Borderline Flawless
Borderline Flawless
Breakers in the NBL Finals, Charlisse Leger-Walker excellence, HBJ Shield & Plunket Shield yarns, NRL round one & NZ U23s footy
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Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Round Tahi vs Knights Preview (Rugby League)
Football Ferns vs Portugal/Argentina: Part One, Keeping Things In Context (Football)
Football Ferns vs Portugal/Argentina: Part Two, Into The Mangroves (Football)
The Breakers Were Wooden-Spooners, Now One Year Later They’re NBL Finals-Bound (Basketball)
2023 T20 World Cup White Ferns Debrief (Cricket)
Exploring The Familiar Scent Of Blackcaps Test Cricket Mana (Cricket)
Basking In Some Stats & Records From The Blackcaps’ One-Run Win Over England (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
NZ Breakers are 1-1 in their NBL Finals battle with Sydney Kings. Two things…
Nine Breakers made a 3-pointer in the first game. Five of them coming off the bench.
This flipped for the loss last night as four Breakers made 3-pointers (Jarrell Brantley, Izayah Le’Afa and Barry Brown Jr shot a bunch of them though). The best Breakers mahi features long defenders who can shoot and whether it's due to Breakers not creating opportunities or players not making the same shots, the variety and depth of shooting is crucial.
How coach Mody Moar prepares for the next few games will be interesting as Sydney were without Xavier Cooks for most of the second game (and still won). Sydney are well stocked for big boppers with Jordan Hunter, Tim Soares and Kouat Noi absorbing the absence of Cooks. Rob Loe and Tom Vodanovich had their minutes halved from game one to game two. How does coach Moar uses and the starters to counter Sydney's depth at centre/forward?
Wellington are HBJ Shield champions after defeating Canterbury in the final. This was Amy Satterthwaite's last game for Canterbury. She couldn't bow out as a double champion but she scored 66 in the final and this wraps up a fabulous final season...
Maddy Green hit 106 runs @ 100sr and along with Jess McFadyen's 53 runs, they were Wellington’s main contribution. This is a culmination of Green's development and for keen White Ferns observers, Green's lack of runs has been a niggly point over the years.
Since making her T20I debut in 2012, Green averaged under 20 for eight consecutive years. While Greens still doesn't have a 50+ score in T20Is, she bumped her record up to 30.75avg/117sr last year and is grooving along at 30avg/143sr this season.
Green made her ODI debut in 2014 and her best year of ODI batting is still 2018 (36.14avg/94.75sr) which is bolstered by runs against Ireland. Green averaged below 30 in every other year prior to 2022. Green had an average of 34.63 last year with three scores over 50 after scoring three 50+ knocks in the eight years prior.
2022 T20I: 30.75avg/117sr
2022 ODI: 34.63avg
2022 WBBL: 24avg/105sr
2023 T20 World Cup: 30avg/143sr
2022/23 Super Smash: 30.25avg/108sr
2022/23 HBJ Shield: 106avg/100sr (1 game)
Green also had her best WBBL campaign earlier in the summer and dished out the best performance in the HBJ Shield final. Green has climbed into the top-tier White Ferns batting group (Bates, Devine, Amelia Kerr) and as long as they are playing, White Ferns won’t lose to weaker teams very often.
McFadyen is also an intriguing run-scorer given her consistent HBJ Shield mahi. McFadyen has averaged 40+ in five consecutive HBJ Shield seasons and she has a delightful List-A batting average of 37.16. Considering that many White Ferns are selected while averaging less than 20 in domestic formats, nudging 40 over 64 games is notable.
White Ferns coach Ben Sawyer couldn't help but dish up some weird selections over his first 12 months in this role, including a confusing wicket-keeper journey. Izzy Gaze was part of the Commonwealth Games team and while she fits the 'potential over performance' mould, Gaze did some performing as well. Gaze was then replaced by McFadyen for the series against Bangladesh late last year and despite not batting, McFadyen was then dropped for Bernadine Bezuidenhout for the T20 World Cup.
This is how Leigh Kasperek responded to being dropped from White Ferns…
2021/22 HBJ Shield: 10w @ 19.2avg/4.5rpo
2021/22 Super Smash: 19w @ 8.36avg/4.74rpo
2022/23 HBJ Shield: 20w @ 12.85avg/4.2rpo
2022/23 Super Smash: 15w @ 14avg/6.39rpo
Kasperek has averaged 20+ with the bat across all four competitions with Super Smash strike-rates of 100+.
Nicole Baird in her first summer of domestic cricket with Wellington...
HBJ Shield: 11w @ 23.63avg/4.16rpo
Super Smash: 11w @ 12.18avg/5.15rpo
Gabby Sullivan's the best young seamer after this excellent summer for Canterbury...
HBJ Shield: 21w @ 15avg/3.87rpo
Super Smash: 21w @ 12.38avg/5.88rpo
Sullivan has been a consistently supporting Lea Tahuhu, who was dominant as per…
HBJ Shield: 14w @ 11.71avg/3.48rpo
Super Smash: 6w @ 19.33avg/4.83rpo
Kate Anderson moved to Canterbury and ascended...
HBJ Shield: 343 runs @ 42.87avg/84sr
Super Smash: 536 runs @ 59.55avg/115sr
Another round of Plunket Shield cricket is underway. Auckland is hosting Wellington with Sean Solia and Mark Chapman hitting centuries on the first day. Northern is hosting Central with Jeet Raval and Bharat Popli hitting centuries on the first day.
Colin Maiden finally gets some cricket as the rain stays away in Auckland, while Northern vs Wellington is being played at Bay Oval. These grounds are located in Aotearoa's spin zone and given recent events at Bay Oval, I'm intrigued by the use of spin in these games. Remember that Blackcaps are operating without a specialist spinner and while this makes sense further south, England still gave Jack Leach plenty of overs in Wellington.
(As of Monday morning) At Bay Oval, Central have deployed Ajaz Patel with support from Brad Schmulian and Tom Bruce bowled an over. Northern have Mitchell Santner, Joe Walker and Tim Pringle - they’d make other teams as spinners.
In Auckland, Wellington used Kieran McComb and Rachin Ravindra who are both lefty finger spinners (don't know much about McComb but keep learning). Auckland have Will Somerville and Adithya Ashok in their team as specialist spinners, along with a bunch of all-rounders who could dabble in overs.
Two games of Plunket Shield and I've got nine spinners in use (excluding Bruce) with all four teams deploying at least two spinners. This is a feature of cricket played in the northern regions late in the summer and while this won't impact Blackcaps Test stuff right now, it's something to track for the future.
I chatted about Redcliffe Dolphins in today’s Kiwi-NRL Spotlight video for the Patreon whanau. I also covered the NZ Warriors win, Will Warbrick’s debut with more Storm wrinkles and Hayze Perham’s fullback mahi with Bulldogs.
Redcliffe Dolphins won their first NRL game and did so with a hearty Kiwi-NRL crew. Jesse and Kenny Bromwich (Manurewa) were key recruits from Storm and many thought these kind of signings were underwhelming. Jeremy Marshall-King and Jamayne Isaako (Aranui) fit into this narrative as well. The Bromwich bros and Marshall-King are current Aotearoa Kiwis while Isaako has also featured under coach Michael Maguire. Signing four Test players can never be underwhelming and the Bromwich bros will be highly influential as leaders.
Add in Connelly Lemuelu who has bounced around since entering the NRL and scored try in 50mins of footy. Lemuelu was a Papatoetoe rugby junior and played union at Tangaroa College before leaving to play league at Keebra Park High School, then entering the Tigers system, spent time with Bulldogs before winding up at Cowboys. Lemuelu was a fullback at Keebra Park and mainly played centre in reserve grade while transitioning to edge forward.
Musical jam…
Wildcard’s Notebook
The Washington State Cougars women’s basketball team this afternoon won the Pac-12 conference championship, beating UCLA in the final. And if you don’t know the significance of that then you haven’t been paying close enough attention to these emails lately, because WSU are led by the brightest rising star in all of Aotearoa basketball: Charlisse Leger-Walker.
CLW was absolutely incredible in the champo game. We’re used to seeing kiwi players in a variety of sports doing the thing that Steven Adams does best of all: playing hard, doing his job, and making everything easier for the stars around him. But this isn’t that. CLW is the star. She was the best player on the court at any given moment during that final. When her team needed points, they turned to her. When the game was in the balance late on she served up a couple of huge buckets getting to the rim (and turning one of those into a three-point play). When she was pressed and double-teamed late on she was immune to the traps.
Then, after being called for a very generous foul in the last thirty seconds (her marker slipped on the way to the rim, CLW barely even touched her), it was Leger-Walker that they went to from the inbounds (23 seconds left, up 63-61) with the deliberate foul incoming. She did miss the second of those free throws... but then she was heavily active fighting for rebounds on the defensive end, unlucky to have one out-of-bounds call go against her after review (not enough evidence to overturn, fair enough) then wrapping up the ball on the next to send it to the possession arrow in their favour. And of course on this blessed day the last rebound landed in her hands as the final buzzer sounded.
Just an unreal influence on a championship game, leading her team to their first ever conference title. Charlisse Leger-Walker scored 23 points on 7/11 shooting (5/7 3PT & 4/5 FT) with 7 rebounds and 3 assists. Multiple clutch plays, including on the defensive end. Capping off a superb week at the Pac-12 tournament from her...
vs California: 39 MIN | 23 PTS (8/15 FG, 1/4 3PT, 6/8 FT) | 6 REB | 2 AST
vs Utah: 39 MIN | 15 PTS (5/14 FG, 4/7 3PT, 1/2 FT) | 3 REB | 5 AST
vs Colorado: 32 MIN | 15 PTS (6/17 FG, 1/4 3PT, 2/2 FT) | 3 REB | 2 AST
vs UCLA: 37 MIN | 23 PTS (7/11 FG, 5/7 3PT, 4/5 FT) | 7 REB | 3 AST
Needless to say...
Something has me thinking you’ll be able to read more about CLW on The Niche Cache later this week.
There’s another hefty basketball story unfolding at the moment and that’s the Breakers in their NBL Finals. Alas, the fellas dropped game two last night at home, meaning the series is split at 1-1 with (up to) three games remaining. The one positive is that this does at least guarantee a second home playoff game – which if they win in Sydney on Friday would be a close-out game.
There were some frustrating signs early for the Breakers in game two. They struggled badly from the outset with their offence and the turnovers that they’d avoided on Friday lurched back into the mix. What’s more is that Sydney upped their aggression in the paint and a worrying achilles heel of NZB that’s been there all season in glimpses became a big factor: foul trouble.
I know the foul counts were pretty contrasting, especially early on (with owner/ceo Matt Walsh firing off multiple whinge-tweets about it during the first half), but it didn’t feel like it was down to sloppy reffing. Foul counts will often be lopsided because games themselves can be lopsided. Sydney made it an emphasis to get stuck into those painted areas and it paid dividends for them.
Also rising fouls don’t explain how the Breakers only scored 9 points in the first quarter and 11 points in the third quarter. They did brilliantly in the second to claw it back to just a four-point deficit at the half then undid so much of that with a weak third. Then some Barry Brown Jr inspired magic in the fourth (copy-paste those last eight words for pretty much any Breakers game, that guy is a marvel) got them close... the hole was just a bit too deep to climb out of was all.
Never good to be losing at home, although the Breakers did have a much better away record than home record during the regular season and have already won a finals game in Sydney (as well as the most recent regular season meeting between the teams). They’ll back themselves to rally back and so they should. Game three will be massive.
Still, you can’t help but feel that the Breakers missed a trick here given that neither Xavier Cooks nor Derrick Walton Jr played any part of the second half due to injuries. The Kings two best players. Those opportunities don’t come around too often in big games like this and if they go on to lose this series then that third quarter performance in Auckland is going to sting even more. Then again, if they go on to lift the trophy then nobody will even care about a slippery game two.
Big difference between the first game and the second game: Will McDowell-White.
WMW in G1: 19 PTS (6/11 FG) | 9 REB | 9 AST | 0 TOV | +9 +/-
WMW in G2: 7 PTS (2/8 FG) | 3 REB | 4 AST | 6 TOV | -6 +/-
He was borderline flawless in the first match-up and then symptomatic of the errors that slipped into the Breakers in the second match-up. A fantastic Izayah Le’Afa effort in game two helped plaster the cracks but Mody Maor’s lot need more out of their starting point guard if they’re gonna add another banner to the rafters.
Didn’t have space to fit this in on Friday so here we go today instead... there’s been an U23 All Whites squad announced for the games against China in a couple of weeks. A curtain-raiser for each of the senior fixtures.
The U23s are at a slight disadvantage because China have gone with U24s to prepare for the upcoming Asian Games - delayed one year due to covid, but with the same eligibility date out of fairness to the players (same thing as happened with the last Olympics) - while the kiwis have stuck to what’s effectively an U22s squad in order to have everyone eligible for the OFC Olympic qualifiers – in other words it’s a squad where everyone is U23 but as of the 2024 Paris Olympics rather than as of right now.
Shouldn’t make too much of a diffo to the games. Paul Temple is coaching the team, while Darren Bazeley helped with the selections. Here’s that squad…
As usual there’s the hefty Wellington Phoenix influence, which is added to with Temple on board as coach (he’s head of the Welly Nix Academy). Alex Paulsen, Ben Old, Finn Surman, Oskar van Hattum, and Sam Sutton are current members of the Nix first team while Noah Karunaratne debuted in the Aussie Cup and has been on the bench three times this A-League term.
Then you’ve got a heap more lads from the current Academy crop there – not including Adam Supyk or Riley Bidois who were with the WeeNix in the 2022 National League but have since switched clubs. Bidois now playing NPL in Oz while Supyk’s moved up north to Eastern Suburbs, who have also recently scooped up Josh Galletly (NZ U20s/Melville). Lilywhites stocking up on the young talent after missing out on the National League last year.
This series being a random bilateral thing, there’s no abundance of overseas players. There are pros aged 22 or younger who aren’t here – anyone born in 2001 or later will be eligible for non-overage status at the Olympics. Such as Marko Stamenic and Matt Garbett, for example, though of course they’ll be in the senior squad when that’s named presumably later this week.
However there are a few curious overseas blokes. Kees Sims is the big one. Fast emerging as NZ’s top goal-keeping prospect, he’s spent his Swedish offseason trialing with clubs like Leicester City and Nottingham Forest and is eligible for the U20 World Cup in a few months. He’s one of three goalies in this squad along with Alex Paulsen and Scott Morris (who was the starting Christchurch Utd gloveman last Natty League).
Elsewhere we’ve got Jay Herdman with another nudge upwards having shone as a creative midfielder for the U19s/U20s recently. Won the Golden Ball at the Oceania U19 Champs. Son of John Herdman so at least one member of the whanau is committing themselves to NZ Football. Plus what’s more is that he’s brought a mate! Gotta be honest, Finn Linder ain’t a bloke I know anything about but he’s from the same Vancouver Whitecaps system as Herdman and is only a few months older. Meaning that he’s also eligible for the U20 World Cup. Linder is a central defender (could get a Finn Surman/Finn Linder CB combo) who was born in Canada but has dual citizenship.
On top of that we’ve got a couple lads at USA universities. Campbell Strong is an Eastern Suburbs talent who was getting first team minutes while still at high school there – Strong was subbed on in the 2019 Premiership grand final that Suburbs won (with the Ole Academy fellas in tow, though Strong’s a local). Ronan Wynne is the brother of Deklan Wynne and was in the Wellington Phoenix Academy prior to moving overseas for some lower division Scandinavian stuff and then to Denver where he’s entering his fourth season and has been getting some big raps.
Zac Zoricich, son of All White Chris, is one of the two Aussie-based players here. ZZ played a bit for Western Springs (and unofficial affiliate Waitakere Utd in Premiership action) before signing a youth deal with Central Coast Mariners early last year and the 20 year old fullback seems to be progressing up the ranks nicely there. Plus Riley Bidois has also been selected. Now with Dandenong Thunder as of very recently, he’s a striker who always impressed with the WeeNix and did get a few senior appearances sprinkled in there last season.
Cool to see a couple Auckland City hombres. Joe Lee was a regular on the right wing for ACFC in their quadruple-winning 2022 season, a left-footer who can cut inside and shoot/cross or attack the line with his dribbling. He’s joined by Nathan Lobo who wasn’t around for the National League as he left for Seattle University midway through the year though he did play at the Club World Cup recently. Lobo was college teammates with Campbell Strong... and will be again supposing they both return for the 2023 season. Plus Oscar Browne’s been on the rise at Western Springs for a couple of years now, another creative midfield type.
Finally, we’ve also got some Jesse Randall, who is soon to be heading to the USA to join USL side Charleston Battery where he’ll meet fellow kiwi Deklan Wynne – who was signed by the Battery back in January. Randall had been trialing in the UK with Barnsley so to see the 20yo dip into the USL instead is a slight bummer, though at least he’s on the elevator. Randall had a very useful stint playing some college ball in the States with Northern Kentucky Uni so the scene won’t be entirely new to him. He featured for Wellington Olympic last year and led the entire National League in assists.