El Niche Cache
October 16, 2020
The Niche Cast Podcast
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Reading Menu
Kiwi-NRL Encyclopedia: NRLW + NRL Finals Round Toru (NRL)
Turns Out There Will Be No All Whites Games in 2020 After All (Football)
2020/21 Plunket Shield: Funky Situations (Cricket)
Monday Morning Dummy Half: Simmering Raiders (NRL)
The Premmy Files – We’ve Got Draws (Football)
Flying Kiwis – October 13 (Football)
2020/21 Plunket Shield: The Low Key Funky Prospects (Cricket)
White Ferns In Australia: ODI Series Debrief (+ Mandatory Kiwi Women's Cricket Info) (Cricket)
Joseph Parker vs Junior Fa: It’s Happening (Boxing)
27fm Weekly Niche Cache Playlist: October 12 (Music)
27fm Sounds of Aotearoa: Mid October 2020 (Music)
Scotty’s Word
Wee bit of Kiwi-NRL signing news to spark things up…
Canberra Raiders signed Caleb Aekins from Penrith Panthers. Aekins is from Northland and has grabbed a few games at fullback for the Panthers, often putting up over 300m. Stuck behind Dylan Edwards, now Aekins will be behind Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and Aekins can play a bit of centre as well. Funky thing here is that Phil Gould set up a recruitment link for the Panthers with Northland that saw James Fisher-Harris, Corey Harawira-Naera and Aekins move to the Panthers and now Fisher-Harris will be the only one remaining at the Panthers while Harawira-Naera and Aekins will both be at the Raiders.
Dragons signed Poasa Fa’amausili from Sydney Roosters. Glenora Bears (Auckland) junior Fa’amausili has been in the Roosters system for a while now and impressed in a loan stint with NZ Warriors, now it’s time to level up with more opportunities at the Dragons. The Dragons had a funky Kiwi-NRL crew (NRL and juniors) a few years back which vanished in more recent years and Fa’amausili is a boost to that, meanwhile the Roosters are still among the busiest recruiters out of Aotearoa.
Gold Coast Titans sign Patrick Herbert from NZ Warriors. Herbert came up through the Dragons before leaving to join the Warriors (Steven Marsters came up with Herbert at the Dragons and also left to join Rabbitohs) and now Herbert will join the Titans where they are assembling a beastly forward pack.
Trent Boult is still among the best bowlers in the IPL and the best IPL bowlers are still the best seamers in the world.
Boult is ranked 4th with 11w @ 19.90avg/8.01rpo.
The top-six IPL bowlers are: Kagiso Rabada (South Africa), Jofra Archer (England), Mohammed Shami (India), Boult (NZ), Jasprit Bumrah (India).
Oh yeah, there is plenty of noise about Wellington Firebirds seamer Ben Sears being super duper fast. Devon Conway mentioned Sears in an interview earlier this year and a few sources have confirmed that Sears is quick, so if possible get out and have a geeze during the Plunket Shield. How quick is Sears? Similar range as Lockie Ferguson but it’s all from a different body shape/stature/style and a splash funkier.
I’ve been pondering the All Blacks this week…
I offered a few notes in the Monday email bout the 16-16 draw, our Patreon podcast segment (sign up!) zoned in on the All Blacks as well. Australia is really going hard at this idea that they have caught up to the All Blacks or found some secret sauce, yet my immediate reaction and my ‘let it simmer for a few days’ reaction is that I saw nothing overly negative from the All Blacks, nor did I see any amazing growth from Australia. I’m eager to see some trends/playing style stuff again from the All Blacks and my belief is that the core elements of All Blacks rugby were present while also being the first game with a new coach, couple new players and kinks to iron out.
That’s just my theory though and now we wait and see if this is a weird case of the Niche Cache living up to some All Blacks arrogance or the Niche Cache offering a common sense approach.
There is plenty of good Youtube content coming from athletes around the world and I’ll put them in a list here as links through to the video.
Chad Townsend (great korero with Shaun Johnson)
Jamie O’Brien (surf/fun beach shit)
Wildcard’s Notebook
The skies are getting a little bit clearer for the Wellington Phoenix these days. In recent times we’ve had some closure over the collective bargaining negotiations with a new (reduced) salary cap agreed and now just in the last day or two we’ve locked in that 27 December season start... not only for the A-League but also for the W-League. However we’re not getting a Welly Nix Women’s team this season and Rebekah Stott has left Melbourne City so unless clubs sign a bunch more kiwis – which might well happen because all the Aussie internationals have pretty much left – then who cares. Hopefully we get the Welly Nix Ladies over the line next season and then we can pay some attention. (I’m a tad bitter about the missed opportunities there, you can tell).
As for the A-League, that late December start means the Welly Nix will be away for Christmas... cue outrage akin to NZ Rugby when the All Blacks were gonna have to do the same. Or not... I’ve already had this rant before and it’s not a big deal. Sports people miss holidays all the time, no dramas. The Phoenix will start the season based in Australia but fingers crossed that if virus numbers and bubble travel play ball then they can get back to hosting games in Wellywood before too long... honestly you can’t even predict things with how fast it all can change. The Phoenix are a hearty bunch though. They know how to get the job done against adversity.
Of which there’ll be plenty. A quick recap on how last season’s squad is looking...
Stefan Marinovic – Contracted for next season
Liam McGing – Off contract
Luke DeVere – Off contract
Te Atawhai Hudson-Wihongi – Off contract
Matti Steinmann – Off contract, signing in India
Tim Payne – Contracted for two more seasons
Reno Piscopo – Contracted for two more seasons
Cameron Devlin - Contracted for next season
David Ball – Contracted for next season
Ulises Davila - Contracted for next season
Jaushua Sotirio – Contracted for two more seasons
Brandon Wilson - Contracted for next season
Liberato Cacace – Sold to Sint-Truiden in Belgium
Alex Rufer - Contracted for three more seasons
Louis Fenton - Contracted for next season
Callan Elliot – Off contract, signed with Xanthi FC in Greece
Oliver Sail – Contracted for next season
Callum McCowatt – Off contract, signed with FC Helsingor in Denmark
Walter Scott – Off contract
Steven Taylor – Released from contract, signing in India
Zac Jones – Off contract as youth player
Ben Waine - Contracted for next season
Sam Sutton – Off contract as youth player
Gary Hooper – Off contract, signing in India
So that’s 12 players definitely under contract and you’d hope they all come back – Uli Davila was on the ‘gram about the A-League’s start date announcement so that’s a good sign. The young fellas Sutton and Jones should be no dramas to keep around. Would like to see fellas like Kurtis Mogg, Henry Hamilton & Ben Old getting in on the fringes too if the squads are lessened. There’s your baseline.
Five players are confirmed not to be returning. The rest of the off contracts... dunno. But the club has been hamstrung in doing any of this, sitting ducks almost, because they couldn’t really be offering new contracts at a time when there wasn’t even a salary cap or CBA in place. With the developments on all that, we should start seeing a few things happening now. It’s only ten weeks until the start of the new season so proper preseason exploits should get underway soon.
Interlude: Here’s a cool video. Love this show so much, love David Lynch so much, and The Return was absolutely brilliant... if baffling and incomprehensible at the same time. I never have a problem with a show that leaves things up to interpretation though.
A word now for the great John Reid who passed away aged 92 this week. Put simply he’s one of the finest cricketers that New Zealand has ever produced, a genuine all rounder whose dashing aggressive batting and zippy pace bowling probably set a blueprint for generations of players to this very day. Pretty outstanding fielder too. They always said of him, those who saw him play, that he’d have been a ferociously good One Day player had he only been born a couple decades later.
Reid captained the Blackcaps on many an occasion across his 16 year Test career including in New Zealand’s first ever Test win – against the West Indies at Eden Park in 1956. It had taken 26 years and 45 matches to finally achieve a victory, typically Reid scored 84 in the first innings to help set it all up. That came just a year after the NZers were skittled for a still-world-record 26 against England at the same ground. I mean, just look at the dude’s averages...
John Reid once scored 296 for Wellington (in 1963), smacking 15 sixes in the process which was a record that lasted 32 years – this is what they were talking about with his potential and untapped ODI prowess. It’s a myth that batsmen in the olden days were all slow and cautious but what Reid was capable of doing was genuinely decades ahead of his time. And keep in mind that this guy was one of two legitimately world class kiwi cricketers of his era. Bert Sutcliffe was the other and so often the two of them had to carry the New Zealand team on their backs... which puts those Test numbers in proper context. Pretty great for New Zealand in the 502-60s but if he’d played for Australia or England in that era his Test numbers would have looked more like his remarkable First Class numbers. The stats honestly don’t do him full justice.
Also... this is a bit of a more frivolous one... or maybe not, dunno... but the pictures of him are so cool. There’s something distinctly of-his-time with the slicked back hear and the woollen pullovers but then also he just always seems to be unleashing some outrageously aggressive stroke, a slog sweep or a hook shot, which when captured in a moment is so damn evocative. He looks so powerful and dynamic even in photos.
Finally I was gonna talk about The Haunting Of Bly Manor but I still have another episode to go and I’ve seen/read far too many horror stories to know that a lot rests on the ending. Stephen King could tell you that, he’s kinda notorious for not always wrapping up his tales as well as he spins the yarn in the first place... although I adore the way he ended The Dark Tower series. Controversial (in a Sopranos kinda way) but I thought it was perfect.
Mike Flanagan, the bossman of Bly Manor, has done a couple Stephen King adaptations come to think of it. Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. The former I reckon is close to brilliant. The latter has its brilliant moments and its not so brilliant moments... which is typical of Flanagan from who you have to accept some sloppy stuff in order to hang in there for the moments of transcendence, same as with Bly Manor and same as with The Haunting of Hill House before it. But more on that next time, most likely.
Here’s Bill Tuiloma banging in a goal...
