El Niche Cache
September 21, 2020
Reading Menu
Monday Morning Dummy Half: Exploring The Kiwi-Storm (NRL)
The Wildcard’s NFL Picks - Week 2 (NFL)
The Brooklyn Nets Needed A New Head Coach So Sean Marks Called Up An Old Mate (NBA)
Billy Donovan and the OKC Thunder Have Consciously Uncoupled (NBA)
Union Bargaining, Broadcasting Dramas & Player Departures: Welcome To The Welly Nix’s 2020 Offseason (Football)
27fm Weekly Niche Cache Playlist: September 21 (Music)
White Ferns In Australia: The Squad (Cricket)
27fm Sounds of Aotearoa: Mid-September 2020 (Music)
The Niche Cast Podcast
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Scotty’s Word
Big ol’ Kiwi-UFC fight week coming up with four City Kickboxing fighters on the same UFC 253 card, along with all the hearty coaches and training partners. I’ll serve up plenty of informative stuff over the week to set things up, for now I’ll refer back to a three-thingy thing I did earlier this year to explain some City Kickboxing matters.
Chapter One: Lineage - Aotearoa’s striking history and how CKB tap into this illustrious combat sport history.
Chapter Two: Style - CKB’s style depends of Aotearoa’s striking funk, yet Aotearoa has minimal history/culture around wrestling and jiu-jitsu. So how has CKB performed so well in the UFC?
Chapter Three: Culture - Culture, culture, culture. Everyone wants a good team culture, very few genuinely build a high performance culture.
While on the topic of UFC, do you really think USA will settle down before and after the election?
☤𝓢𝒌𝓪𝓲☤@RavagiingThis is utterly brilliant The look on @ColbyCovMMA face Lov it 😅11:40 AM · Sep 20, 2020131 Reposts · 323 LikesJed I. Goodman@jedigoodmanColby Covington post fight interview.3:07 AM · Sep 20, 20203.58K Reposts · 8.88K LikesNZ Warriors have named their NRLW squad and I’ve been battling my own advice as I ponder how NRLW is kinda solely about Australian players and thus the Jillaroos pipeline, while Aotearoa is left to try and keep up. Combine that with Australia rolling out State of Origin while there isn’t much to keep the rest of international rugby league occupied. These are the type of issues that organisations are dealing with and as I find it a wee bit annoying, it’s all about stepping back and dealing with what’s in front of me.
NZRL do have some games scheduled with Aotearoa Black Ferns vs Fetu Samoa and Tonga vs Niue going down on November 7th to cover the women bases. A day later, also at Mt Smart there will also be two games - NZRL Schools vs NZ Clubs (Under 18) and NZ Residents vs Maori Residents.
That NZ Schools vs NZ Club team will be a showcase of the young talent in Aotearoa, with the club team made up of players who don’t play school rugby league. With a large number of players who would otherwise be playing reserve grade in Australia, back in Aotearoa for the pandemic, the NZ Residents vs Maori Residents game will also be stacked with funky talent.
The Warriors women squad has just five players from Aotearoa with the rest all Aussies - three players from the Australia Sevens team are named showing how funky the cross-code opportunities are. Madison Bartlett, Georgia Hale, Kanyon Paul, Crystal Tamarua and Hilda Peters are the kiwis who made traveled across the ditch. The other three teams are yet to make their squads final so I’m intrigued as to how many Aotearoa-based players make themselves available for Aussie teams - if there are just five for the Warriors then I suspect there to be none.
Hamish Rutherford has been on a slick run of form in England’s T20 blast; 46, 41, 62, 45, 100.
Otago Volts’ Rutherford is now 6th in runs with 352 runs @ 39.11avg/160sr and only one batsman has hit more sixes than Rutherford’s 19 sixes.
Worcestershire County Cricket Club@WorcsCCCRutherford is looking in top form again here. He’s on to 26 off 15 ball 🚀12:10 PM · Sep 20, 20201 LikeAuckland seamer Matt Quinn is also on a minor wicket-taking streak with 1+ wicket in all eight of his games so far (10w @ 21.30avg/7.93rpo).
Over in the IPL and Trent Boult took 1w @ 6.90rpo in his first appearance for Mumbai Indians.
Reasonably interesting yarn with new Brooklyn Nets coach Steve Nash - JJ Redick has a plethora of funky interviews if you want to dive down that rabbit-hole.
Wildcard’s Notebook
You’re getting me on a bit of a buzz right now as I write this after watching my Dallas Cowboys pull off an all-timer of a ridiculous comeback win against the Atlanta Falcons. 20-0 down after one quarter with four fumbles (two lost) and looking absolutely lost – they’d later twice turn the ball over trying unsuccessfully to convert on fake punts... only to constantly chip away at that lead, even as the Falcons seemingly responded every damn time, until stunningly recovering an onside kick and nailing a field goal at the end to win it 40-39. All you fellow gridiron freaks can expect to read more about that in my NFL Picks later in the week. Those picks have been absolutely sizzling this week too, just quietly. Times are good.
That game kicked off at 5am. I was up not-so-bright and early to get that sucker streaming on my proper laptop, with my old doddery laptop also hauled out of retirement to get the Redzone stream going on a second screen. Meanwhile there was a football game in Norway (Viking FK vs Aalesund) that kicked off at 4am - I didn’t watch this one, bit hard to find a stream for the more obscure games out there – in which Joe Bell was clogging up the midfield. That one I only followed through occasional twitter checks but that still meant getting a good immediate glimpse in the ol’ feed that he’d scored late on in a 5-2 victory. Decent little strike it was too...
Then at 6am Burnley vs Leicester City kicked off in the Premier League and I brought in a third screen, my phone, to watch that one as well – multitasking on multiple sports, that’s the life – and not even ten minutes into his new season old mate Woodsy went and did a bit of this...
Following on from his superb finish to last season (which was only like a month ago, lol) that makes it four straight Premier League games in a row in which he’s score, a new personal best and the first time he’s done that in any league since his Championship days at Leeds. Gonna be an interesting one to see how he’s received when he plays at Elland Road now that Leeds are back in the top flight. It was there that he really found the consistency in his career that’s taken him to the next level. You can read more about all the specifics in Flying Kiwis tomorrow but spoiler alert: I’m picking him to get to 20 goals this season if he stays healthy. He’s improved on his Premier League numbers in all three seasons with Burnley, no reason not to make it four.
And while we’re at it with Flying Kiwis goals, Eli Just had two of them this week for FC Helsingør in the Danish second tier as they’ve won three on the trot after getting promoted. Absolutely surging... and they’ve still got Callum McCowatt to join the squad too once his visa gets cleared (Dalton Wilkins is injured but he’d been playing regularly at left back beforehand – the three Ole Bros all together again).
Speaking of Ole Academy lads, at 8am this morning Rio Ave began their Portuguese league season with a 1-1 draw against Tondela (scoring in stoppage time, the teasers) and Nando Pijanker found himself on the bench as an unused substitute. His first matchday squad with his new team. Hopefully it’s not long before he ticks off the next milestone with a debut... there are two chances coming up this week with a Europa League third round qualifying tie against Beşiktaş (Friday NZT) and then a league match against Vitoria Guimaraes (Monday NZT).
Hold on a second... Tondela, Beşiktaş, and Vitoria Guimaraes? What do those three clubs all have in common? They’re all current or former haunts of a certain Tyler Boyd – who’ll probably play in that Europa League matchup. One of the fresher class of Ole Academy graduates following in the footsteps of one of Ole Academy’s finest ever. All three of those opponents in a row, what are the chances? Fingers crossed Nando gets out on the park for at least one of them.
Things were weird there for a while, even when it was the fun type of weird, with various footy leagues starting and stopping all over the show and no sense of synchronisation between them... but we’re now officially in the 2020-21 season and the football calendar makes sense again. And with the beautiful proliferation of kiwi men and women throughout most of these football leagues that means at least a couple times a week when there should be a streamable match via the wonders of the modern age.
For example: it was a tough one, with a few false starts, but I managed to watch most of Ryan Thomas for PSV Eindhoven on Sunday morning (after watching Manchester United spill spaghetti all down their shirt fronts, metaphorically speaking – Woodward bro just spend the money, we need Sancho!). Hell of a finish to that game as PSV cruised with a 1-0 lead but forgot to score a second, then their goalie missed a simple backpass for a hilarious own goal... but they rallied to score a winner in stoppage time (camera cuts immediately to a goalie too relieved to even celebrate). Ryan Thomas played ninety minutes there, looking perfectly comfortable for a team that expects to be challenging for the Dutch title this season and getting back into the Champions League.
Meanwhile the NBA is deep into the Conference Finals, the NRL playoffs are just around the corner, the NPC or whatever the hell they call it these days is putting the wholesomeness back into NZ rugby (after NZR’s tacky politics over Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship threatened to kill whatever of it was left), the aforementioned NFL season is two weeks deep now, there’s NZ combat sports wonders all over the place (with City Kickboxing amongst it all)... one day soon we might even get some cricket.
Sports are amazing. Kiwi sportsfolk are amazing. Having the digital nativity to be able to stream the hell out of most of it is also amazing. I didn’t even have to get out of bed to watch the NFL and the Premier League simultaneously this morning, I just had to make sure I didn’t knock a laptop onto the floor or bump a charger cord loose and accidentally run the battery down. Actually, I did make the latter faux pas (there’s a reason I replaced the old laptop, it can’t handle much of a workload)... but that was after the football had ended so no dramas. I had an extraneous screen by that point. Technology is amazing. I’m feeling immensely grateful for technology right now.
Granted, later on I’ll definitely have to turn it all off and take a long walk to unplug my brain – same as anything, too much of one thing gets rather unhealthy. Gotta get my feet touching some grass at some point each day. Maybe a sneaky meditation sesh under a tree if I have the time. Listen to the birds singing in the trees, feel the breeze on my skin. Life is good. I still can’t believe the Cowboys won that game. It just doesn’t feel real.
Music news: Van Morrison is a grizzly old bastard with a notoriously horrid personality so no surprises that he’s made an EP of anti-lockdown songs... or something of the type. But Van Morrison has also at various times in his career been one of those rarest of the rare transcendent songwriters and performers. There’s not much he could do at this time of his life that would particularly surprise, shock, or interest me but his 1968 album Astral Weeks remains a first ballot Hall of Fame record as far as I’m concerned. It hits on this cosmic/rustic sensibility that absolutely floors me every time I hear it. Just ignore anything he says now.
And speaking of musicians and political opinions, I had a laugh at a Jason Isbell tweet about dumbarse Americans of a certain persuasion moaning that all the good country artists have become too ‘liberal’ or whatever. As if believing that Black Lives Matter is somehow radical? Then one muppet suggests to another muppet to check out Tyler Childers as an example of a fella they don’t have to cancel. Now, I rate the hell out of Tyler Childers and anything he has to offer musically... so that led to a quick scroll through the replies whereupon I discovered that he’s released a quickie album in support of Black Lives Matter. And a video explaining the exact context in case the racists wanted to wilfully miss the point. Tyler, my man. I couldn’t be prouder.
Country music is one of those genres which people either love or hate and I feel both ways. A large percentage is written by designed commercial formulas. That party boy bro country scene is the worst music on the planet. But then there’s also this crew of literal modern geniuses like Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Margo Price, Tyler Childers, Kacey Musgraves, etc. all doing their own thing and creating incredible art. And, what do you know, they’re all fairly liberal minded folks, definitely as far as civil rights go – which shouldn’t have to be a political opinion but in America it always has been so it remains so.
I have a theory about this. The people out there who make art on that most intensely profound level, they’re accessing degrees of empathy that most of us don’t have access to on our own. All art is a little bit autobiographical because it’s written through the lens of one’s own personal experience but when I listen to an Isbell song like Yvette for example, and the subject matter involved in that... it’s not mine or Isbell’s lived-in experience. But that song nearly brings me to tears every time I hear it. Why? Because there’s a deeper emotional truth involved which is where he as the writer/performer and I as the listener connect. It requires extreme empathy to reach another human being like that, to create something that bridges that gap (be it a song, a film, a piece of writing, a painting, even food... whatever works). An empathy which also grows in the listener through experiencing it, by the way.
America seems pretty split down the middle right now in that ugly divisive way but the vast majority of people who have access to that empathic emotional truth serum are going to be people who are naturally inclined to listen to the problems of others, to understand and sympathise with those problems, and to speak up for those people with their own voices. That’s why it’s so dumb when people moan about liberal-minded Hollywood... like, yeah, they’re all artistically inclined people so of course most of them care about people who don’t look like them. The same people also moan about liberal elite academics though so at some point you really have to stop and ask yourself if both the head and the heart of society are leaning towards not killing innocent fellow citizens then perhaps you’re on the wrong side of history if you disagree with both of them.