In A Groove
HBJ Shield & Ford Trophy, NZ Breakers & Tall Blacks, Football Ferns, NZ National League, Kiwis in Pacific Championships, and more
Scotty’s Word
Canterbury are the best team in Ford Trophy right now and Josh Clarkson is still the best player.
Canterbury are 4-1 while Auckland, Central Districts and Wellington are 3-2. Canterbury’s big donnie batters are scoring lots of runs and they also have two emerging talents on the rise in Rhys Mariu and Matthew Boyle. Here’s how their top-five batters have gone in the first five rounds of Ford Trophy...
Henry Nicholls: 306 runs @ 76.5avg/95sr - 1st
Chad Bowes: 235 runs @ 47avg/99sr - 4th
Tom Latham: 204 runs @ 102avg/91sr - 8th
Matthew Boyle: 152 runs @ 38avg/93sr - 13th
Rhys Mariu: 148 runs @ 74avg/85sr - 14th
Mariu continues to be the most interesting player for Canterbury. He has scores of 0, 37, 67* and 44* in Ford Trophy which forms his best List-A season of his career. Aside from his runs scored and status as one of the best sweepers in Aotearoa, I’m most interested in Mariu’s one-day strike-rates.
Mariu scored 18 runs @ 72sr on ODI debut followed by 58 runs @ 95sr in his second outing. That gives him an ODI strike-rate of 88.3 which is slightly higher than his LA strike-rate of 84.3, both around the same zone as his strike-rate in Ford Trophy this season (85.5).
The funkiest thing about his NZ-A mahi this year was that he scored his 249 runs vs South Africa A with a strike-rate of 96.5. While he also had a knock of 135 runs @ 75.4sr and has First-Class career strike-rate of 65.9, Mariu has already flashed his ability to increase his scoring tempo in both these formats.
There has been hype around Mariu for a couple seasons but his Ford Trophy mahi so far this season is a notable development. Not only is he demanding 1st 11 selection, Mariu is showing that he has the skills to be viewed as multi-format batter and not just a longform opener. That was already forecasted when he scored runs in his second ODI but Mariu did that without really dominating Ford Trophy and now he’s in a groove.
Canterbury also have Angus McKenzie, Fraser Sheat and Michael Rae doing sneaky mahi with the ball. All three have 8 wickets and while Canterbury have the potential for a bowling unit full of Blackcaps, they are only successful because of the lads who do the hard mahi for most of the season. McKenzie, Sheat and Rae haven’t represented Aotearoa and they probably won’t any time soon but they are excellent seamers for Canterbury.
Angus McKenzie: 8w @ 26vg/4.2rpo - 6th
Fraser Sheat: 8w @ 27.7avg/5.1rpo - 8th
Michael Rae: 8w @ 31.6avg/5.2rpo - 11th
That’s lovely but Clarkson has twice as many wickets as those lads and just hit 100 runs @ 120.4sr. Here’s how Clarkson’s season looks...
vs Wellington in New Plymouth: 5w @ 3.2rpo | 19 runs @ 190sr
vs ND in New Plymouth: 4w @ 4.2rpo | 0 runs
vs Otago in Dunedin: 21 runs @ 57sr | 3w @ 2.3rpo
vs Auckland in Auckland: 16 runs @ 133sr | 4w @ 4.3rpo
vs Canterbury in Rangiora: 100 runs @ 120.4sr | 7ov @ 6rpo
Bat: 156 runs @ 31.2avg/107.5sr
Ball: 16w @ 11.3avg/3.8rpo
2025/26 Ford Trophy: Round Five Basics
2025/26 HBJ Shield: Emerging Player Preview
HBJ Shield starts this weekend and it’s all about Otago Sparks. Otago has won three of the last four HBJ Shield seasons with Craig Cumming as coach and now they have Gareth Davies leading the ladies. Otago Volts have had more coaching turnover but after a decent campaign last summer with Ashley Noffkee as coach, they are yet to win a game this season with Josh Tasman-Jones in charge.
Sparks are much better equipped to deal with the coaching change than the blokes but I’m still curious how this looks and whether there is any change to their dominance. The cool thing about Otago’s women is that they have so many layers of intrigue, starting with Eden Carson and how she bounces back from a stinky ODI World Cup, then there are Bella James and Polly Inglis who didn’t even get a crack in that losing White Ferns team.
Emma Black is on the fringe of the White Ferns mix and she needs wickets to make progress on that path. Caitlin Blakely has been a key figure in Otago’s success and she has potential to demand a White Ferns promotion through her run-scoring, especially because White Ferns would benefit from more mature wahine in their squad as they enter the next phase.
Anna Browning is an elite young talent as a spinning all-rounder. PJ Watkins is a lefty seamer/spinner who played a bigger role with the bat in the HBJ Shield championship last summer. Olivia Gain is one of the hardest hitting emerging batters in Aotearoa, while other notable youngsters I’m curious about are batter Saffron Wilson and seamer Louisa Kotkamp.
Suzie Bates will be a factor as well. If she’s active, she will probably enjoy the Sparks vibe more than whatever held White Ferns back at the World Cup. Felicity Leydon-Davis is another experienced all-rounder who has been among the best HBJ Shield players over the past few seasons.
There will be other youngsters who command attention and given how Otago has development young cricketers during their HBJ Shield dominance, I’ll be keeping close tabs on who earns regular 1st 11 opportunities and how they perform.
For paid subscribers and the Patreon whanau I have more notes about the youngsters in Ford Trophy. We talk more Ford Trophy and National League football in our weekly Bonus Pod. I also touch on the recent news of Patrick Moimoi’s move from NZ Warriors to Panthers which amplifies the theme of these two NRL teams sharing talent.
Leftover from Aotearoa’s win in the Pacific Championships...
Ronaldo Mulitalo, Sebastian Kris and Nelson Asofa-Solomona were injured during the tournament. This gave opportunities to Keano Kini, Te Maire Martin and Xavier Willison with Zach Dockar-Clay and Josiah Karapani late inclusions into the squad but they didn’t play. Scott Sorenson was also in the squad but didn’t play.
Recent Kiwis in Will Warbrick, Jordan Riki, Griffin Neame and Leo Thompson weren’t selected in the squad with Neame the only one who I think was injured. Jahrome Hughes and Kodi Nikorima weren’t in the squad either, mainly due to injuries.
11 players in the mix who didn’t play the final: Mulitalo, Warbrick, Karapani, Kris, Hughes, Nikorima, Dockar-Clay, Sorenson, Riki, Neame, Thompson.
That gives us 28 players in the wider Kiwis mixer. There won’t be much space for development youngsters next year and that’s a great place for Aotearoa to be heading into a World Cup.
Musical jam…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Those wild and crazy Breakers did it again, serving up an absolute hiding to the Brisbane Bullets away from home last night, winning 113-84. They scored 41 points in the second quarter which is the highest scoring second quarter in the 40-minute NBL era. Sam Mennenga topped with 25 points but everybody played well. It was one of those perfect outings where there’s nothing to complain about. Izayah Le’Afa and Taylor Britt even hit three pointers! Jack Andrew got some garbage time minutes! Izaiah Brockington had positive plus/minus!
Of course, this was another blowout like all their other wins so we didn’t get to see them correct their major crippling issue: fourth quarter offence in close games. The four games that the Breakers have won have come by margins of: 29 points, 17 points, 42 points, and 29 points. They’ve lost every close game.
Breakers Record By Day
Wednesday: 2-0
Thursday: 0-2
Friday: 2-1
Saturday: 0-2
Sunday: 0-4
They’re 4-3 on weeknights and 0-6 on weekends.
But underneath the struggling offence, the Breakers have emerged as a really good defensive team. They were absolutely shocking in the 0-4 start with Defensive Ratings in those games of 138, 130, 124, and 119. Since then their DRtg’s read: 108, 107, 84, 125, 103, 73, 113, 97, and whatever last night’s was (too early for the stat sites to be updated). Enjoy a visual representation from the spectacular resource that is Spatial Jam...
Across the last month (during which they’ve played six games), the Breakers actually have the best Defensive Rating in the entire competition, how about that?
When the Breakers give fewer than 14 turnovers they’re 4-5.
When the Breakers shoot 46% FG or better, they’re 3-2.
When the Breakers shoot better than 33% from threes, they’re 3-1.
When the Breakers get 12+ offensive rebounds, they’re 3-2.
When the Breakers get 20+ assists, they’re 3-1.
Remember that the Breakers are 4-9 overall. Obviously those are all stats that you’d expect to be reflected in wins but the point is to show that the Breakers are capable of all of these things, they just don’t do them consistently. It wound me up a little hearing the commentators last night talking (from their offsite bunker) about NZB’s key to victory being Parker Jackson-Cartwright scoring 20+ points when to my mind it’s way more about whether PJC is getting assists that determines whether or not the Breakers cook. In the Bullets win there were 11 different players with at least one assist (everybody who took the court except for Jack Andrew) which is even better than just relying on PJC. Shows that the ball was flowing through hands no matter who was out there.
In other news, this should be fun...
These are FIBA World Cup Qualifiers for the 2027 event, with these two nations in a group that also includes the Philippines and Guam. The top three teams progress to the second round so there’s nothing major on the line here, although I think points do get carried over so if the Tall Blacks can get a win it’ll go a long way towards helping them return to another World Cup. But they should be able to progress comfortably without doing so. The first game is in Hobart on 28 November, the second is in Wellington on 1 December. The Tall Blacks did beat the Boomers in Hamilton earlier this year, don’t forget.
Yanni Wetzell is the only player from outside the NBL that’s been selected... but damn it’s a strong group. Much stronger than the group they took to the Asia Cup a few months ago - only Davison, King, Britt, Cameron, Darling, and Smith-Milner remain from that squad. And while Judd Flavell may have gone a wee bit light on guards, particularly with Ili only just coming back from injury, the big man rotations are going to be astonishing with some outrageous size at his disposal. Enough to where it might even be Advantage Aotearoa on that front. Four of those 12 players are at least 2 metres tall.
PG – Shea Ili | Taylor Britt
SG – Flynn Cameron | Izayah Le’Afa
SF – Mojave King | Max Darling
PF – Finn Delany | Sam Mennenga | Carlin Davison
C – Tyrell Harrison | Yanni Wetzell | Tohi Smith-Milner
For our blessed paid subscribers, youse can indulge in some Football Ferns squad perspective (before I write about them in more detail next week) as well as a comparison between how the Auckland FC Reserves and Wellington Phoenix Reserves are tracking in the Men’s National League
2025 Women’s National League – Week 7
2025 Men’s National League – Week 7
All Whites vs Colombia/Ecuador: Squad Yarns & Preview
MNL Team of the Week #7
GK – Jackson Gardner (Birkenhead Utd) – With regards to Eli Jones of AFC who also had a blinder, Gardner was unreal for Birko making a bunch of massive saves and fitting in flawlessly despite only recently being signed as an injury replacement.
RB – Devin Slingsby (Birkenhead Utd) – Two brilliant goals and also a clean sheet for Beaverton, Oregon’s finest export, helping Birko return to winning ways after a three-game skid.
CB – Theo Ettema (Miramar Rangers) – Big man defender doing big man defender things. That’s always going to get a salute in the mighty National League of Aotearoa.
CB – Nikko Boxall (Auckland City) – Not a coincidence that Auckland City’s best performances have come when Nikko Boxall is available. Nobody leaps higher for their headers. Nobody’s more scary to go into a shoulder to shoulder with.
LB – Haris Zeb (Auckland City) – That’s Pakistani international Haris Zeb to you and I, pal. Back in town for his second appearance and it was an influential one, scoring one goal and setting up another in a wonderful performance.
CM – Daniel Normann (Western Springs) – This dude is wild the way he always seems to be pressing at 100% from the first minute to the last. So much energy and such a gnarly sense for a turnover.
CM – Gerard Garriga (Auckland City) – Triple G has scored four times in four appearances and, as the senior man in a midfield that didn’t include Mario Ilich for once, that extra dose of Spanish flair got ACFC over the line.
CM – Reid Drake (Western Springs) – Scored a couple lovely goals and was always on the hunt for more, including with those long throws of his, as Western Springs made it four wins in a row to claim top spot.
FW – Owen Smith (Miramar Rangers) – Won the penalty that turned the game in his team’s favour and also was the dude who got fouled for Coastal’s red card. His pace and directness once again proved a winning combination.
FW – Jonty Bidois (Auckland FC) – He’s a man in form right now, scoring again as AFC held Wests to a 1-1 draw, brimming with belief... you may have even spotted him being rewarded with a seat on the bench for the A-League derby.
FW – Martin Bueno (Miramar Rangers) – Now the MNL top scorer following a brace against Coastal, while he also set up their other goal and it was through his hold-up play that Rangers were able to take control in the second half.
Musical Jam...
