El Niche Cache

April 15, 2020

The Niche Cache

May 15, 2020

To return to the root is to find peace. To find peace is to fulfill one’s destiny.

Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way)

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Scotty’s Word

Starting with a slice of NZ Warriors news as they have officially re-signed Eliesa Katoa for four more years. This comes after securing Ben Murdoch-Masila who will return to Auckland next year and then while not official just yet, all signs point to the Warriors signing Toby Rudolf from Cronulla Sharks (link at the bottom). Katoa was the best Warriors player in their two games earlier this year and that’s crazy because these weren’t merely Katoa’s first few NRL games, this is his second year dabbling in rugby league; Katoa went straight into Jersey Flegg last year (Under 20s) after leaving Tamaki College.

What I found interesting was that the Warriors blurb about re-signing Katoa included thoughts from Katoa, Stephen Kearney, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Craig Twentyman and Peter O’Sullivan. That’s the coach, captain, ‘head of athletic performance’ and the big-man recruitment guru all offering two cents on re-signing a 20-year-old.

For context; when the Warriors signed Wayde Egan, former GM Brian Smith was the only person who offered a quote and when the Warriors signed Honey Hireme (easily the best kiwi wahine league player) only women’s coach Luisa Avaiki offered a quote.

Yet here are the four leaders of the Warriors frothing over Katoa. Obviously there are factors like the pandemic at play and such news in these conditions (chillin’ in Tamworth) makes it easy for such an oddity to occur. Katoa’s proven himself to be a beast as well, so no wonder. Very weird though.

How about this Twentyman dude!?

Seeing his name in the yarn about Katoa re-signing took me down a path pondering Twentyman’s impact at the Warriors, since taking over from Alex Corvo. My understanding is that Corvo’s training stuff didn’t align with the playing group and Corvo was cut, then Twentyman came in with a recent background in Sevens rugby.

So far, 2020 has seen numerous major knee injuries and a Warriors team that looked incredibly sluggish. That’s the domain of the ‘head of athletic performance’ and from that perspective, Twentyman’s performance was kinda as bad as the team’s in those two game.

One more thing from thinking about Katoa…

Katoa was in the Blues Under 18 training camp in mid-2018, via playing for Tamaki Colleges 1st 15. I enjoy check these kinda teams/squads to see which union players are also in league systems and general ‘where are they now? kinda stuff and that specific Blues training camp included Christian Tuipulotu as the only other notable league name.

Tuipulotu was recruited by the Roosters after leaving St Pauls College, as an edge forward/centre and then got a crack with North Sydney Bears (Roosters reserves) in the Canterbury Cup. Tuipulotu is a gun, one of the best #KiwiNRL prospects at the moment and a name to keep an eye on.

Another slice of newsy shit is the NZ Cricket contracts. I won’t deep dive here and will save the full yarn for when the contracts are confirmed; contracts were offered to 20 players, they have until May 22 to accept or say ‘nah bo’. Here are the 20 players offered contracts:

Tom Blundell, Trent Boult, Devon Conway, Colin de Grandhomme, Lockie Ferguson, Martin Guptill, Matt Henry, Kyle Jamieson, Tom Latham, Henry Nicholls, James Neesham, Ajaz Patel, Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee, Ross Taylor, Neil Wagner, BJ Watling, Kane Williamson, Will Young.

Not offered contracts were Colin Munro, Jeet Raval and Todd Astle (retired).

Munro: not required for ODI and Test cricket, still a decent T20I option after a solid T20I summer.

Raval: is this the end of Raval’s brief Test opening tenure? While I don’t view Will Young or Devon Conway as Test openers (both feel better suited to #3-5), having Blundell, Young and Conway there showcases the batting depth simmering around Aotearoa.

Raval averaged 19.55 in the Plunket Shield this summer in five games/nine innings.

The only radio stations I listen to (when not listening to podcasts) are Bfm in Auckland and Bruce FM. Bruce FM is only available in the South Island, well that was the case in early 2019 when I was cruising round the South Island and both are equally as funky. That being said, I don’t listen to much hip hop on the radio so I can’t really say fuck the radio with regards to hip hop but I know that mainstream hip hop/rnb radio stations in Aotearoa are unlikely to be playing the following jams or jams that are similar. If you’re not tapped into these pockets of current hip hop, use the following as a diving board - all these videos are from this year…

Bit of money chat from Tom Bilyeu - who is always a decent source of learning, motivation and growth:

Wilcard’s Notebook

Football is almost back. Not all of it, in fact only a little bit of it… but I’ve gotta be honest with you, friends: I’m rather amped for the Bundesliga and will absolutely be getting back on the ol’ horse to stay up late enough on Saturday to catch some Dortmund vs Schalke at 1.30am… which just so happens to be a bit of a grudge match too so there’s even more on the line. That’s the thing with the Bundesliga, they’re not going through the motions like the Premier League will be, they’ve got a legit title race on their hands. Eight points separate first from fifth with eight rounds remaining - Bayern have a four point lead at the top but they’ve been a little schizo this season and a slow start after the resumption and they’re back in the pack… they’ve got some tough games still to play as well. Anyway, based on my cursory knowledge and a little rapid research, here’s a quick guide as to who you might wanna support…

Bayern Munich (55pts) - Sarpreet Singh’s team, obvs, but he’s not too likely to play so don’t let that obstruct you. Defs keep an eye out in case though. Otherwise it’s a bunch of superstar players looking to win an eighth league title in a row. Robert Lewandowski is always a fascinating watch (to my mind the best pure number nine on the planet and he has been for some time), while dudes like Thomas Muller, Manuel Neuer and Thiago are always good value. Canadian youngster Alphonso Davies (who was once a teammate of Stefan Marinovic’s in Vancouver) is having a breakout season. Bayern were on a cheeky 11-game unbeaten streak in the league when the pando hit, enough to earn Hansi Flick the full-time gaffer spot. They might be nearing a changing of the guard at the club with some of their established elders not getting any younger but still clearly the team to beat.

Borussia Dortmund (51pts) - They took the title race down to the final day last season and have arguably gotten better since. This is the new home of Norwegian wonder kid Erling Braut Haaland who’s been scoring goals for fun all season… although he couldn’t score past the NZ U20s at the last World Cup. He’s brilliant. Worth watching on his own. But Dortmund also have Jadon Sancho and Julian Brandt too which is a sizzling and youthful attacking trio. Mats Hummels, Mario Gotze, Emre Can, Marco Reus… they’re all there to provide the know-how. This is a supremely exciting team, it’s just that their defence can be a bit inconsistent and their form isn’t nearly as good on the road… although maybe it will be now with no intimidating fans around.

RB Leipzig (50pts) - The upstarts and not too popular either. Leipzig have a really funky team, with dudes like Timo Werner, Marcel Sabitzer, Emil Forsberg, and Christopher Nkunku all worth a geeze. Not to mention former Everton winger Ademola Lookman and Chelsea loanee Ethan Ampadu. But they’re also a disgusting corporate team who has bought a lot of their success and therefore German fans of other clubs really kinda hate them. RB stands for Red Bull, as in Red Bull energy drink. You get the idea.

Borussia Monchengladbach (49pts) - The cool thing about M’gladbach is that with no fans allowed at games, they’ve come up with this scheme to put cardboard cutout fans in seats. And for twenty bucks you can get one done of yourself. So Manchester City have plastic fans and Borussia M’gladbach have cardboard fans, how about it! These dudes were actually leading the league for a while there as Bayern and other took their time in getting settled, but some timely defeats have dropped them down a bit. M’gladbach don’t score enough goals, basically. Great defence but heaps of close games which can always go either way. Yann Sommer, Matthias Ginter, and Dennis Zakaria are some players to follow. Marcus Thuram also plays here - son of the great Lilian.

Bayer Leverkusen (47pts) - For what it’s worth, this lot have a great jersey. Really fantastic. Leverkusen were also on a sneaky impressive run after the winter break which has seen them put some space between themselves and Schalke in sixth and surged them right on into contention for the Champions League spots. There’s a core of excellent German players here in Kevin Volland, Jonathan Tar, Sven Bender, and Kai Havertz as well as imports like Moussa Diaby, Lucas Alario, and Leon Bailey who have all chipped in with useful goals along the way. And maybe it’s just me but it feels like Leverkusen have always had some classy Brazilians in their ranks too - Ze Roberto going way back. Emerson played there too. And at the moment they’ve got this young fella Paulinho who’s meant to be decent.

Elsewhere it’s new music Friday and I’m similarly excited to give the new Jason Isbell a spin. The singles didn’t thrill me but he’s one of those fellas who always sounds better in the context of an album and his deep cuts are often the best ones so that’ll be a good one. I Break Horses is a Swedish band whose latest offering is fantastic. The Car Seat Headrest album takes a while to get going but the back half is typically great - I s’pose this is all a sneak preview of the May 2020 Albums Jukebox in a couple weeks.

I’ll also add that the new single from The Beths is magnificent…

And since I’ll basically go anywhere Ty Segall is willing to take me, here’s an interview interspersed with some live acoustic solo jams from the great man. His Harry Nilson covers EP came out earlier in quarantine and is particularly excellent, that was more than a month ago now so being the prolific bloke that he is we must be close to a new album at this point.

And just finally, how good is this!? Iggy Pop Live at the Royal Albert Hall from a couple years ago when he was touring with Josh Homme and the Post Pop Depression lads. There’s a good doco about the making of that album too called American Valhalla. Iggy remains one of the absolute titans of planet earth.