Shooken Vibes
Breakers finals fizz, Blackcaps statistical funk, Kiwi cricket & league prospects, Wellington Phoenix contract yarns, the legend of Charlisse Leger-Walker grows & more
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Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Round Tahi vs Knights Preview (Rugby League)
Flying Kiwis – March 1 (Football)
Football Ferns vs Portugal/Argentina: Part One, Keeping Things In Context (Football)
Football Ferns vs Portugal/Argentina: Part Two, Into The Mangroves (Football)
The Breakers Were Wooden-Spooners, Now One Year Later They’re NBL Finals-Bound (Basketball)
2023 T20 World Cup White Ferns Debrief (Cricket)
Exploring The Familiar Scent Of Blackcaps Test Cricket Mana (Cricket)
Basking In Some Stats & Record From The Blackcaps’ One-Run Win Over England (Cricket)
How Northern Brave Won Back To Back Super Smash Championships (Cricket)
How Canterbury Magicians Sent Amy Satterthwaite Out As A Champion (Cricket)
2022/23 HBJ Shield: Wellington vs Canterbury Final Preview (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
NZ Breakers get the headline status today as they begin their NBL Finals campaign against Sydney Kings. Keep an eye of Xavier Cooks as he was the Aotearoa NBL MVP with Wellington Saints last year and the athletic big bopper is a key figure for Sydney, averaging 16.2 points per game with plenty of assists and rebounds. There is also lovely Tom Vodanovich crossover with the kiwi playing for Sydney in their championship winning outfit last year before moving to Breakers.
Vodanovich has enjoyed more mahi with Breakers, going from 11.23mins per game last season to 13.87mins this season. While Vodanovich plays his role for Breakers, this funky bit of Sydney-Aotearoa crossover is part of the Breakers recipe as Vodanovich is a versatile player who rips in.
Whether it's trying to limit Cooks or covering all Sydney players, Breakers have a bunch of long defenders who can roll through defensive rotations. Being the best defensive team in the NBL is about having tools and mana. Breakers have the physical tools in Derek Pardon, Jarrell Brantley, Tom Abercrombie, Rayan Rupert, Will McDowell-White and Vodanovich. Breakers have the mana with their imports leading effort and intensity. This is also evident in how smaller lads like Barry Brown Jr and Izayah Le'afa play against bigger bodies.
The general combination of defence and 3-point shooting is enticing. Breakers players who are shooting over 30 percent from at least two 3-point attempts per game: Brown Jr, Brantley, Le'afa, McDowell-White, Rupert, Abercrombie, Vodanovich, Cameron Gliddon.
The other Breakers thing is their standing as one of Aotearoa's dynasty teams. Wellington Blaze are in the midst of a Super Smash dynasty, the Crusizzlers are in the midst of a Super Rugby dynasty and Auckland City FC keep on winning. Breakers won three consecutive NBL championships between 2011-13 and won another one in 2015. Sydney are defending champions and these two teams have four NBL championships each. Sydney have one championship since 2010, all four Breakers championships have come after 2010.
Recent events highlight the difference between Blackcaps and White Ferns.
Blackcaps select the best players and that usually revolves around cricket’s strong middle class. These players understand themselves and their mahi, they can also ride the wave of Test cricket (while cracking semi-finals/finals in most World Cups) with maturity. Despite struggling against England in four consecutive losses, Blackcaps won the Basin Reserve Test thanks to their gritty competitors. These lads keep showing up throughout a five-day banger and/or find ways to perform under pressure.
As much as I want White Ferns to be a dominant force, they don’t select the best players which makes it hard to win games. I’ve closely followed two White Ferns World Cup campaigns over the past year and in both formats, White Ferns have crumbled under pressure. More concerning is the shooken vibe that plagues staff and players.
White Ferns select potential over performance. Regardless of how we feel about Blackcaps Test selection, they skew towards mature players because they are more reliable - or at least trustworthy to coaches and senior players.
Don’t stress though. There are lots of fabulous young cricketers in Plunket Shield right now…
Canterbury have Chad Bowes, Cole McConchie and Leo Carter (Ish Sodhi too lol) as experienced batters, but 21-year-old Rhys Mariu hit scores of 68 and 78* vs Northern this week on debut. Canterbury still have the best crop of seamers in Aotearoa with Fraser Sheat (24yrs), Henry Shipley (26yrs), Zak Foulkes (20yrs) and Will O'Rourke (21yrs) joining Sodhi and Ed Nuttall vs Northern.
Katene Clarke (23yrs) was injected into Northern's Plunket Shield experienced batting unit; Henry Cooper, Jeet Raval, Bharat Popli, Tim Seifert, Mitchell Santner. Kristian Clarke (21yrs), Scott Johnston (26yrs) and Fergus Lellman (21yrs) also featured in Northern's bowling attack.
Who scored runs in Otago vs Wellington? Rachin Ravindra (23yrs) and Dean Foxcroft (24yrs) hit centuries. The Phillips brothers went 50+ for Otago as well, while Muhammad Abbas made his debut for Wellington a few weeks after playing in the Under 19 national tournament.
(Wellington keep picking up some talented youngsters from other regions. Abbas’ father has a coaching connection with Wellington so his move down from Auckland makes sense. Finn Allen made that move a few years ago and Nathan Smith moved up from Otago. Wellington have also recruited the likes of Logan van Beek and Nick Kelly as more established domestic players in recent years)
Will Warbrick made his NRL debut for Storm last night. This Kiwi-NRL Spotlight from last year laid out some impressive Warbrick mahi while in the Storm’s farm system at Sunshine Coast.
Roosters have signed Tavita Henare-Schuster from Manawatu and the former Palmerston North Boys High School student seems like an impressive footy player...
Henare-Schuster isn't named in any Roosters teams this round and I'll be tracking his progress. This throws up some Manawatu wrinkles as two former PNBHS students are starting consistently in SG Ball; Javahn Stevenson-Hala is on the bench for Roosters and Maraki Aumua is a half with Bulldogs.
Jersey Flegg Under 21s starts in New South Wales this weekend and here are some notable Kiwi-NRL lads named...
Jack Sandford starting fullback for Raiders - Christchurch Boys 1st 15.
Daeon Amituanai starting winger for Panthers - Whiti Te Ra (Otaki).
Salesi Ataata and Toataua Porima bench forwards for Sharks. Ataata is an Otahuhu junior, Porima is from Bay of Plenty via Upper Central Under 20s.
Matua Robinson is starting winger for Roosters - New Plymouth Boys High School 1st 15.
The rise of Keano Kini (Northcote/Marist) with Gold Coast Titans has crept under the radar this year. While I feel like I'm reaching to claim Karl Oloapu and Isaiya Katoa under the Kiwi-NRL umbrella even though they are both from Wellington, Kini is a hearty Kiwi-NRL junior.
Kini was playing 1st 15 rugby for Rosmini College in 2020 while also shining at every level of rugby league while in Aotearoa. Then he left for Gold Coast where he attended Palm Beach Currumbin with Deine Mariner and Xavier Willison, now he's in the Titans NRL squad.
Musical jam … like real good jam…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Big news outta the Wellington Phoenix this morning... turns out that Oli Sail, Clayton Lewis, and Steven Ugarkovic are all leaving the club at the end of the season.
Ugarkovic was kinda expected. He’s an Aussie fella, only ever signed on a one-year deal, and expressly mentioned a desire to work with Ufuk Talay as his main reason for joining the club (as well as first eleven minutes). Doubtful anyone really expected him to be around long term, now it sounds like Melbourne City is his next destination.
Sail was less expected but it’s one we’d been prepared for after links of him moving to Europe last season. That move never eventuated and his form has stuttered a bit this time around, though he still remains as good as anybody in the league on his day. As well as being the incumbent All Whites goalie. At 27 years old, this is the time to expand his horizons if he’s going to do it. Unfortunately instead it sounds like he’s going to sign with Perth Glory which is a lateral move at best.
There have been some rumours of Danny Hay potentially having some involvement there – Hay is a former Glory player and spends a lot of time in Perth where his wife’s family all live – which would further explain that move. Current Glory coach Ruben Zadkovich allegedly punched a player at training recently so there could be a managerial opening there and to be honest that would be a fantastic gig for Danny Hay to scoop up if it came to pass. But I’ve got no idea if that’s anything other than smoke and mirrors. We’ll see how it all unfolds.
Lewis is a shock though. He’s a dude who had a stink time of it with Scunthorpe United when he first went pro, struggling to find that right fit. But he found it at the Welly Nix and as a Wellingtonian he could have stuck around for years to come as a fan favourite and key player whilst still being able to add to his international caps. Then again, maybe he feels that pathway would be too stagnant and wants to challenge himself overseas once more. But realistically the timing and packaging of this announcement suggests they’re all probably off to other A-League clubs. Sydney FC and Macarthur are the rumours floating about for Clay.
Which sadly leads us to the most important contract situation at the club by a long mile: Ufuk Talay. The gaffer’s deal expires at the end of this season and this mini-exodus isn’t exactly a happy portent of him sticking around. Talay is an ambitious bloke who you’d imagine would probably want to move overseas if he’s going to leave the Nix but then those opportunities don’t always pop up so easily. There are other A-League clubs (most of them) who can pay him more, let’s be honest, and literally any club looking for a new manager is going to want a word with Uffie.
At least one thing we can be sure of is that Talay will handle any impending departure much more smoothly than the last fella did. I’d expect every leading question to be met with a firm forward defensive stroke until the end of the season.
Wellington Phoenix Contracted Player Situation
Expiring Contracts: Nico Pennington, Joshua Laws, Callan Elliot, Alex Rufer, Lucas Mauragis (loan), Yan Sasse (Int), Nikko Boxall, Steven Ugarkovic, Oli Sail, Clayton Lewis
Signed Until 2023-24: Ben Old, Alex Paulsen, Kosta Barbarouses, Bozhidar Kraev (Int), Oskar Zawada (Int)
Signed Until 2024-25: David Ball (Int), Scott Wootton (Int), Tim Payne, Sam Sutton, Oskar Van Hattum, Finn Surman
Plenty of work to be done with the rest of those expirings. Already had three confirm they’re leaving while Mauragis is only on loan so he’ll surely follow them. But there are still eleven players under contract including four imports which is far from a terrible position to be in. The midfield stocks are looking desperate though.
Quick shout for Max Crocombe after his FA Cup heroics with Grimsby Town. Crocombe has been ever-present in goal for a GTFC team that only got promoted back to the Football League last season (they knocked Wrexham out in the playoffs so Crocombe could find himself on Disney+ soon) and has been lingering mid-table for most of the campaign yet somehow has advanced all the way to the quarters of the FA Cup after knocking out a higher ranked opponent in five consecutive rounds.
That includes an incredible 2-1 win over Premier League side Southampton yesterday, a team sitting 64 places ahead of them on the current EFL standings. Then again, the Saints are onto their third manager of the season and are dead-last in the Prem. Not gonna lie, I did have a sneaky suspicion something special could happen in that one.
Grimsby Town last made the quarters in 1939 and the best thing about that premonition actually coming to pass is that although there weren’t too many notable saves to be made from MC, he did get plenty of moments to shine doing something he does best...
He actually went down with cramp twice, I missed the first one. Two bouts of crippling cramp for a goalkeeper who had hardly left his penalty area all game. Incredible stuff. Starting an argument with an opponent who tried to get him to hurry up, thus allowing him to take even more time... this is next level thinking from Max. Best of all was the utter genius of keeping that ball from crossing the goal-line outside his near post but not actually picking it up until he was closed down several seconds later. This is galaxy brain time-wasting. This is a man revolutionising the artform before our very eyes.
Grimsby Town are away to Brighton & Hove Albion in the quarters. That game takes place in a couple weeks.
I wrote a hefty stats yarn yesterday about that instantly famous Blackcaps win and there were more stats than I could fit into one piece... so I sliced a few out and you can have them here instead.
Tom Blundell averages 68.33 across his last 10 Test matches. Two hundies and eight fiddies. Five of those matches have been against England. He’s also now been dismissed in the 90s on three separate occasions.
Devon Conway averages 70.21 in the first innings of matches and 27.90 in the second innings. Yet to get triple-figures in a second inns knock.
Tim Southee is the 31st man to have captained the Blackcaps in a Test match. He also just did something that 13/30 of the blokes that went before him never managed to do: win. He’s on the board with his first victory as el capitan.
Southee also surpassed 700 combined wickets in all international formats... but that’s lame because combining formats is silly. What really sizzles is the fact that he’s up to 359 Test wickets and needs just three more to pass Daniel Vettori for second all-time by a NZer.
Neil Wagner has 258 to sit fifth on that list... then you have to drop all the way down to Matt Henry with 61 for the next highest active dude from this current squad (discounting Trent Boult). In terms of all active players, Kyle Jamieson and Doug Bracewell do each have 72 wickets while Ish Sodhi has 54. For so long Blackcaps wicket-taking was dominated by a three-headed hydra and now one of those heads has been chopped off and we’re still waiting for it to grow back doubled.
Shout out to Matt Henry though. With six wickets in this match he’s dragged his average back down under 40 again. Prior to his 7/23 against South Africa a year ago he averaged 46.27. Since then he’s averaged 30.12. Lad’s finally found his Test rhythm, right as he’s needed most.
On the other hand, Henry Nicholls has now gone 13 innings without passing fifty. He’s averaged 22.96 across his last 25 innings (starting with the tour to England for the WTC final).
The Blackcaps have won four matches in a row at the Basin Reserve and have a six-game unbeaten streak there since a loss to South Africa in 2017. Australia also won there in 2016. Those are the only two defeats for NZ at the Basin in the past 15 games: 8 wins, 5 draws, 2 losses.
Williamson averages 67.00 with 4 hundreds at the Basin. Latham averages 48.74 with two hundreds. Nicholls averages 60.25 with 3 hundreds. Williamson is six runs shy of matching Ross Taylor’s record of 1279 runs at the Basin. Bowling’s a bit harder at a ground which has been known for copious runs in recent years but Southee does average 32.72 at the Basin with 55 wickets, five short of Chris Martin’s venue record. Wagner has 45 at 29.55 there too.
Sticking with that game for a bit longer, there has been some chat about whether England should have enforced the follow-on at all... and given that time wasn’t really a factor that’s a fair argument. They didn’t need to skip that innings. There was room to spare thanks to how quickly they batted in the first innings, room which they could have used to bat New Zealand out of the game entirely and then back themselves to bowl the kiwis out on day five.
But, to be fair, they’d shredded the kiwi top order three times in a row to that point. Ben Stokes himself admitted afterwards that had factored into his decision. A flattening Basin Reserve wicket (a superb Test cricket surface, gotta throw that out there) was also a factor. In hindsight they made the wrong call but at the time it was at least understandable.
Two other things come into play here too: one is that England want to entertain, as they keep saying. It’s getting a tad sanctimonious to hear them keep saying so but that’s more because of the English media than the players and coach. I did notice how amidst a bunch of England players talking about how proud they were to be involved in such a thrilling match (despite losing), a few of them, Stokes included, did make sure to point out that they do still care about results and they’re gutted they couldn’t get the dub. Maybe not as gutted as they should have been... yet that’s also the benefit of winning so many games lately. They probably feel they can afford to drop one. Also you can guarantee they’ll cop a tight defeat to the Blackcaps a lot better than they would against Australia.
The second idea is that England like chasing. They enjoy batting fourth. Against NZ at home a year ago they chased down totals of 277 (five wickets down), 299 (five wickets down), and 296 (three wickets down) to convincingly sweep a series in which every game appeared in the balance at key moments, only for England to romp home. They then chased 278 to win by seven wickets against India straight after before Pakistan and South Africa offered wins via their bowlers as well as a couple of easy chases under 200 runs.
A target of 258 runs, as it ended up, shouldn’t really have been a problem for that batting line-up on that surface. As Stokes also said, he felt that the Cappies would have to play near-perfect cricket from the follow-on onwards to win that match... as it happened the emphasis was on the ‘near’ rather than the ‘perfect’ but you can’t deny it was an astonishing effort from NZ to even get back into the hunt. From ENG’s perspective, sometimes you have to tip your cap to a brilliant opposition effort.
But I’ve gotta admit that having been a follow-on fundamentalist in the past I’m fast moving away from the idea and games like this are the reason. By enforcing it, England left the door open to a kiwi win. Had they batted again they could have taken this thing well beyond our reach and had us batting for pure survival.
With the run-rate at which they score time is never a factor (zero draws in the McCullum/Stokes era so far). The main benefit of the follow-on is that it accelerates the game so much yet that’s redundant for a team as aggressive as this. They should never follow-on, really.
Test Results When Follow-On Is Available (All Nations, Across All History)
Enforced (296 matches) – 232 wins (78.38%), 60 draws (20.27%), 4 defeats (1.35%)
Not Enforced (111 matches) - 96 wins (86.49%), 13 draws (11.71%), 2 defeats (1.80%)
You’d think that taking the time to bat again means that the losses would go down but the draws would go up... yet that’s not the case at all. Keep in mind that one of the two defeats from a follow-on not enforced was a bogus one where rain wiped out the middle three days of an England vs South Africa game in 2000 so both teams declared at 0/0 in the second and third innings to allow for a result. Technically there could have been a follow-on there but morally speaking it shouldn’t really count.
Charlisse Leger-Walker continues to do fantastic things in the NCAA. Her Washington State Cougars finished up their regular season with a 19-10 overall record, earning the seventh seed in their Pac-12 conference (which over the last few years has been the toughest conference in the country). CLW herself averaged 18.0 points and 4.4 assists per game. Shot 40% from the field overall and while her hot three-point shooting of the early season did cool off, she still ended up at 33.7% which was a personal best. The peak of her regular season was a 40-point scoring night away to Washington Uni in December.
All that has culminated in being named to the All-Pac-12 team by both the media and the coaches. It’s the third time in three seasons that she’s earned the honour.
Yesterday they began their postseason efforts with a 61-49 win over California, CLW top scoring with 23 points on 8/15 shooting. They trailed by six points at the half but some great defence and a couple of offensive bursts saw them pull away for win number 20 of the season – one shy of the school’s all-time record set way back in 1978-79.
Thanks to that win they subsequently faced 2-seeded Utah in the Pac-12 quarters this arvo. It was a game that most would have expected them to lose, coming up against a side that’d gone 25-3 this season. Instead they produced one of the biggest results in the school’s history for a 66-58 victory (and win #21). Another excellent defensive showing throughout and when the offence faltered late as they tried to close out the win, up stepped CLW with an almost incalculably important three-pointer with eight seconds remaining to clinch it.
CLW scored 15 points on 5/15 shooting with 5 assists. Utah are ranked amongst the top five teams in the entire country so this was a magical upset for the Cougs, who are sure to get picked for NCAA National Tournament status again and this time they’ll be planning on winning the franchise’s first ever natty tourney game. For the record, that would make it three tournaments in a row after only one in school history beforehand. Three tournaments that align exactly with Charlisse Leger-Walker joining the team.