You do what you do best, play to your strengths. If you have one of the best kicking halfbacks in the world - use him! If you have Francois Steyn coming off the bench - play to his strength as an exceptional kicker. Willie Le Roux’s strength as a fullback is his kicking, Handre Pollard is a typical Springbok #10.
Why do kiwis (media specifically) want South Africa to play like Aotearoa? South Africa wants to win and their best route to wins is doing what they do best. I’ve still found these Tests highly entertaining and that’s based on the physical play, the tactical battles at work - enjoying the niggly slow down tactics from South Africa.
I’ve been pondering that along with the media’s focus on Israel Adesanya and Dan Hooker broadcasting their need to be based overseas. Part of this stems from UFC media and they don’t know that most kiwis are based overseas right now. These lads are UFC media darlings, so UFC media pounces on anything and everything.
Then we have kiwi media’s fascination with this. City Kickboxing’s Genah Fabian has been based in USA all year - but for all their noise about women’s sports, kiwi media doesn’t highlight that. Nothing about the Adesanya/Hooker situation is unique. It’s not unique in the kiwi sports landscape, it’s not even unique within Team CKB as their comrades are based overseas at the moment.
Wildcard’s Notebook
Unfortunate NWSL Stuff
Pretty sure you’ll have heard by now about the dramas going on in America’s National Women’s Soccer League. Perhaps you won’t have heard of the New Zealand connections involved though. I did see the story covered on one of the telly newses where they did mention Abby Erceg but then the piece itself was from CBS or something in the States so no further context was supplied. So allow me to break it down for ya.
What happened is that Paul Riley, now-ex coach of the North Carolina Courage, was the subject of a lengthy and incredibly well reported piece on The Athletic which detailed how, in a previous job in the league, he’d been... ‘grooming’ seems like the right word. Grooming players on his teams seemingly with the hope that it’d lead to sexual relationships (even though he was in his late-40s at the time and was married). Maybe it was opportunistic. Maybe it was meticulously planned. Either way it was shocking. Two players went on the record for the piece, detailing their experiences with him. There may or may not have been more but what was reported here was already inexcusable.
Because clearly there was a pattern at play. Both of these instances involved players who were deeper on the roster, players who were quite young at the time and who relied upon his coaching decisions for their careers (one of whom he’d traded for multiple times). It was a pretty disgusting abuse of power dynamics as well as - and this is something that stood out immediately reading the story even before it even got to the specifics - a shocking lack of boundaries for a coach. Not only with the two whistleblowers but just in general: things like commenting bluntly on players’ weight/bodies, socialising way too hard with the team, and discussing personal lives. Not good... hence Riley was swiftly fired by the Courage after the story came to light.
The North Carolina Courage is Abby Erceg’s team. Not only that but she captains them and has done ever since they relocated/rebranded from the Western New York Flash. They were NWSL champs in 2018 and 2019 as well as being runners up in 2017 (plus the franchise also won in 2016 as the Flash). Riley has been the coach that whole time and a bloody good one too. Off the field he’s clearly a bit of a creep but his coaching record is undeniable. He’s also never been short of praise for Erceg – here’s what he had to say when she re-signed with the club earlier in the year...
“Abby has been massive to this club’s success,” said Head Coach Paul Riley. “From leadership to pure knowledge of the game to an unrivaled fitness regime, Kiwi has become the best defender in the NWSL. Having her sign a longer term contract shows the club’s aggressive mentality toward improvement. She has so many tools and so much respect from the squad. I’ve coached some great leaders, but Kiwi is special and she understands that habits are the invisible architecture of a daily professional’s life. She is a fabulous pro, and she bleeds commitment to the club.”
The Athletic article quotes an anonymous Courage player as saying that Riley has largely “laid low” the last few years. He’s also now 57 years old and recently because a father for the first time – somehow getting that done during the NWSL Challenge Cup tournament bubble in Utah which baffles the mind as to how that was possible without breaking any boundaries.
We can’t know what Courage players knew or suspected about the bloke. Again, Paul Riley was also a superbly successful coach so he obviously took his job very seriously. He had a great professional relationship with Erceg and no doubt plenty of the rest of the squad too. Gotta feel absolutely rotten for them now realising that there was this whole other side to their coach, this sudden betrayal. Especially for Erceg because of course she was caught up in the whole Andreas Heraf thing once upon a time too.
But there are two other New Zealanders linked into this chaos and that’s where things get a whole lot less sympathetic. Paul Riley was at the Portland Thorns when the two reported situations occurred and one of them was specifically reported to the team, who led an investigation. The general manager of the Thorns was then, as it remains now, Gavin Wilkinson (GW also holds the same role for the Portland Timbers team in the MLS which is where Bill Tuiloma currently plays - never had a kiwi for the Thorns though). That’s 33-cap All White Gavin Wilkinson if you didn’t know. Wilkinson has held that GM role for the men’s team since 2009 and since the formation of the women’s team in 2012.
The first mention of Wilkinson is a bit of a stray bullet, detailing a conversation he had with one of the two whistleblower players (I’m avoiding names here because it feels salacious to do otherwise - the immense bravery of putting your trauma out there in public like this suggests to me they’ve earned the right to sit back and let certain other names be the main focus) in which he encouraged her to stick to footy in her media interviews, particularly with regards to her sexuality. At least that’s what the article suggests.
“She said Wilkinson’s tone was genial, but the message was clear: We don’t talk about being gay or having pride. We play soccer. Wilkinson also praised one of the team’s best players and her reticence to discuss anything but soccer in interviews.”
For the record, Wilkinson has categorically denied that account of things. “Bullshit” was the word that he used in the article. He later offered a more considered response to the journalist in questions...
It’s also worth reasserting that this happened six years ago, before Colin Kaepernick started kneeling and before the Shut-Up-And-Dribble stuff with the NBA. History has not been kind to that line of thinking from Gav but, assuming that he did say something along those lines, I highly doubt he was alone among general managers in all sports for requesting such a thing. It was tone deaf at worst. It’s just that it looks bad now in hindsight because of what happened next.
Riley’s abuse of power had been reported to Wilkinson and the Thorns franchise. The coach’s contract was running down and they’d just had a disappointing season and there was already a decision to be made about his future. The player in question had tried to go through the club’s human resource director but couldn’t do so anonymously which initially put her off (another embarrassing fact for the NWSL). Then later in the season she sent a detailed email direct to the team’s owner, the NWSL commissioner, the same HR director, and also Riley himself. The owner never responded but Wilkinson did reply on both of their behalf saying that they took the matter seriously and would investigate. The NWSL said something similar while the HR director set up a meeting.
That team investigation found no illegal behaviour (because there wasn’t any, technically speaking) but it did acknowledge the gross breach of employment protocol or whatever you call it that Riley had committed. So they let him go. But they did so without publically mentioning the investigation so from the outside it merely looked like he’d been dumped because of bad results (and also Riley’s desire to move back to the east coast). Riley, by the way, claims in the article that he was cleared by the investigation and needless to say has denied all accusations.
This has been an ongoing drama for the NWSL where problems like this are allowed to fester because as a growing female sports league they’re so worried that bad press will invalidate the NWSL’s entire existence. A stupid point of view which allows things to get so much worse but you see this line of thinking so often. Everything is presented as uber-positive and then when a controversy comes along nobody knows how to react. The NWSL had existential fears from the start as the latest in a long line of professional women’s soccer comps in the USA. Meanwhile Paul Riley is the fourth coach this year to resign/be fired because of some sort of behavioural policy violations. There’s a reason this keeps happening, right?
Anyway, Riley was released by the Thorns without the reasons for that release being revealed and a few months later he got a new job at the Western New York Flash. One of the whistleblowers had spoken with Wilkinson worried about Riley moving to a new club and he effectively shrugged it off.
The NWSL knew about the allegations against Riley, and the subsequent team investigation, and they still signed off on the appointment. Gavin Wilkinson knew about the allegations and he didn’t step in at any point. And the GM of the WNY Flash? That was none other than 31-cap All Whites midfielder Aaran Lines. Either he was told about the allegations and hired the bloke anyway or he never found out in which case either it was a lazy hire or somebody lied to him. But given that Wilkinson and Lines were teammates for the All Whites it would be astounding if they didn’t discuss the hire in some capacity. Prominent kiwi names are caught up in this scandal and it’s not flattering.
The NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird has already resigned. She wasn’t involved with the league in 2015 but she had been contacted more recently when the two players tried to seek some answers before going to the media and she effectively shrugged it off too. Notice the pattern? Baird, who got this job on the back of her success in business with an eye on growing the league commercially (to which point, in fairness, she did a fine job), didn’t last 24 hours after the article was published. Nor should she have considering the way this incident has highlighted the ongoing shambles in which the NWSL’s main employees, its players, are continually treated (read this thread for a crazy semi-related story). The NWSL’s general counsel Lisa Levine has also resigned.
That’s only the start. There’ll be more reckoning to follow because the NWSL absolutely needs it. This should be the strongest competition on the planet given how good the USA national team is but every couple of years there are teams going bankrupt and there are scandals all over the place and it’s way more likely that their best players leave for Europe than Europe’s best players head for the NWSL. There are many reasons for that but the messy state of the league is surely the main one.
At least Aaron Lines has a bit of what the tv crime shows call plausible deniability, considering how the Thorns and the league both seemingly tried to bury this situation. Also he hasn’t been involved in the NWSL since the Western New York Flash were sold and relocated several years back. Gavin Wilkinson on the other hand, well there were “GW Out” chants at the most recent Portland Timbers game. To be honest, it’s hard to see how he hangs on to that job now. What an absolute mess.
It’s the fact that Paul Riley went almost straight into a new job after the Thorns gently parted ways with him that stands out here. Bad things happen, sadly. People in power don’t always act the way they should. But to think that there were people who knew about what had happened, who were in a position to do something about it, and they simply allowed the guy to pop up at another club with no dramas... that’s shameful. Riley’s a great coach but there are lots of great coaches. We all know how disposable top level coaches are in football. This is so hard to fathom.
Even if Riley’s truly been on his best behaviour since then, there were still more than enough hints in that article that he’s maybe not the guy you want in charge of your franchise. Think of those missing boundaries. It’s probably a fact that for the majority of his players he was a respected coach, a trusted mentor, and a reliable authority. But for the handful of players for whom that’s not the case... how can that be something you’d ever allow yourself to have on your conscience?
Something Else…
In happier news, Ryan Thomas scored for PSV this morning. More on that in Flying Kiwis tomorrow but here’s the goal and a bit of his post-match interview. Thomas won’t be in the All Whites squad next week by the way as he focussed on his club career (no doubt travelling during a pandemic, with two young kids, was a factor too) but also gotta mention that those two games are confirmed on Sky Sports now so we will be able to watch them.
