Annual Leave
Auckland City vs Bayern Munich, Warriors in the Two Andys Era, Steven Adams contract extension, NZ cricketing matters, and more
Scotty’s Word
Here are some stats where NZ Warriors have steadily improved during the two Andys era...
(all per games)
Completion Rate
2023: 79%
2024: 82%
2025: 83%
Penalties Conceded
2023: 5.55
2024: 5.12
2025: 4.92
Dummy Half Runs
2023: 6.4
2024: 7.16
2025: 9.61
NZW have the best completion rate in the NRL right now and they are tied on 64 with Cowboys for the fewest penalties conceded. There is a notable increase in dummy half running which has come with more support runners from the last two seasons, while they have stripped back a few decoy runners from last season...
Supports
2023: 43.22
2024: 43.83
2025: 46.61
Decoys
2023: 49.66
2024: 58.91
2025: 50.38
More dummy half running and less decoys hints at a more direct attacking motion. This is boosted by hefty increases in run metres for Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and Wayde Egan. Most of Egan's metres come around the ruck and Nicoll-Klokstad usually plows in behind the ruck when there is flow.
Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad
2023: 188m
2024: 202m
2025: 208m
Wayde Egan
2023: 51m
2024: 49m
2025: 70m
New Zealand Warriors 10 Best Emerging Youngsters From The First Half Of 2025
New Zealand Warriors 2025 Mid-Season Youngster Report
Kiwi-NRL Spotlight: The Return Of Tukimihia Simpkins
NZ Warriors had two wins vs Eels over the weekend. 46-22 in NSW Cup and 32-20 in Jersey Flegg Cup with both games played in Sydney. NZW are now 13-1 in NSW Cup leading the competition and they are slowly moving up the ladder in U21s, now eighth with a 5-7-2 record. Since U19 Aussie Jack Thompson got a starting halves role NZW have won three of their last five games and I've got a few more details from these tiers of NZW for paid subscribers/Patreon whanau.
The Eels U21 team who lost to NZW had Dakota Kakoi (Linwood) at centre and Ieti Samuelu (Mangere East) as a middle forward. Add in the two Kiwi-NRL juniors who played for Roosters and that's still not enough to match the nine Kiwi-NRL juniors who played for Knights against Roosters.
Kiwi-NRL Juniors in Knights vs Roosters U21s game
Knights: Cullen Gray (Hikurangi), Haami Loza (Mangere East/Otara), Ryder Williams (Marist), Tamakaimoana Whareaorere (Te Puke), Bailey Carmichael (Te Puke), Te Kaio Cranwell (Linwood), Xavier Lynch (Halswell), Jayden Harris (Hikurangi), Ezekiel Ieti (Hornby)
Roosters: Jackson Stewart (Hornby), Phillip Lavakeiaho (Wesley College)
Gray was fullback with Loza and Williams in the halves.
Whareaorere and Carmichael are both from Te Puke and went through Rotorua Boys High School.
Gray and Harris are both from Northland. Gray is from Whangarei and Harris is from Kohukohu - I think he's related to James Fisher-Harris.
Cranwell, Lynch and Ieti are from Christchurch and represent three different clubs.
Four more notable Kiwi-NRL juniors who have crept up from U21s to NSW Cup in recent weeks...
Te Hurinui Twidle | Turangawaewae - Waikato
Split even between U21s and NSW Cup. Mainly fullback, bit of halves.
Cassius Tia | Bulldogs | Marist - Auckland
Mainly NSW Cup, bit of U21s. Aggressive, physical half also playing centre.
Sosaia Latu | Knights | Mangere East - Auckland
Started the year in U19s, bit of U21s then NSW Cup. Mainly a winger, bit of centre.
Felix Fa'atili | Sharks | Hornby - Christchurch
Mainly U21s, bit of NSW Cup. Mobile big bopper.
Dean Foxcroft has moved back to Central Districts and is in their squad for the Global Super League. I've given up tracking all the T20 stuff that's happening right now and will zone in on a few key areas to help digest it all. Beyond the paywall I have updated the seam bowling stats for bowlers I reckon will build towards the T20 World Cup and that doesn't include Trent Boult, Lockie Ferguson or Adam Milne.
I don't know much about the GSL but I'm eager to see how Curtis Heaphy, Will Clark and Toby Findlay perform because they are talented youngsters I'm tracking. This is mainly about Foxcroft though and his departure from Otago...
Otago Sparks lost Craig Cumming as coach and after one season, Aussie Ashley Noffke has departed Volts for an assistant coach job with Pakistan. Cumming was awesome but the Sparks HBJ Shield dynasty and strong Super Smash mahi is led by players, so I think they will keep building.
Volts have nothing close to the winning mana of Sparks but Noffke appeared to have a positive impact. Better team mahi, individuals sizzling and a bunch of young talent thriving were all signs of Noffke's influence but he views a coaching future with Pakistan (!!) as a better option so later bo.
Both Otago teams need a coach and Foxcroft returns to CD. Unlike Blackcaps contracts, domestic cricket contracts actually offer valuable information about player movement and it will be interesting to see who leaves/joins both Otago teams as contracts are announced over the next month.
Otago can absorb the loss of Foxcroft assuming they keep a similar squad. Luke Georgeson is one of my favourite undercover emerging cricketers and his leadership caught my attention last summer, having taken over as captain from Foxcroft. The trio of Georgeson, Max Chu and Dale Phillips is an awesome group to build around, especially as they are young but have lots of experience.
Otago has a fabulous production line of local juniors as well. This is notable because Otago recruited Foxcroft, Georgeson, Phillips, Thorn Parkes and Jamal Todd from other regions. Their local youngsters include Chu, Llew Johnson, Ben Lockrose, Jacob and Zac Cumming, Mason Clarke and Thomas O'Connor.
They also have solid veterans in Leo Carter, Matthew Bacon and Andew Hazeldine. Carter and Hazeldine moved south from Canterbury, Bacon moved from CD but all three have settled with Otago and will play important leadership roles.
2025 New Zealand A Tour Of Bangladesh Debrief
2025 New Zealand A Women's Tour Of England Preview
Jess Watkin has the highest T20I batting strike-rate for kiwis who have scored 50+ runs...
Jess Watkin: 157.33
Rebecca Rolls: 129.03
Sophie Devine: 120.38
It's also the highest for 10+ runs and Bella James would be second with 14 runs @ 155.5sr but that's all from one knock. This is part of a funky combo for NZ-A that I'm curious about and along with athletic, skillful seamers there is a theme of batters who score quickly getting opportunities in the White Ferns system.
As noted a few times in these newsletters, Maddy Green's stirke-rates have exploded in the last year. These three were the leading run-scorers in the North vs South one-day series this year...
Jess Watkin: 164 runs @ 82avg/94.79sr
Bella James: 140 runs @ 70avg/115.7sr
Maddy Green: 135 runs @ 135avg/135sr
Watkin dipped below 100sr but she scored the most runs. Having played all her White Ferns cricket in 2018, Watkin has better foundations to maintain high strike-rates in recent seasons while James has been building towards higher strike-rates. Green is embedded as a White Ferns leader and won't be playing for NZ-A so I've stuck with Watkin and James in the last five domestic seasons...
Jess Watkin (Super Smash | HBJ Shield)
2020/21: 108.19 | 123.04
2021/22: 121.73 | 124.27
2022/23: 114.06 | 104.53
2023/24: 107.57 | 76.71
2024/25: 142.46 | 85.76
Bella James (Super Smash | HBJ Shield)
2020/21: 68sr | 54.85
2021/22: 86.84 | 73.44
2022/23: 142.68 | 80.63
2023/24: 104.54 | 51.79
2024/25: 104.22 | 81.17
100+ in T20 and 80+ in one-dayers are my benchmarks in women's cricket. Watkin and James both hit those markers for White Ferns but Watkin hasn't played recently and James has three games combined across the formats. Georgia Plimmer is also interesting with those benchmarks in mind because she has found a groove recently but has an ODI strike-rate of 69.8 and T20I strike-rate of 100.
The NZ-A team has lots of young batters who may struggle on tour. The Watkin/James/Plimmer trio are more reliable run-scorers and they have also proven themselves as some of the most attacking batters in Aotearoa. How that looks against England A will be a key wrinkle I'll watch out for.
Musical jam...
Wildcard’s Notebook
Auckland City played Bayern Munich this morning and lost 10-0. Nothing unusual about that considering the vast gulf between the two clubs. As soon as the game kicked off, ACFC sunk into 11-men-behind-the-ball mode... and actually did okay for about five minutes, until Bayern realised they could win every meaningful header and it was promptly 1-0, with Kingsley Coman’s goal the first of the tournament (Al Ahly and Inter Miami had drawn 0-0 in the opener). Auckland City never conceded more than three goals in the previous version of the Club World Cup (although they did lose 6-2 to Al Ain in the rejigged Intercontinental Cup last year)... but they were 4-0 down after 21 minutes in this one.
Bayern were stronger, faster, and more skilled. They passed the ball around with intent, not treating this like a circus game. They were professional and focussed. Auckland City put in a shift but there was nothing they could do. There was one major chance that they managed to work on the break where Dylan Manickum did really well to find David Yoo in the box but he chopped back onto his left foot and was closed down. Jamal Musiala came off the bench and scored a hat-trick. Michael Olise got two goals and two assists. Harry Kane was blanked in his hour of action. For ACFC, Conor Tracey made seven saves so that was useful. Couldn’t save the penalty he faced from Musiala but that was a dodgy decision in the first place.
Check out the team picked by Bayern coach Vincent Kompany to see that he didn’t take this one lightly...
Losing 10-0 isn’t much fun, especially when they play the Can-Can music after each goal, but it is what it is. Bayern are in another stratosphere. This was a unique opportunity for the players and also a pretty lucrative one for kiwi football so it’s all good fun and nobody got hurt.
Ignore the people who’ve spent the day arguing that this result makes a farce of the entire tournament – the whole point is to see how different clubs stack up against teams from around the world. If that leads to a few blowouts then that’s fine because it’s an honest reflection. What would harm the legitimacy of the competition would be if they did the opposite and only invited the ‘best’ teams whether they qualified or not (everyone rightfully hated the Super League idea). Don’t see what the big deal is about a cheeky ten-nil every now and then. We’ve all been there before… and probably not against Bayern Munich.
I do bristle a little bit when people focus too much on the part-timers aspect, listing the day jobs of the players and getting rather condescending. That angle’s not wrong… but there were four capped New Zealand internationals among the players who got on the pitch here (Myer Bevan, Adam Mitchell, Nikko Boxall & Ryan De Vries), plus several more who played for NZ in the age grades. Those four internationals have all played professionally overseas and a few others (David Yoo, Angus Kilkolly, Jackson Manuel, for example) have been on the pro fringes at various times. Most of them have played at Club World Cups before. They’re not bums off the street. This is the perennially dominant club within Oceania. Nobody thought they’d be a match for Bayern Munich but they’ve sacrificed a lot to be there and they qualified legitimately.
But the wildest thing is the way that even some serious international media outlets (although it’s mostly the aggregators) kinda just don’t care about getting facts right when talking about Auckland City FC. Fortunately the name confusion with Auckland City and Auckland FC (and maybe even Auckland United) hasn’t been too bad. However, there has been this persistent idea that keeps getting repeated about how ACFC weren’t even at full strength because not everybody could get leave from work. Observe just a couple of the culprits…
The Athletic: “All the players who represented them today have full-time jobs and needed to take annual leave just to make this trip. A few will be on unpaid leave before they get home and, sadly, a couple of first-team regulars were unable to get the time off at all, meaning that they had to stay at home.”
The Telegraph: “For Auckland, there will be little to take encouragement from ahead of the remainder of their group of death, in which they also face Benfica and Boca Juniors, with several of the New Zealand team’s players not able to travel to America because of their work requirements back home.”
OneFootball: “The Club World Cup will feature some of the richest and best-structured teams on the planet, but it also has room for more modest participants. And there is no greater representative of "humility" in the tournament than Auckland City, from New Zealand. With a squad of semi-amateur athletes, the club will have absences in the United States because some players were unable to take time off from their other jobs during the tournament.”
Needless to say, The S*n made a whole headline about it despite including no evidence whatsoever. And of course the claim is all over social media with the flames being fanned by the types of people who get their news entirely from headlines.
Well, sorry to burst the bubble, but if there’s a player who should be there that isn’t then I can’t spot them. There’s simply no truth to it. There were guys like Otto Ingham, Kentaro Ozaki, and Kailan Gould who played earlier this year who aren’t around but that’s because Ingham transferred to Auckland United, Gould is currently playing in Vanuatu, and Ozaki seems to have been an emergency call-up whose only start was when ACFC played twice on the same day (one team at the Oceania Champs League final, one team in Northern League).
Pretty sure the myth stems from a few players, like Mario Ilich for example, missing the OCL in order to bank their annual leave for the CWC. Surely that’s not so hard to research properly. The proof of all this is that ACFC had to play a Chatham Cup tie against Waiheke United on the weekend despite a 27-man squad being in the USA right now. They lost 2-1 with a squad full of U23s players. Anybody who should have been at the CWC but had to stay back would have been involved there, you’d reckon? But they weren’t because they don’t exist.
Speaking of the Chatham Cup (and Kate Sheppard Cup) you can read all about how those games went in the latest Aotearoa Domestic Football Roundup. There’s also some more Auckland City vs Bayern reaction beyond the paywall.
And while we’re at it here are some more yarns from the recent footballing output…
All Whites at the Canadian Shield Tournament: Victory vs Côte d'Ivoire
All Whites at the Canadian Shield Tournament: Defeat vs Ukraine
Checking In With The NZ Men’s U20s After Their Trip To Chile
Football Ferns vs Venezuela: The Mayne Reign (Properly) Begins
Steven Adams has signed a three-year contract with the Houston Rockets. No need to test those free agency waters when he’s probably not going to find a better fit than the one he’s already in. He could have potentially gotten more money elsewhere (the Rockets could offer the most, since they hold his Bird Rights – allowing them to go over the salary cap to re-sign him), since the US$39m sum of this deal comes in slightly under the mid-level exception that other teams would probably have sought to use on him. Plus he definitely could have commanded a starting spot on a different team. But there are certain things about this Rockets fit that he’s not going to take for granted.
An Established Role – Sure, it’s not a starter’s gig, but Steve-o’s never been one to fuss over ego trips. What matters is that he knows how he fits into this team, having earned the trust of his coach and teammates, with a proven track record of how that leads to winning basketball.
Future Success – Every player wants to win a championship yet Steven Adams, more than a decade into his career, hasn’t even been to the NBA Finals yet. But this Houston team just made a massive leap in wins and now have a few playoff scars to help turn a promising young team into future contenders. Clearly, he believes in the direction.
Repaying The Faith – Not everybody’s got loyalty to spare in professional sports. Steven Adams is a guy who does, though. He likes his settled routines and he’s never fussed about a trade in his life. Greener pastures elsewhere aren’t an issue. And having had his knee injury misdiagnosed by the Grizzlies, who then traded him for not very much before he had a chance to recover from their errors, the Rockets gave him all the room he needed to get back to playing his best basketball. Limited minutes through most of the season but all with an emphasis on having him perfect for the playoffs. Adams will have appreciated that.
The Third Year – He might have gotten (slightly) more money and more minutes somewhere else but would another team have offered the security of a three-year contract (fully guaranteed) for a back-up centre who doesn’t shoot threes and turns 32 in a fortnight? Perhaps not.
Wiggle Room – There’s also the sneaky aspect of getting this deal done before free agency even begins (the Finals are still ongoing!), allowing the Rockets to tick one offseason objective off as soon as possible. They’ve still gotta figure out how to progress with Fred VanVleet’s contract option, having delayed the deadline, plus the NBA Draft is happening before the month ends and Houston have the tenth overall pick. Kevin Durant has already floated that the Rockets are on his three-team shortlist of trade preferences (along with Miami and San Antonio). KD is buddies with Steven Adams from the OKC days. Houston have plenty of future picks as well as young trade-able players (Jalen Green, Tari Eason, Jabari Smith, maybe even Reed Sheppard). Could be something in the works there, just sayin’.
(Note that I didn’t put Alperen Sengun or Amen Thompson in the trade bait list, they’re the two I reckon are untouchable – Adams is also literally untradeable for at least six months because of his three-year deal).
Steven Adams on IG, after signing his extension:
“Today was a meaningful step forward—built on gratitude, resilience, discipline, teamwork, and trust. This journey hasn’t been one I’ve walked alone. It’s been shaped by the steady guidance of my DPT and mentor, Mike Davis, and grounded in the values passed down from family and friends. Each step required discipline. Every challenge demanded trust in the people around me and in myself. I’m grateful to be back on the floor. Honoured to represent my whānau, my teammates, and my country, New Zealand. Every time I step out there, I carry a piece of everyone who's helped me get here. Thank you for riding with me. The journey continues.”
NBL Standings With Three Rounds Remaining...
All teams play 20 times and that’s accounting for the Indian Panthers defaults (would have been 22 otherwise). The Canterbury Rams already booked their top six place last week. The Wellington Saints have now joined them after Hyrum Harris’ buzzer-beater against the Tuatara. The Taranaki Airs are looking good for third after running away with the victory against Hawke’s Bay with a strong second half last night. But then there are seven teams all within two wins of each other competing for three places in the postseason. Points percentages are all very similar too.
The way it works, in case you’ve forgotten, is that the top two go straight into the semis while teams 3-6 have a single elimination round (3v6, 4v5) with the higher-seeded winner facing the second team and the lower-seeded winner facing the top team. Then semis and a final. No series, just one-off games.
Musical Jam...