El Niche Cache
August 14, 2020
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Monday Morning Dummy Half: Steven Marsters and Paul Turner Debut (NRL)
The Welly Nix Title Quest: The Quest Is Over (Football)
2019/20 Aotearoa Women Development Contracts (The Basics) (Cricket)
Aotearoa's Black Sticks Women Were Actually Kinda Good In 2020 FIH Pro League (Hockey)
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Scotty’s Word
These are amazing times for kiwi sport, much of which we cover and trying to keep up with all the kiwi sporting antics is a bit frantic. There are also a bunch of sports that we don’t cover so much, but help build the idea of Aotearoa being the best sporting nation in the world, kg for kg. Take Scott McLaughlin for example, who has won eight of 18 races in the V8 Supercars this year, winning the last three races and is on track to win another V8 Supercar Championship.
Alongside/doing battle with McLaughlin are team mate Fabian Coulthard and Shane van Gisbergen from Aotearoa. Coulthard is 9th in the championship, van Gisbergen is 3rd and McLaughlin’s 1st. Not only is the best driver of the past few years and the dominant force in V8 Supercars from Aotearoa, he’s part of an all-Kiwi duo with Coulthard and van Gisbergen’s a force as well.
I’m not sure if we take Aotearoa’s sporting excellence for granted or what, the Niche Cache is all about celebrating this and across our regular sports beat, the excellence is flowing. Lydia Ko registered her third top-20 LPGA finish in a row, Steven Adams is casually playing NBA Playoffs, Aotearoa’s presence in USA’s Major League Soccer hit a nek level with Winston Reid making his first appearance for Kansas City and the #KiwiNRL debut count for 2020 now sitting at 11 after Steven Marsters and Paul Turner made their NRL debuts this weekend.
The kiwi crew in Australia’s NBL is growing, Junior Fa vs Joseph Parker is simmering, we’ll have women’s cricket coming up via White Ferns and Women’s Big Bash League. All the NRL action has me fizzing to see Aotearoa Kiwis play internationals and our kiwi footballers are still contributing to their respective teams around the world - Abby Erceg was once again one of the best players in USA’s NWSL.
UFC 253 is locked in for September 26 and Aotearoa will have four City Kickboxing fighters on that card. Israel Adesanya vs Paulo Costa, Kai Kara-France vs Brandon Royval, Shane Young vs Nate Landwehr and Brad Riddell vs Alex de Silva Coelho.
I definitely wasn’t predicting that Scott Kuggeleijn would be the best kiwi cricketer after four games in the Caribbean Premier League. Colin Munro and Glenn Phillips are both in the top-five for runs and that felt likely prior to the CPL starting as both have played the last few CPL tournaments, Kuggeleijn however felt like someone who was slipping further away from Blackcaps 1st 11 duties.
Kuggeleijn has 10w @ 12.70avg/8.37rpo and is the only bowler with more than 8w, the only kiwi bowler with more than 2w. The zip of Kuggeleijn has caught a few batsmen out and that’s logical considering Kuggeleijn’s style of bowling; whippy, heavy-ball.
At the other end of the spectrum…
Corey Anderson now has scores of 0, 2 and 2. Barbados are 5th.
Ish Sodhi has 1w @ 99avg/9rpo. St Kitts & Nevis are 0-3, 6th.
I’ll jam a full breakdown of the kiwis in CPL action tomorrow and I’ve also got a Diary of an Aotearoa Warriors Fan entry on the hoist for the next few days. Here are some Roger Tuivasa-Sheck stats for your pleasure…
All Runs: 1st (319 - 22.78 per game)
Run Metres: 1st (3, 076 - 219.71m per game)
Post Contact Metres: 7th (1,027 - 3.21pcm per run)
Tackle Busts: 6th (63 - 4.5 per game).
How about some Aotearora reggae to wrap it up…
Wildcard’s Notebook
I’ve watched that shot about fifty times now and the count keeps rising. I had the game on my phone this morning while I was writing some Flying Kiwis (Tommy Smith to Hearts?) and I nearly threw my phone out the window when it went in. He had 3.7 seconds in overtime with his team down by one and on the brink of going 3-1 down in the series. He threw in two crossovers and then stepped back for the game-winner. He did this on a busted ankle that meant he was a game-time decision, which he was getting treatment on during the game (precautionarily, but still). The second best player on his team was out with a knee injury. His team trailed by 21 points at one stage in the second quarter. He’s 21 years old and he scored 43 points with 17 rebounds and 13 assists. His name is Luka Doncic.
I’m now wearing my Dirk Nowitzki jersey and coasting through the day on that cloud nine buzz (did I mention I’m a Mavs fan?), these NBA playoffs have been incredible. Something about the lack of travel and the lack of distractions is definitely cancelling out the lack of fans and contributing to some outstanding levels of basketball. People have talked heaps this year about using the pandemic to reassess things that you maybe took for granted before, not sure this is what they meant but there are for sure gonna be some talks around the globe about how well some of these bubble situations have worked out.
The Champions League final was this morning as well and they were all talking about how much they rate the rate format there and how it might get resurrected down the line. I do prefer those two-legged ties to be fair but can’t deny they did an excellent job at balancing everything to finish the tournament. And the right team won too. Shout out Bayern Munich, absolutely insane form they’ve been on since Hansi Flick took over. PSG put up a serious fight, especially in the first half, much better than I thought they would (s’pose being one of the richest clubs in the world precludes you from ever being a proper underdog, really) but Kingsley Coman (a Parisian who once played for PSG and whose dad still supports PSG) winner gave them a 1-0 triumph to mark their TWENTY-SECOND CONSECUTIVE WIN IN ALL COMPETITIONS.
Bayern have literally won every single game since the restart and then some. Their Champions League knockout games saw them beat Chelsea 7-1 (over two legs), beat Barcelona 8-2, beat Lyon 3-0, and then beat PSG 1-0 for the trophy. Their undefeated streak goes back 30 games in all comps now. It began with a 3-1 win over Spurs in December, then three days later they beat Werder Bremen 6-1 in the Bundesliga. What was special about that Werder Bremen win? It was Sarpreet Singh’s first team debut. They have not lost a game since Sarpreet Singh’s Bayern Munich first team debut. File that under kiwi sporting greatness... obviously he hasn’t had much of a say in this all-time legendary Bayern team but he played twice, made the bench a further twelve times, and got a Bundesliga winners medal for it all (and a DFB-Pokal title and a 3.Liga title. This wasn’t him trying to break into some battler lower league English team in his first season, this was him being a wider squad member for the best team in Europe. He’s currently on loan at Nürnberg now in the second tier looking to be nothing less than a star player at that level as he continues to progress.
Back to the NBA now and oh look...
Well, you know what they say: hindsight is 20-20. Paul George, meanwhile, was 3-14. I have no idea why that dude is playing as passive as he is, he’s letting these games pass him by and his hesitancy to impose himself on the contest allowed the Mavs to storm back into game four by doubling on Kawhi Leonard. The main reason I never felt like this series would be competitive was I didn’t see how the Mavs could stick with a two-superstar offence without a lockdown defender on their roster (to do what Lu Dort is doing for OKC). But poor Paul George is doing it for them. Granted, it’s still a two superstar offence because Lou Williams was literally unguardable in this game and Kawhi Leonard was incredible down the stretch and in OT.
But wait because it gets worse...
How can anybody not love the NBA, seriously? So good.
Funky times for Steven Adams though. He wasn’t great in game three of the Thunder vs Rockets series, missed some shots, went 0-3 from the free throw line, and generally was a bit of a passenger on offence and that simply cannot be allowed to happen against a smaller, switch-heavy Houston team that is always gonna punish him defensively with the mismatch. Adams has to be absolutely dominant on offence to survive as a positive influence. He’s always gonna give you those mad screens and the big hustle plus he’s rebounding really well this series so Billy Donovan remains a huge fan of the lad. But when he went out with another bruised leg late in game three and OKC pushed Dan Gallinari to the five it made a significant difference.
That happened with 24 seconds left in the fourth quarter after Adams had dived to try steal a loose ball (from the inbounds after he’d scored a layup and then Harden and CP3 had gotten tangled up for a foul) and after a review it was determined he hadn’t got a finger one it, OKC ball. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander then bombed a massive triple and after Dan House missed a free threw and Chris Paul missed on the buzzer it was off to overtime. Adams was soon cleared to return but by then the Thunder had run away with it, outscoring the Rockets 15-3 in OT for the win. Now, in fairness James Harden had fouled out with the scores still even so it was more about Harden’s absence than Adams’ absence. But that four guard plus Gallinari lineup does feel like it makes a lot of sense and it certainly looked worth persevering with. Gallinari can knock down threes from all angles which matches PJ Tucker and his corner three maestro-ness. With the Thunder chasing the series still they kinda have to go that way so don’t be too upset if Kiwi Steve’s minutes drop from here on out, particularly in the fourth quarter of games.
Unless he can find a way to dish up a whole lot more of this...
Which he’s capable of for sure. But it’s tricky when he spends a lot of his time on the court surrounded by shooters who wanna shoot and against a really active defence whose busy hands are making those inlet passes very difficult to haul in. Adams versus anyone remains a great matchup for OKC but it’s a matter of actually making use of it. If they’re not going to, of it they aren’t able to, then his crunch-time minutes are gonna have to fade. I still think OKC are a long way back in this series though so not sure it’ll matter.
Latest viewing in the Wildcard’s Film Club (which is just me watching movies with a funky name) was this 80s banger...
Love a good frightener. No doubt that Hellraiser is a bit of a mess with a script that’s underwritten and special effects that were cheap at the time and even more dated now but damn the imagery was something else. I find that’s what you remember most from a good horror most often, it’s the concept and the images. The puzzle box. Reincarnated Frank. The Cenobites. Pinhead himself.
There are a couple different incarnations of reboots in the works apparently with HBO working on a series while there’s a film being planned too, which is usually a dumb thing but I dunno I reckon there’s untapped potential here. Like, make Frank and whatshername his mistress much more well-rounded characters and add in some more background for the daughter and speed up the pacing in a few places with way better SFX on the baddies and I’d watch that for sure.
This was also Clive Barker’s directorial debut (based off one of his stories) and having watched this and Candyman relatively recently I think his visionary storytelling works better on the screen with a steadier hand behind the camera. Hellraiser was fascinating but flawed, heavy on these amazing ideas but with shallow characters. Candyman is one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen.
That’s enough movie chat for now. Stay safe, stay positive, and beware of explorers in the further regions of experience. Or not, whatever. You do you.
P,S. - was just about to slap publish on this bad boy when I saw the horrible news that American singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle has passed away. He was the real deal, a musician able to plug into the highs, the lows, and the in betweens of this whole human experience thing, particularly his albums Midnight at the Movies and Harlem River Blues if you’re looking for recommendations. Here’s a beauty of a tune from the latter that he wrote about a chick from Aotearoa, no less. RIP JTE.