Kimura
Dan Hooker's loss, Daryl Mitchell the star & Welly Nix Women chat
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The Niche Cast: Stink Face
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2021/21 Hallyburton Johnston Shield: Bright Start For Bright Future Otago Sparks (Cricket)
Peter O'Sullivan Leaves NZ Warriors and That Cycle Ends (NRL)
Footy Ferns in Canada: Game Rua, The Build Begins (Football)
Will This Be The Season That The Breakers Actually Live Up To The Hype? (Basketball)
Kiwi Steve in the NBA #1: Welcome To Grind City (Basketball)
Rounding Up The Tall Ferns’ Exploits At The 2021 Asia Cup (Basketball)
Get To Know The Wellington Phoenix Women’s Inaugural Kiwi Contingent (Football)
Scotty’s Word
Dan Hooker loses…
Dan Hooker’s fight vs Islam Makhachev was worst case scenario. The style match up for this fight was Hooker the striker vs Makhachev the next Khabib (wrestling/grappling) and so when Makhchev sealed a takedown within the first 30 seconds of the fight, it sucked.
When these blokes take a fighter down, they either work their way into a submission or literally beat the crap out of their opponent. Hooker fell into the former category as Makhachev quickly advanced through control positions on top of Hooker, before yanking his arm behind his back - apparently it’s called a ‘Kimura’.
With my Kiwi-UFC hat on, I threw up the ‘inevitable’ vibe of Makhachev as reason to support the plucky kiwi Hooker. Makhachev is like a tidal wave that everyone knows is coming but there’s no way you can stop it unless you run away to higher ground and in the octagon or in the UFC that ain’t possible. I hoped that the inevitable vibe was unfounded and that Hooker would show what it’s like at the top of the lightweight division (this was Makhachev’s first highly ranked opponent), instead the inevitable vibe was amplified. Just as we saw time and time again with Khabib Nurmagomedov, Makhachev will take you down and there’s not much you can do to stop that.
Where does this leave Hooker?
Hooker has enjoyed a fabulous few weeks where he’s been celebrated by UFC fans and the UFC. MMA media churned out plenty of content with Hooker as well, quizzing him on City Kickboxing moving to USA and how shit Aotearoa’s stuff can be. Then Hooker got steam-rolled by Makhachev and has once again found himself close to the top, but not quite good enough to make the leap.
Hooker climbed to the top of the division before losing a five-round war to Dustin Poirier in June 2020. Hooker was then knocked out by Michael Chandler in the first round back in January 2021 and both these fights saw Hooker fighting a fellow top-five contender. Hooker defeated Nasrat Haqparast a few weeks ago, but Haqparast isn’t a top-10 fighter and for all the positive vibes Hooker has earned over the last year or so; he can’t get a win at the top of the division.
Daryl Mitchell the Blackcaps secret weapon?
Good win by the Blackcaps this morning and there’s plenty of Blackcaps chat in our Patreon Podcast. I’ll do a full yarn tomorrow on the back of their win over India, right now I’m pondering the mahi of Daryl Mitchell in the opening slot. In all our korero about this T20 World Cup, we didn’t really consider Mitchell as an opening option even though I was still eager to see Mitchell given a middle order spot - if other selections are in tune with that.
Mitchell started this campaign with 33 runs @ 150sr in the first warm up game against Australia. The next warm up game vs England saw Mitchell swap roles with Tim Seifert and this didn’t work out so well for either; Seifert scored 8 @ 100sr and Mitchell scored 2 @ 40sr.
Mitchell then went back to the opening role with scores of 27 @ 135sr (vs Pak) and 49 runs @ 140sr (vs India). Mitchell has a solid T20 record of 31avg/132sr but hadn’t done too much in T20I cricket since making his debut in 2019. I’ve covered the slow decline of Tim Seifert’s T20 batting and it’s weird how Mitchell’s found a positive trend, now resulting in Mitchell enjoying his opening gig. Remember that Seifert was the T20I opener last summer, until he struggled in four games vs Australia and then dropped down the order.
Here’s what they did in last summer’s Super Smash…
Mitchell: 10inns, 374 runs @ 37.40avg/135sr.
Seifert: 10inns, 281 runs @ 28.10avg/115sr.
Seifert’s decline is all about his strike-rates and he finished this year’s Caribbean Premier League with 113sr from 10inns. Then Seifert put up back to back knocks of 8 @ 100sr - the first was that warm up game and then against Pakistan. While Seifert was battling in the CPL, Mitchell played in England’s T20 Blast where he scored 209 runs @ 144sr.
Picking Mitchell to open in this World Cup was a surprise move - mainly because Devon Conway’s not opening. It’s been brewing though and Mitchell has simply continued on his impressive T20 antics this year.
Wildcard’s Notebook
Blackcaps > India
Dunno if you noticed the Cappies laying the beat down on India this morning... jokes of course you did. Wouldn’t be reading this bad boy otherwise. But what you may not realise is that when it comes to ICC events... the Blackcaps have Indian cricket on a leash without a safe word. You have to go all the way back to 2003 for the last time that India beat Aotearoa at an ICC event and that’s not for lack of trying. In the last two and a bit years alone the Caps have dropped them in a T20 (this morning), in an ODI (World Cup semi-final), and in a Test (WTC Final). Here’s the complete list...
1975 ODI World Cup: New Zealand won by 4 wickets
1979 ODI World Cup: New Zealand won by 8 wickets
1987 ODI World Cup: India won by 16 runs
1992 ODI World Cup: New Zealand won by 4 wickets
1999 ODI World Cup: New Zealand won by 5 wickets
2000 Champions Trophy: New Zealand won by 4 wickets (Final)
2003 ODI World Cup: India won by 7 wickets
2007 World T20: New Zealand won by 10 runs
2016 World T20: New Zealand won by 47 runs
2019 ODI World Cup: New Zealand won by 18 runs (Semi-Finals)
2021 World Test Championship: New Zealand won by 8 wickets (Final)
2021 T20 World Cup: New Zealand won by 8 wickets
How about them apples. Even got the hyperlinks in there for ya so you can traverse old memory lane. Could chuck in the two Test victories in the preliminary stages of the WTC too but that feels unfair as those were, for all other intents and purposes, regular bilateral series. Likewise there was the game abandoned at the 2019 ODI World Cup. But keeping it to proper tournament-style games we’re talking 18 years without a loss and 10 wins from 12 games in all formats against one of the powerhouse nations in the sport. That’s crazy.
Welly Nix Thangs
Shout out to the Nix for chucking the whole press conference up online. Here are my notes from having watched the thing. Quite impressed with how well Gemma Lewis approached this btw. These notes are mostly paraphrased ideas of her explaining, this isn’t me applying any editorialising except when specified, just summing up the stuff that the coach talked about and the club’s perspective on matters…
This women’s squad has been put together with an intention to balance competitiveness with longer term player development – with the 2023 World Cup in mind (and beyond), hence the obvious youth
Another reason for youth is that the SheNix were only green-lit at a stage when most other A-League clubs were putting the final touches to their squads, severely limiting the available player pool (of Aussies especially) and meaning the Nix had to operate in a bit of a hurry... making a young squad close to a necessity
Having said that, Lewis reckons many of the youngsters are ready for this level and even without the existence of this team they’d have been pushing through the FFDP to get them signed by other A-League clubs
The short time frame also took a few locals out of contention. Lewis said only a very small number of established Football Ferns actually turned them down though – no names mentioned but Anna Green would be an implied one. Green moved back to Aotearoa from England and playing in the WSL partly for a more stable career (believe she’s an accountant in Wellington) so taking five months off to move to Oz isn’t really on the cards. Annalie Longo is probably another in that boat given her new role with NZ Football (which, ironically, meant she was very involved in getting this team up and running)
Also, Lewis said that the team wouldn’t look much different if border restrictions weren’t a factor. No point in bringing kiwi players back from better leagues purely to strengthen this team, that’s not the best thing for their careers. The trajectory is meant to go the other way: boosting more players into pro deals and using the Nix as a stepping stone to overseas deals... which was music to my ears, I tell ya what
Success in year one will be a balance between winning games and being a launching pad for players, it’s not all in one direction or the other. In future years it’s expected they’ll grow to be more competitive but gotta keep things in context to start with
The remaining Australian signings will likely include someone in each major positional area (GK, DEF, MID, FWD) as well as a utility or two... it’s a small squad after all so gotta have versatility
A number of these players have FFDP priors and that programme has a strong focus on promoting players to professional clubs overseas, meaning there’s a lot of personal development to that end which should suit them heading to Aussie for the season
Youth doesn’t necessarily mean inexperience and those who were involved in the U17 World Cup third-placing, for example, should have a boost in that area despite their age
Lily Alfeld and Chloe Knott were specifically mentioned as leaders/captaincy material. Kate Taylor also got a shout out there from amongst the younger players
The locals have been together and training for the last wee while, though with a number of them from Auckland it was mostly about getting rid of the lockdown-induced cobwebs. The Aussie contingent plus Oz-based Te Reremoana Walker will join the team when they get overseas
Double headers are a preference both at home when they’re able to play in Wellington but also for the games in Wollongong. Love that integration between the teams... honestly cannot understand how so many English Premier League clubs, for example, struggle to understand why that’s important
Lots of interest in commercial/corporate sponsorship for the women’s team initially but nobody yet willing to sign on the dotted line and Domey is understandably a bit pissed about that
Lewis sees this team as boosting visibility for players, filling a missing link in the pathway for the kiwi wahine. Inspiring for those at the age where they’re having to decide whether or not they’re gonna commit to this sport as a career
Football Ferns have slipped a bit in the global rankings as other nations up their financial investments to levels that New Zealand cannot match, but this team should hopefully help undercut that difference. This is something I wrote a fair bit about during the last World Cup where the eight quarter-finalists were all from Europe except for the USA. That’s not a coincidence. Europe and USA are where all the money is
Cushla Rue is apparently a future Matildas player by many accounts. Isabel Gomez not far off either. Interjecting a personal opinion here... those two signings feel very similar to a trend we’ve seen with the men’s team the last few years where if they cannot attract the top Aussie locals, which they can’t, then they go after younger guys who they can offer improved opportunities to. Cam Devlin. Matt Bozinovski. Liam McGing. Mirza Muratovic. In the men’s case they’ve also made a point of signing Aussie youth internationals who had been based overseas, such as Reno Piscopo, Nicholas Pennington, Josh Laws, etc.
And I’ve also noticed how specifically they’ve targeted various positions with the NZers that they’ve signed. It’s not merely the best players available who fit the bill or anything, they’ve actually got something close to a starting eleven based purely off the eleven NZers on full contracts. See, here, I did a graphic for y’all to prove it…
