El Niche Cache
March 22, 2021
Podcast
TNC Variety Show: Episode 9
The Niche Cast: The Hottest Pocket (Blackcaps/NZ Warriors/Kiwi Football)
Reading Menu
It’s Mid-Season Shuffle Time As The Breakers Try To Salvage Their Season (NBL)
Flying Kiwis – March 16 (Football)
2020/21 Plunket Shield: Blackcaps Second Stanza Update (Cricket)
The Premmy Files – Wellington Phoenix 2020-21 Season Review (Football)
27fm Weekly Playlist - March 22 (Music)
Scotty’s Word
Blues Dude…
In today’s episode of the TNC Variety Show, the seed of my hot take will be that NZ Warriors and Auckland Blues are in very similar positions; good but not hardened to winning big games. I touched on this for the Warriors in the round two notes as they were defeated by Newcastle Knights and then felt the same feeling watching the Blues. Neither of which felt overly frustrating because, well with these two teams it’s just cool to be at this current stage.
Like the Warriors who went set for set with the Knights, the Blues always felt as though they were in the contest vs Crusaders. As the game hit a climax though, the Blues fumbled a couple of exits from their own territory and made poor decisions like Ofa Tu’ungafasi at key moments. Sure I would have liked to have seen the Blues and Warriors finish those games off, however these are the games you stack up as crucial experience to then hit the nek level.
The Crusaders do this all the time. If they don’t blow a team away, they’ll sustain a high level of play and win key moments later in the game. At one stage I thought that this Blues Dude yarn will be based around the 60min second wave of substitutions as it felt like the Blues had better depth in their second wave - how good is Tom Robinson!?
I liked Adrian Choat off the bench as well, TJ Faiane had a great comeback and I love his all-round skill, Gerard Cowley-Tuioti ran direct to generate momentum. Kurt Eklund made a hefty impact himself, yet Eklund and fellow second wave sub Tu’ungafasi were the blokes who conceded super unnecessary penalties at key times. Don’t suplex a bloke after the whistle, don’t spear into a bloke after the whistle. Don’t do either before the whistle when the game is on the line.
The positive impact of these second wave blokes perked my antenna as I have a wider idea of weaker international teams trying to copy the All Blacks with such 60min rotations, without the depth of talent. It felt like the Blues had the better second wave and don’t dive too deep into the stats below, just absorb it after that intuitive feeling of what the second waves did…
Lots of numbers on the left, not many numbers on the right.
But … the Blues second wave also conceded those big penalties.
And the Crusaders had the best players on the park.
Richie Mounga is amazing. Genuinely amazing and I want to watch the Crusaders to see what Mounga will do.
Sam Whitelock is also amazing. Best lock in Aotearoa, surely part of the top-two locks in the world.
Sam Whitelock vs Blues
14 tackles, no misses. Busiest line-out target of either team (6 takes). 2 passes. 1 offload.
Codie Taylor is the best hooker in the world.
Obviously the Crusaders have class throughout their roster. Ethan Blackadder caught the eye though (alternative All Black loosies: Blackadder, Sotutu and … ?) while the Crusaders backline are all very good. Which brings me to my key Blues Dude insight as the Blues backline didn’t feel as clinical as the Crusaders.
The Crusaders have a dominant presence in Mounga. Everything is set up by Mounga, even if that is just Mounga communicating what needs to happen. With numerous backline weapons, the Crusaders have one voice with Mounga and that provides immense clarity.
The Blues don’t have a dominant presence. The three first-five types in Otere Black, Harry Plummer and Stephen Perofeta are all nice players but are all at similar stages of their development. Black has earned some buzz recently, although I don’t see him anywhere near Mounga.
The Rieko Ioane, Caleb Clarke types aren’t the dominant presence that is needed in the same way that David Havili, Leicester Fainga’anuku, Will Jordan, Jack Goodhue, Sevu Reece fall under Mounga.
When the game was in the balance, the Blues didn’t have a bloke leading them into good territory. Playing with patience and putting the Crusaders under pressure. The ball-runners can grab the game and flip momentum, however these games are won by a play-maker slowing down and dictating where the game is played. The Crusaders have one bloke leading all of that, the Blues have a couple who aren’t as clinical.
No matter how good I think Hoskins Sotutu is, that’s not his job.
Sotutu’s job: 1 try, 2 beaten defenders, 8 passes, 1 offload, 5 lineout wins.
Sotutu continues to be key lineout target for the Blues.
The Black/Plummer/Perofeta combo is nice, but I think the Blues can do better.
Short-term: TJ Faiane will be a factor.
Long-term: Roger Tuivasa-Sheck will be a factor.
I believe Tuivasa-Sheck will be equally as funky in the midfield and fullback. Less kicking could be better for RTS, while fullback and wing would give him more kick-returning space. When pondering the skillset of RTS and what the Blues need, the midfield role is what fascinates me for RTS in rugby union.
Wildcard’s Notebook
No sooner does one season end then the next one begins. That’s always the case in sports but it gets weird when the next season is a different competition entirely. Auckland City lost 4-2 to Team Wellington in the final ever ISPS Handa Men’s Premiership match and then a week later will line-up in the Northern Premier League. The grand final itself will get a full-on write-up that I’m working on simultaneously to this newsletter so keep ‘em peeled for that one. This piece I wanna focus more on the future though.
Auckland City made the announcement last week that they would continue on into the new National League format by absorbing their sister club Central United’s top team. It already wasn’t easy to see where one club ended and the other began with those two and it had already long been rumoured that Auckland City would endure at least in name. As chairman Ivan Vuksich told Newshub: “City's brand has become too valuable to lose”.
That makes them a rare case. Team Wellington will disband as champions and their players will disperse across the Central Premier League to their various clubs, mostly Miramar Rangers and Wellington Olympic. Last year Miramar had the likes of Mason-Smith, Bevin, Moreira, Whyte, McKoewn, Hailemariam, etc. Meanwhile Olympic had Sinclair, Mata, Barcia, Palezevic and a couple other belters from elsewhere.
Tricky to predict what 2021 will look like until we see squad lists... I’ve been trawling the interwebs looking for signs of such things but so far only Mainland Premier League have really served up the goods. That competition and the Southern region started last weekend. Teams in those two comps are competing to join the inaugural Southern Conference which’ll be a combined comp for the best clubs in the South Island with the top two teams from there advancing to the National League. So the top teams in those comps basically play three seasons this year. Their locals for a couple rounds, then the South Island conference, then the National League.
This is how the qualifying will work for the Men’s Premiership, as copy & pasted from NZF’s memo thing:
Northern Conference (12 Teams) | Top four (4) placed teams qualify
Central Conference (10 Teams) | Top three (3) placed teams qualify
Southern Conference (8 Teams) | Top two (2) placed teams qualify
Wellington Phoenix FC | Automatic qualification
The Women’s comp will be treated similarly eventually but for now it’s only the Auckland/Northern clubs competing for qualification with Canterbury, Southern, Capital & Central still existing in their current forms for at least the rest of 2021. To be honest, it kinda feels like the women’s comp is being dragged along with the men’s one here as that’s a much more stable league where the teams are treated like the regional all stars that they’re supposed to be but that’s another matter.
Meaning that this is what’s happened to the Men’s Premiership:
Auckland City – Now operating in place of Central United, will have largely the same squad as in the Prem with a few exceptions. More dudes than usually played for Central in winter though, that’s for sure.
Team Wellington – Went out on top with a third championship. Probably gonna see a heap of Team Welly players for Miramar Rangers and Wellington Olympic as already mentioned. A few scattered elsewhere too.
Hamilton Wanderers – Already a winter club so just get to keep on chilling. Will have basically the same team and coaching staff as they had in summer and just gotta do their best to qualify through an extremely tough Northern Premier League conference.
Eastern Suburbs – See above.
Waitakere United – Gone into permanent slumber. Pining for the fjords. In the last two seasons WU had increasingly gotten close with Western Springs, using their home ground and several players. Also a very sizeable chunk of players from Birkenhead (including coach Paul Hobson). Waitakere City, meanwhile, which is a different club entirely, is the best bet to represent the West of Auckland as West Coast Rangers after their merger with Norwest.
Canterbury United – The Canterbury United Pride will get at least one more season in the women’s comp to expand upon their dynasty. The Dragons meanwhile have been seen off for the undying lands beyond the western shores (LOTR reference, sorry). But Cashmere Tech basically have all their starter level players, while Christchurch United have all the reserves.
Hawke’s Bay United – Last you’ll hear of these folks. HBU had apparently lost its close ties to the top local clubs, despite a large player overlap, and was being run by a small crew of hearty volunteers. Shout out to the incredible volunteers who keep the sport running around the country at all levels. Look for Napier City Rovers to be in hot contention for the NL.
Wellington Phoenix Reserves – No dramas, the WeeNix have a protected spot in the National League so they’re the only team guaranteed to make it. Even though they came last. Such is life.
Southern United – Stepped out of the comp for 2021 with the intention of coming back in next year having saved up some pennies... lol. Next thing the league disappears and thus so do they. Apart from their women’s team of course. Still flying the flag.
Tasman United – Already deceased.
Gonna be a weird one trying to follow all that throughout winter. Far too much to write about until the actual National League but gotta keep an eye on it.
If I’m being honest... there’s more about the new format that I don’t like than what I do like. The alignment is cool, sure. Should be more engaging for fans and players. But the focus on player development grates me, aye. This is the top league in the country – it’s not a development league. You wanna see good young players getting minutes but most Premiership teams were doing that anyway, it happens naturally if the talent is there. Trying to manufacture that talent though with rigid quotas feels like the wrong way to do it for mine.
And there’s no doubt that this will weaken the overall standard of the competition as the top tier talent is spread out across so many more clubs, which means that the level those young players are performing at drops noticeably and how is that supposed to build you up for a professional career overseas? Because producing professional players is surely the whole point of the player development thing – we’re past the point where domestic amateurs should be in national team contention. Anyway, the majority of the new pros coming through the last couple years have come out of the Wellington Phoenix or Ole Academy – two private academies - so not even sure why that’s suddenly the main purpose of this comp. If you want to promote professional standard players, the best thing to do is to improve the quality of youth coaches, of training and playing facilities (pitches especially). Otherwise you’re trying to reverse-engineer a situation by shoehorning players in who aren’t good enough. Because if they are good enough then they’ll already be playing, no need for the quota.
Anyway, enough of that. Also wanna say that I very much agree with Derek Tieku here...
Tieks scored his 12th goal of the season in the final regular season game to draw level with Hamish Watson (playing against him, no less). Watto then dusted himself off to score a hatty against Tieku and his Hamilton Wanderers in the semi-final two weeks later but the Golden Boot is a regular season award so that’s irrelevant. The assumption was that the pair would therefore share the trophy. Instead it seems there’s some dumb tiebreaker which has seen Watto gifted it for having played one fewer game.
Like, why do you need a tiebreaker for Golden Boot? It’s an individual award in a team sport, you don’t have to find a lone winner. If two fella score the same amount of goals then they should just share it. Especially when you’re otherwise getting into ICC World Cup territory with the tiebreakers, what the hell difference does it make if someone plays a game fewer? It’s not a strike-rate award. The Golden Boot is about volume, baby. Mass capacity. Quantity, pure and simple.
Though I’ll admit in the moment the thing I was more annoyed by was that the Golden Boot was actually just a plaque. In fact it doesn’t even have a picture of a boot…
Pretty sure it was the same for the Women’s Prem final back in December. Come to think of it there was some weirdness with that one too. Kaley Ward (Capital) won the Women’s Prem Golden Boot with six goals, level with Rina Hirano (Auckland) but since Auckland’s first three games were overturned as 3-0 default losses because of a typically petty and rigid ineligibility drama, Hirano only ended up with three. But Ward’s Capital side then lost 4-0 in the final against Canterbury with Gabi Rennie scoring a double to take her season’s tally up to seven. It’s a regular season award so okay, fair enough. But I also kinda wonder: should it be a regular season only award? Playoff goals are even more important, and the players who get the bonus opportunities to score in those ones are the top scorers for the best teams so I dunno if that’s actually so unfair.
Hey how about this? Abilene Christian University with the huge upset over Texas, going ballistic in the celebrations. Amongst that ACU crew is #11 Tobais Cameron... son of Tall Blacks coach Pero Cameron. See if you can spot him...
Cameron played 8 mins off the bench with 1 rebound (no field goals attempts) as ACU overcame a terrible offensive night to suffocate the Longhorns, coming back in the second half thanks to some serious defence. Abilene Christian will face UCLA in the second round. Elsewhere Thomas Webley’s Hartford were well beaten by Baylor in their game, 79-55. Webley got 7 mins off the bench, with 2 rebounds and 2 blocks.
The female contingent got underway today with the Leger-Walker sisters in action for Washington State, though unfortunately they fell 57-53 as the clutch plays of their regular season didn’t quite translate. Charlisse missing a couple late looks. It was a tough shooting night for her in general - 18 points on 4/18 shooting, propped up at the free throw line - and both she and Krystal’s extreme passing skills were a bit off with seven combined turnovers. Tough trip to the tournament there, and a shame that it ends Krystal’s college eligibility. But this was only just the start for CLW, the Pac-12 Rookie of the Year. Noooot a lot of freshmen doing what she does on this stage.
