Pukana Awareness
Kai Kara-France did the business, the Breakers start 0-3, and National League footy yarns
Podcast
The Niche Cast - The Odyssey
Reading Menu
National League South Central Series – Women’s Week 6 (Football)
Aotearoa Warriors Don't Lack The Centre Vibe: Adam Pompey, Rocco Berry and Viliami Vailea (NRL)
2021/22 Women's Super Smash: The Differing Journeys of CD Hinds and Otago Sparks (Cricket)
Blackcaps vs India: Test Series Debrief (Cricket)
What Did We Learn About The Welly Nix Women From Their First Ever Game? (Football)
Will This Be The Season That The Breakers Actually Live Up To The Hype? (Basketball)
There’s A New Dune Movie Coming Out (And It Actually Looks Really Good) (Movies)
Scotty’s Word
Connecting the Kai Kara-France dots…
I had a great feeling about this fight and a minor ‘tooting of my preview horn’ here as Kai Kara-France smoked Cody Garbrandt in the first round at UFC 269. Most of my vibe was emotional though as Garbrandt was doing everything wrong in the lead up to this fight. First Garbrandt was trolled by Sean O’Malley and took the bait at the press conference, completely ignoring Kara-France to cut a promo.
Then Garbrandt got the pukana treatment at the weigh in. Obviously folks in USA aren’t pukana aware and Garbrandt laughed at Kara-France’s ‘throat slitting’. We all know what happens when the pukana is disrespected.
In the fight, Kara-France immediately took control of the middle and both fighters were eager to trade blows as Garbrandt circled around the outside. Garbrandt is known for his boxing but getting into a striking battle with any Team CKB fighter is tough, let alone Kara-France who has reclaimed his ‘Don’t Blink’ nickname with powerful finishes. Garbrandt has lost five of his last six fights, four via KO/TKO.
Kara-France has won his last two fights, both by KO/TKO.
Hard and fast wrap of Team City Kickboxing in 2021…
Israel Adesanya: 1-1 (loss vs Jan Blachowicz, win vs Marvin Vettori).
Dan Hooker: 1-2 (loss vs Michael Chandler, win vs Nasrat Haqparast, loss vs Islam Makhachev).
Brad Riddell: 1-1 (win vs Drew Dober, loss vs Rafael Fiziev)
Kai Kara-France: 2-0 (wins vs Rogerio Bontorin, Cody Garbrandt).
Genah Fabian: 1-2 ( wins vs Laura Sanchez, Julija Pajic, loss vs Kayla Harrison - PFL)
Shane Young: 0-1 (loss vs Omar Morales).
Carlos Ulberg: 0-1 (loss vs Kennedy Nzechukwu)
Jomboy does cricket…
Jomboy is a Youtube channel that breaks down MLB plays and has moved into other sports. Jomboy now loves cricket and T20 cricket is a great entry point to cricket…
Wildcard’s Notebook
NZ Brokers
I feel like whenever I write about the Breakers, I’ve gotta go out of my way to say nice things as well so that I don’t come across as a hater. Which isn’t true. I support the team, I want to see them winning games. It’s just that there’s so much strangeness around this club.
Like, it’s unbelievable how much strangeness... but they don’t get covered closely enough by mainstream kiwi sports media for them to take notice and see the patterns. Not to mention that their major sponsor is Sky Sport so they’re not about to highlight anything negative. When the Breakers do get the spotlight, it tends to be for (valid) sympathy reasons given what they’ve had to go through and are still going through in order to play, or for surface level hype reasons from folks who’ve only read the press releases.
Oh and of course the overseas experts (getting a lot of their info from agents) who are only looking at draft prospects and don’t even consider the context of the team they’re playing within and whether they’re helping them win...
Right now NZB’s biggest problem, apart from being based in Australia which will hopefully only be a temporary thing and the draw does allow them to make up all their home games later in the season so long as logistics allow (and the team seems confident they will for now), is the injuries.
Yanni Wetzell missed the first game as he recovered from covid. Tom Abercrombie got hurt in preseason and has missed the first three games although the word is that he’ll be back ahead of schedule soon. Jeremiah Martin might be the most talented dude on the roster right now but he’s missing at the moment with a sore ankle. And their other senior import Peyton Siva suffered a grade two hamstring tear in game two which will keep him out until at least the new year – potentially up to six weeks on the sideline.
Four likely starters there who have all missed time already – at least one of them likely to miss a whole lot more of it. Any team with two imports down is going to struggle in a competitive league like the NBL. Injuries are a part of sports, they happen, just gotta roll with the punches. Except... this seems to be a recurring thing for the Breakers. For a team whose main hashtag is #UNBREAKABLE they seem to be pretty bloody broken all the time.
This is Dan Shamir’s third season in charge and he’s hardly ever had a full strength roster to choose from. Wetzell getting covid, nothing you can do about that. Same with the freak incident of Corey Webster’s avocado stabbing last year. And Lamar Patterson was an injury in waiting when he turned up out of shape a year ago. But Tai Webster getting hurt soon after, when his usage rate was through the roof, feels less like bad luck. When it keeps happening over and over again you have to wonder if the coach is driving them too hard or the physio’s not being listened to or something. Or perhaps they’re just cursed. I dunno what it is but they always seem to be in an injury crisis these days.
Owner/CEO Matt Walsh emphatically denied the (not entirely reputable) rumours that they were planning on dumping Peyton Siva after some poor shooting in preseason. However now that he’s injured Dan Shamir is talking about “evaluating what we need to do” regarding Siva. Funny how these things go.
The Breakers play high-flying’ Illawarrra Hawks and then defending champs Melbourne United in round three. They’ve started 0-3 and could soon be 0-5. All they need to do from the first half of the season is stay in touch so that when they get home they can go on a rampage but it doesn’t look like that’ll happen.
They were 17 points up against Adelaide at half-time on Sunday and somehow not only lost but got smoked by 13 points. A 30-point swing in the second half. Hugo Besson and William McDowell-White had brilliant offensive first halves as the Breakers seemingly couldn’t miss against a ramshackle Adelaide team and then everything just went cold second half. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Unfortunately there’s no shield involved because this team has been *shocking* on defence so far.
Tom Abercrombie will help that heaps. His return will mean they don’t have to lean on minutes from Rasmus Bach who showed some lovely hustle on defence in the ADL game but then also twice stepped out on open corner threes and another time threw one up that hit the side of the backboard.
I adore what Hugo Besson can do offensively. He’s an absolute thrill. And Ousmane Dieng is getting first round draft chat at his age for a reason. But Besson and Dieng, disregarding their immense potential and just looking at the players they are right here right now, are bad defensive options. Weak links on defence turn good players bad around them. It’s the leak in the life-raft situation... you plug one hole and a new one sprouts. If Finn Delany has to leave his man to help inside then somebody else is wide open.
But, yes, fingers crossed Tom Abercrombie and Jeremiah Martin are able to sort a few things out. This team has too many fun players to be this bad, it would be a crime against basketball. But if they do slump to another stinker of a season then don’t say I didn’t warn youz.
Cacace Robbery
What do you reckon of that? Libby Cacace denied a dramatic equaliser deep into stoppage time because his buddy Yuma Suzuki was ruled offside and interfering with play in the six yard box.
This is one of those ones that would never in a million years be called without the insight of the VAR – Suzuki is definitely slightly off as the ball is struck but he’s also kinda minding his own business as the shot blasts its way into the net. If there’s contact between him and the goalie then the keeper initiated it... which is still offside but no lino in the world could have spotted it naturally given he was back onside by that point. Less than a second later.
Then you get into debates about what constitutes interference with the keeper. An offside player can’t just disappear so a keeper drifting away from the course of the ball and bumping into him is pretty harsh. Yes, that’s interference, but it’s not interference that stopped him from making a save - the keeper still has a clear path in that direction. And claiming it as an obstruction of the line of sight is bonkers as the GK was the second defender in this case so he had to be behind him in order to be offside (to start with at least… or reaching back with a foot/leg).
Nah, the lad’s been robbed there, mate. This is one of those ‘by the letter of the law’ decisions. Pretty annoying to see a goal disallowed on what’s effectively a technicality in the rules and especially annoying in this case because Cacace’s been stuck playing off the bench lately and this would have been his first Pro Liga goal for Sint-Truiden. He needed that one (you could tell from his reaction).
Ah well, as covered in Flying Kiwis last week there are some tasty rumours of him being pursued by Torino for the January transfer window so that could be an escape.
South Central Natty League Finales
1) How good for Southern United? That team won 1 of their first 49 games after coming into existence. They had a -145 goal difference in that time. Now here they were not only winning the South Central Series but toppling the dynastic Canterbury Pride to do so... and in style.
It was the same way that they beat them in the first round only more emphatic. A structured defensive shape with two solid lines but rather than sitting back they were aggressive in stepping up to win the ball against the Cantabs build up. They had Amy Hislop hustling her way around up front. They’d get numbers forward in transition. They all knew the plan and worked hard together. They pressed as a unit. They countered as a unit. Remarkable footy in a truncated and belated season where a lack of fluency was apparent for most teams. But good recruitment continuity as well as a few returning key players who weren’t there in 2020 worked a treat.
2) I’m assuming they did the MVP thing by opposing coach votes again... which remains a dumb way to do things. You often end up with the best player on the weakest team hogging heaps of votes. In the women’s comp there were no dramas because Annalie Longo is just that far ahead of everybody else and you don’t fly under the radar with your impact when you’re an international centurion. A definitive selection there. But the men’s comp saw Selwyn United goalie Pieter-Taco Bierema given the award which continues a trend of weird MVP selections. In fact this is the second year in a row that the outstanding goalie of the worst team won MVP. That’s not how those things are supposed to work.
These are the last four MVPs (the time frame when I’ve been covering the league at hundies) and my own far superior selections. Granted, I will say that I didn’t hate the Tieku year, that one was all good. Tieks deserved that one even if he wasn’t my first choice.
3) Nice to see NZ Football get trophies for the SCS despite them being unofficial. Guess that means that Southern United and Miramar Rangers never have to give them back. Would have been nicer if they’d handed the trophy to Southern before they popped the bubbles in celebration. That wasn’t technically a final and the title could potentially have gone to Capital in the other game which is the only reason why I’ll offer slight understanding as to why the Southern women didn’t get a proper presentation but they had the trophy there so they obviously had at least some forward planning. All I’m saying is that it’s noted whenever the women’s National League is taken less seriously than the men’s.
4) Teams of the Season will begin their assemblance on Tuesday once I get done with Flying Kiwis. I usually do three teams each, same as how the NBA does things with their first, second, third team All-NBA awards, but it’ll only be two XIs this time due to the lesser number of overall clubs involved. Like, can’t have three XIs when the women only had four teams in total. But I will whip up a second all the same because it’s about celebrating and acknowledging the league and its players.
5) Ollie Whyte is too good to not be playing professionally overseas.
6) Fair play to Miramar Rangers for getting some revenge. They went down 1-0 to Wellington Olympic in the match that decided the Central League and thought they’d won against the same opponents multiple times late on when they met in league play only to end up drawing 4-4. This time around they fustigated ‘em. 7-2 was the final score. This despite Miramar having both starting wing-backs on crutches and their captain suspended.
7) It doesn’t matter how much you lose by in a final. If you lose, you might as well go down swinging which is what both Canterbury Pride and Wellington Olympic did in their last games. Each dug themselves into a hole with preventable defensive lapses putting them behind but as to the sheer quantity that they conceded... well, what are you supposed to do other than throw caution to the wind and try get back into the match? No dramas there with all the goals. Rangers and Southern picked them off ruthlessly whilst playing with the lead, that can happen. Always rather a final (/deciding league game in the case of the women’s) with heaps of goals rather than a 0-0 draw that ends up sleepwalking into a penalty shootout.
8) Quick note of humble gratitude to all of you who’ve been reading these write-ups throughout the season. Been some hectic Mondays trying to get them done but the response is always great which makes it worth it and then some. Plenty more kiwi footy yarns where these all came from but of course you already know that.
If you do wanna say cheers somehow, a pledge on our Patreon is the best way to do that. Gotta keep food on the table somehow, ya know? Even just a dollar or two per month adds up when enough people get involved. Otherwise if that’s not feasible right now, spread the word about The Niche Cache through good old fashioned word of mouth. Do the liking and commenting and sharing things online. Whack an ad when you’re on the site. All them good things. Peace.
9) As the tweet says...