Anatomy of a Capitulation

Super Smash funkiness and Blackcaps/White Ferns depth, more Charlisse Leger-Walker records, Welly Nix women away form, Joseph Parker, Breakers & more

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Podcast

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Reading Menu

• The Glorious Revival of Kosta Barbarouses at the Wellington Phoenix (Football)

• Exploring The Wellington Phoenix’s Efficiency Boost Under Giancarlo Italiano (Football)

• 2023/24 Super Smash Scout: Top Three Youngsters (Cricket)

• 2023/24 Super Smash Scout: All Things Otago (Cricket)

• 2023/24 Super Smash Scout: All Things Auckland (Cricket)

• Blackcaps T20I Check In After Bangladesh Series (Cricket)

• Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Six Sneaky Juniors To Learn About (Rugby League)

• Six Of The Best Kiwi-NRL Junior Halves In Australia For 2024 (Rugby League)

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Scotty’s Word

One of the funky things about Super Smash is how every game is a double-banger. Otago went to Northern Districts and grabbed two wins in Hamilton with all Otago mahi covered here. Auckland's two wins against Canterbury at Hagley Oval was fascinating because of how quiet Hagley Oval was as Canterbury Magicians capitulated. The blokes didn't break down in that fashion, they were thoroughly beaten from start to finish.

It genuinely felt like the soul was snatched out of Hagley Oval.

Anatomy of the Canterbury wahine capitulation...

• 15th over: Lea Tahuhu goes for 3 runs and takes a wicket late in the over. Auckland are 91/5 and need 12.4rpo to win.

• 16th over: Sarah Asmussen concedes 5 runs. Auckland are 96/5 and need 14.25rpo to win.

• 17th over: Overseas import Fatima Sana goes for 14 runs. Auckland are 110/5 and need 14.33rpo.

• 18th over: Overseas import Sophie Molineux goes for 13 runs including a wide. Auckland are 123/5 and need 15rpo.

• 19th over: Sana goes for 8 runs. Maddy Green is run out. Sana bowls a no ball with the last delivery which goes for 3 runs all up. Auckland are 135/6 and need 18rpo.

• 20th over: Molineux goes for 3 runs and then bowls a no ball. 4 runs off the free hit, followed by 4 runs and 2 leg byes. Auckland grab a single and 2 runs to win.

During the game Canterbury coach Rhys Morgan laid out how Sana and Molineux were playing their last or second to last games respectively. Local Cantabs Asmussen (1w @ 6.2rpo) and Tahuhu (2w @ 3.7rpo) were excellent throughout and then leading into the final stages. Sana and Molineux both deliver no balls which become free hits as overseas imports while Canterbury stumble.

That's a rough return from the 'best players' and it may have spoiled their farewell activities. Canterbury were sluggish in the field as well though, allowing singles to become doubles etc. One of a few factors that come together for such a loss.

Also interesting was how Frances Mackay captained her team through this and was obviously frustrated, then she appeared in the commentary box 20 minutes later to chat about the blokes game. Mackay did so with utter professionalism that defied the situation.

Canterbury blokes had less of a capitulation and instead struggled for any momentum, perhaps picking up bad juju from Hagley Oval. Canterbury's batting innings never got going, scoring at 7rpo with Daryl Mitchell leading with 57* @ 114sr. Mitchell was sweating like he was back at the World Cup and conditions looked tricky. Then Auckland came out to bat and made it look easy .. aside from facing Matt Henry.

Allen barely broke a sweat in his 78* @ 169sr. Will O'Rourke went for 12.6rpo, Ish Sodhi went for 14.5rpo and Michael Rippon went for 12.5rpo.

What was the best thing about Canterbury's stinker? Showcasing Izzy Sharp and Zak Foulkes.

Both have received plenty of Niche Cache spotlight so tap in. Sharp is 19yrs and she whacked 45 runs @ 160sr which included a few boundaries off Molly Penfold. Sharp had no issues with Penfold's short stuff and she is the cleanest young hitter in Aotearoa.

(Part of the Canterbury capitulation involves Auckland. Auckland kinda stink. They only have Green and Skye Bowden doing anything, plus their young White Ferns do very little. Canterbury are full of grizzly pros and Sharp's better than any young Aucklander, yet the Cantabs fumbled this game)

Foulkes (21yrs) was not-out with Mitchell on 13 runs @ 216sr. This gives Foulkes 40 runs @ 160sr in Super Smash. Then he dismissed Sean Solia with a beauty - typical Foulkes mahi angling the ball into the lefty and swinging it away. Aside from Henry, Foulkes was Canterbury's best bowler with 1w @ 5.5rpo.

Best ODI/T20I Blackcaps in the recent pocket of Super Smash availability...

• Finn Allen: 154 runs @ 77avg/177sr

• Henry Nicholls: 96 runs @ 32avg/141sr

• Glenn Phillips: 91 runs @ 91avg/151sr

• Tim Seifert: 85 runs @ 28avg/160sr

• Jacob Duffy: 5w @ 20avg/8.7rpo

• Ben Sears: 3w @ 31avg/9rpo

• Matt Henry: 2w @ 13avg/3.9rpo

• Mitchell Santner: 2w @ 20avg/5.8rpo

Best White Ferns in Super Smash...

• Suzie Bates: 276 runs @ 69avg/114sr | 2w @ 24avg/6rpo

• Maddy Green: 133 runs @ 44avg/116sr

• Amelia Kerr: 118 runs @ 29avg/131sr | 5w @ 17avg/5.3rpo

• Kate Anderson: 113 runs @ 22avg/109sr

• Georgia Plimmer: 76 runs @ 76avg/101sr

• Hannah Rowe: 70 runs @ 70avg/101sr | 2w @ 35avg/7.1rpo

• Jess Kerr: 57 runs @ 19avg/139sr | 3w @ 25avg/4.6rpo

• Eden Carson: 4w @ 32avg/6.5rpo

Building out these top 10s…

Blackcaps Batting

1. Kane Williamson

2. Daryl Mitchell

3. Devon Conway

4. Tom Latham

5. Will Young

6. Glenn Phillips

7. Rachin Ravindra

8. Tom Blundell

9. Henry Nicholls

10. Mark Chapman

Topic of discussion for us in podcasts last week was the Young, Phillips, Ravindra, Nicholls cluster. Everyone will have a a different pick and perspective of these four as a fun indicator of depth.

Blackcaps Bowling (excluding Trent Boult)

1. Tim Southee

2. Matt Henry

3. Kyle Jamieson

4. Mitchell Santner

5. Lockie Ferguson

6. Ish Sodhi

7. Adam Milne

8. Ajaz Patel

9. Neil Wagner

10. Jacob Duffy

Santner and Sodhi are world-class T20I spinners, with Santner’s ODI mahi and overall skill boosting his ranking. Milne’s had a strong ODI/T20I year. Patel and Wagner make sporadic Test appearances which impacts their ranking positively and negatively.

White Ferns

1. Amelia Kerr

2. Sophie Devine

3. Suzie Bates

4. Maddy Green

5. Lea Tahuhu

6. Hannah Rowe

7. Jess Kerr

8. Georgia Plimmer

9. Fran Jonas

10. Kate Anderson

The upper tier is easy. Rowe is a genuine all-rounder who usually performs well in domestic cricket, while J-Kerr’s batting is also an asset. Plimmer leads the youngsters and I've gone with Jonas as the other youngster in the top 10. Anderson earns a ranking because she is getting White Ferns game time and she has dominated domestic cricket.

Two Kiwi-NRL things I'm brewing for the podcast tomorrow...

Sebastian Su'a on the rise for Knights. Mt Albert junior who played U21 Jersey Flegg and NSW Cup for Knights last year, could crack an NRL debut this season. If Knights do sign Tyrone Thompson to join twin bro Leo, they could have them and Su'a as middles in 2025.

Te Hurinui 'Apa' Twiddle has been in lots of Kiwi-NRL yarns and I still love pondering this Turangawaewae junior. Fullback for Eels in U19 SG Ball and Flegg last year, with a similar playing style to Clint Gutherson, Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and Dylan Edwards. Could get lots of NSW Cup opportunities with a strong summer.

Musical jam...

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Wildcard’s Notebook

Aotearoa’s finest active basketballer, Charlisse Leger-Walker, did another thing over the weekend. This time it was the inevitability of becoming this country’s all-time leading points scorer in NCAA Division 1 basketball, male or female. Beats Erin Rooney’s record which has stood for over a decade. Here’s the top 15, per the great Mike Lacey...

Although just know that CLW has already played again since. Two games in three days and they lost them both... though Leger-Walker was excellent throughout. 22 points, 4 assists, 9 rebounds against Stanford in the game that broke the NZ record for her. CLW hit 5/10 from three point range in that one, a much needed display from deep after she’d failed to land a single triple in her previous five games. That 23.6% 3P accuracy this season has been the one downside of an otherwise stellar campaign.

That game was followed by 20 points (on 6/10 shooting) in an overtime loss away against California. She hit a deeeeep three in the last minute to tie things up and scored the bucket that put her team in front late in the extra period... but Washington State got done by an offensive rebound as Cal were able to take the 73-72 win. WSU are 11-5 overall this season but are 0-3 within their Pac-12 conference. That game was CLW’s 100^th in NCAA basketball.

The NZ context of what she’s achieving is incredible but there’s also the school context too, and a peek at the WSU game recap there shows that Charlisse is on track to break a few more Cougars records as well...

Charlisse Leger-Walker vs California:

• Scored 20 points to push her career point total to 1,687, fourth all-time in WSU career scoring

• Six made field goals pushed her career total to 586, fifth-most in WSU history

• One made three pushed her career total to 194, second-most in WSU history, 34 from breaking the school record

• Played 30 minutes to push her career total to 3,629, fourth-most in WSU history, 332 minutes from breaking the school record

• Played and started in her 100th career collegiate game.

Frustrating defeat for the Wellington Phoenix in the A-League Women’s last night. They were 1-0 up nearing half-time of their match away against Brisbane Roar and conceded a very silly goal from a keeper’s giveaway and then let in anther early second half and fell to a 2-1 loss against a team near the bottom of the ladder. There was a blatant goalline handball penalty that they should have gotten near the end, adding to the frustrations, but that doesn’t excuse what was still a subpar performance for what we know this team is capable of.

Unfortunately that’s becoming a recurring theme in their away games. First road match of the season they won 3-0 against Western Sydney and looked spectacular but since then it’s been loss after loss in those away matches. They’ve held leads in two of them – Adelaide and Brisbane – only to go on to lose 2-1. They lost 1-0 in the other two (Central Coast and Sydney). Single goal defeats are always salvageable but annoyingly the WahiNix seem to have a bit of a mental hurdle in those ones. Two goals scored in their last four away games.

Home: 6 G | 4 W | 1 D | 1 L | 11 GF | 6 GA | +5 GD | 13 PTS

Away: 5 G | 1 W | 0 D | 4 L | 5 GF | 6 GA | -1 GD | 3 PTS

That’s the best home record in the competition (albeit Melbourne City will overtake them with a win having played one fewer homer... coincidentally it was City who beat the Nix in Wellington in week one). It’s also now the third-worst away record. The Nix have dropped ten points behind league-leaders MCY, though that’s nothing much to worry about. Two straight wooden spoons then getting annoyed at not finishing first? Yeah chill on that one. Top six is where it’s at and at the halfway stage of their fixture list they’re doing alright in fourth. But that away form is going to need to swing back around if they’re to sustain that.

It’s hard to pinpoint specifics for this away slump, though one major factor has been the recent inconsistency of their imports. Mariana Speckmaier missed an open header that could have saved a point against Sydney. Rylee Foster was responsible for the first Brisbane Roar goal while right back Hailey Davidson’s 1v1 defending allowed for the second goal to occur. Hope Breslin has been up and down all season, occasionally brilliant and occasionally anonymous. Isabelle Cox has looked sharp though. She scored the goal against Brisbane to mark her first start. Liking what she’s shown so far.

Let us also recall that since the season began the Nix have lost Marisa van der Meer and Grace Wisnewski to injury and Chloe Knott to the pressures of modern capitalism. Kate Taylor missed the Brisbane game with a minor injury. Emma Main was sick, not sure about Manaia Elliott but she didn’t play either. Depth is being tested rather strictly.

Davidson is the only Welly Nix player to have started all 11 ALW games. The blokes team, on the other hand, still have an astonishing eight players who’ve started every game. Line-up consistency helps plenty. The HeNix have managed to take 9 points from six away games whilst maintaining an equally excellent home record (12 points from five).

The vibes were brighter for kiwis at other ALW clubs this week though. Deven Jackson brought shades of her 2022 Eastern Suburbs season as she scored her first goal for Canberra Utd in their draw against Newcastle Jets, with Ruby Nathan also coming off the bench to set up a goal in that one. The first goal contribution for either this season and there’ll hopefully be plenty more where that came from. Jackson in particular has really brought that steady growth to her season getting more and more prominent as the games have gone by. She’s cracked the starting line-up lately and even wore the captain’s armband after Michelle Heyman was subbed off. Heyman being the all-time leading ALW goal scorer and therefore a fantastic role model for both Jackson and Nathan there in the Aussie capital.

Beyond that, all the headlines from Melbourne City’s 5-0 win against Adelaide were about 17yo Daniela Galic who scored a remarkable hat-trick... but Hannah Wilkinson did chip in with a very tidy second half goal to raise her season’s tally to five. Wilkie also got to do some captaining after Rebekah Stott was able to get an early breather with the result long since decided – although she had to wait for Kaitlyn Torpey to be done with the armband first. Chuck in Annalie Longo and that’s five NZers who spent time with captain’s armbands this round.

Hannah Blake was stuck on the bench for Adelaide during the first half as that game got away from her teeam in dramatic fashion. That’s her first subs appearance of the season but she was on at half-time (with MCY leading 4-0) so hopefully that experiment won’t be repeated.

Most Goal Contributions by NZers in ALW

• Hannah Wilkinson (Melbourne City) – 6 (5 goals, 1 assist)

• Grace Jale (Perth Glory) – 3 (3 goals)

• Hannah Blake (Adelaide) – 3 (2 goals, 1 assist)

• Macey Fraser (Wellington Phoenix) – 3 (2 goals, 1 assist)

• Emma Main (Wellington Phoenix) – 3 (2 goals, 1 assist)

• Michalela Foster (Wellington Phoenix) – 3 (3 assists)

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We’ve got some Joseph Parker news after his spectacular win over Deontay Wilder. Not quite the immediate boost that he might have wanted in the form of an Anthony Joshua rematch. Joshua had all but agreed to fight Wilder after their respective bouts on that Day of Reckoning card but then Parker spoiled that by making Wilder look awful in a convincing point victory. Instead AJ is going to take on UFC convert Francis Ngannou in March.

That’s a quick turnaround, possibly too quick for Parker vs AJ to happen even if both of them seem to want to stay busy. Ngannou gave an underprepared Tyson Fury big trouble in his pro boxing debut, which itself spoiled the Fury vs Usyk unification bout that was initially supposed to headline the Day of Reckoning card. Ngannou has a big following from his Mixed Martial Arts days and has been able to leverage that, and his impressive (losing) debut, into two massive fights right off the bat. Joshua won’t take him lightly and should win but it’s an interesting bout all the same and AJ earns the right to get another payday like this by staying busy on the quick turnaround. Still plenty of time for the title bouts.

Speaking of which, that might be Joseph Parker’s best avenue. Whenever he’s asked about who he wants to fight, he always lists off the guys who have beaten him in the past. That means Joshua, Dillian Whyte, and Joe Joyce. AJ is booked. Whyte didn’t fight at all in 2023, inactive since failing a drug test prior to a proposed fight with Joshua. Joyce might be available, having followed up his KO of Parker with consecutive defeats against Zhilei Zhang – who himself has expressed some interest in fighting JP.

These things are hard to organise but Parker has the rankings in his favour. He’s up to third in the WBO, fourth in the IBF, eighth in the WBC, and third in the WBA... and only the WBA one has been updated since his Wilder win so he should rise further in the others. Nudging towards mandatory challenger status in all four of the majors... and it’s the IBF which is the one to watch.

All four are held by either Tyson Fury or Oleksandr Usyk who are still going to have that unification bout at some stage. But the unifier comes with a rematch clause which means that the IBF are likely to strip the winner of their belt for not defending it against mandatory challenger Filip Hrgovic. Parker was also ranked below Otto Wallin and Anthony Joshua but that was before the Wilder win. Boxing guru journalist Dan Rafael has already reported that Parker is in line to be the ordered challenger when that belt becomes available. So expect to see him keep busy with a fight early in 2024, possibly on that March card in Saudi Arabia, but Hrgovic might just be the one to target at some point in the mid-year.

And then finally a bit of Breakers, as the winning streak came to an end at home against Perth Wildcats. Not the way they wanted to begin a really tough stretch of fixtures. They’d done well to get their season back on track by beating mostly teams below them on the ladder but against the in-form Wildcats they got caught out despite a five-point half-time lead. In a game stacked with offence, the Cats had a little bit more – with a 34-point fourth quarter turning the tides in their favour. 108-102 was the final score.

And who, pray tell, sparked that third quarter switcharoo? None other than Hyrum Harris. Aotearoa’s own. He drilled a three to begin the half then also scored on a drive past Mangok Mathiang, catching him distracted in transition, then also polished off a sweet iso move down low. He was rebounding everything. Even bagged an assist. I thought he’d been really sharp to begin the game too but a couple of fouls limited his action there. All up he played 17 minutes with 11 points and 8 rebounds and the Wildcats were +14 with him on the court (in a game they won by six points).

Also having a large contribution was Tai Webster, whose shot continues to look wobbly this season but no dramas because he’s contributing in every other way. TW had 11 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists. Only shot 4/13 from the field but those assists made up for that... plus he looked really active defensively and, like Harris, was a big net positive with a +13 plus/minus. Webster had a little bit to prove against his old team. The bro looked fired up.

Still no Corey Webster as he failed a fitness test earlier in the day. His spot is a little up in the air for this team for tactical reasons (basically, they already have Bryce Cotton) so we’ll see how that tracks. But Hyrum Harris and Tai Webster had it covered.

For the Breakers, there were three main things that went wrong there:

1. Don’t allow a great free throw shooting team to get to the line 39 times

2. Don’t give up extra possessions by getting out-rebounded by double digits

3. Don’t throw away a solid first half with a terrible third quarter, especially defensively

Other than that, 102 points should win you pretty much every game in this league so can’t complain there. Zylan Cheatham scored 25 points as he continues to show up after his injury layoff. Anthony Lamb contributed 27p/8r/6a. There’s still something that doesn’t quite feel right about this team though... and it might just be that they’re too mercenary to get attached to. Case and point...

New Zealanders in the starting line-ups from this game:

Breakers – 0

Wildcats – 2

Total minutes for New Zealanders in this game:

Breakers – 45:03

Wildcats – 48:44

NZers on the respective coaching staffs:

Breakers – 0

Wildcats – 1

Combined NZ box score contribution:

Breakers – 18 points, 5 rebounds, 1 assist, 0 steals, 5/12 field goals

Wildcats – 22 points, 15 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 steals, 8/18 field goals