Sketchy Definitions
Warriors salary cap flow, Western Springs vs Western Springs, Carlos Ulberg wins, U20 Footy World Cup squad yarns, domestic football chat & more
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Reading Menu
Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Winning Footy Notebook (Rugby League)
Another Season, Another Elimination Finals Defeat For The Wellington Phoenix Lads (Football)
Forecasting a Football Ferns FIFA World Cup Squad (Football)
10 Of The Best Emerging Wahine Cricketers In Aotearoa After The 2022/23 Season (Cricket)
Kiwi Steve in the NBA #8: At Season’s End (Basketball)
Aotearoa at the 2023 Men’s U20 World Cup: Squad Yarns & Preview (Football)
Flying Kiwis – May 9 (Football)
27fm Weekly Playlist: May 15 (Music)
Scotty’s Word
Outside of the NZ Warriors Winning footy notebook realm is the contract stuff with Shaun Johnson, who apparently checked in with Tigers last week. Johnson is deserving of a fresh deal with Warriors and even though Tigers have plenty of cash to throw at Johnson, the increasing salary cap and more junior talent flowing through the Warriors pipeline could combine for an increased offer from Warriors.
Staying in Aotearoa is a factor as well and business is booming for Warriors, so there are lots of 'third party' deals available. The salary cap for 2022 was $9.6 million and this year it increased to $12.1m, although there is no figure sorted for 2024. That is a notable increase in cap space for all NRL teams and this is why Warriors can sign Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, while also possibly upgrading Johnson's deal. Using imaginary numbers, Johnson could go from $600k to $800k without a major dent in cap space.
This is easier to do when developing young players who are on their first or second NRL contracts. Aside from phenoms commanding big money as teenagers, the cheapest players are usually the youngest. Warriors have local lads like Tom Ale, Rocco Berry, Demitric Sifakula, Ed Kosi, Adam Pompey in that bracket. Even young players recruited from Australia such as Ronald Volkman, Freddy Lussick and Taine Tuaupiki would be on club-friendly contracts.
The next salary cap could be $14m. That means players worth $1m a couple years ago will be worth $1.5m, with more money flowing throughout NRL squads. This theory will be tested with Johnson, who probably wants a respectable deal that Warriors should be able to offer. The other angle is how NRL and NRLW can offer more money to athletes in Aotearoa at all levels (lowest salaries to marquee).
Apparently Super Rugby crowds are an issue. The are no crowd issues in NRL in Aotearoa or Australia and when I check in with NBL basketball, I'm seeing decent crowds that local associations are probably happy with. Even though Black Sticks hockey is declining, I've seen impressive crowds at Pro League games in Wellington and Canterbury. Fans also love Blackcaps cricket.
I'm curiously following the vibe at Roosters after they lost to Panthers. Under coach Trent Robinson, Roosters build into their season with everything mapped out so I'm balancing that with the focus on Joseph Manu and Brandon Smith. Winning Warriors footy features two kickers, whether it is Te Maire Martin or Ronald Volkman and Manu doesn't offer much finesse as a kicker.
That didn't matter when Roosters defeated Warriors at Mt Smart because it was raining. This caused both teams to simplify their footy, suiting a bigger Roosters team. Playing halves is different than fullback for Manu and there is also nuance in the role Brandon Smith is playing as a hooker.
Smith juggled hooker and middle forward at Storm, although his desire to focus on hooker was a major factor in his move to Roosters. Smith developed his dummy half craft under Cameron Smith and alongside Harry Grant, having also grown up playing hooker. Roosters have bigger issues than Smith's service out of dummy half, but the Waiheke Ram definitely isn't playing his best footy.
Roosters have earned faith in their system, same with Manu and Smith earning faith as elite Kiwi-NRL lads. How this develops during State of Origin and how Roosters adjust will teach me plenty about rugby league. No such issues for Raiders, who have won five games in a row with Joseph Tapine, Matthew Timoko and Jordan Rapana sizzling. Unfortunately Corey Hararawira-Naerea has dropped out of the rotation.
Tapine's average run metres per game in recent seasons...
2020: 125m/game
2021: 120m/game
2022: 165m/game
2023: 164m/game
Timoko had a breakout campaign last year and is now my leading Aotearoa Kiwis centre. Timoko has elevated from 109m/game last year to 166m/game this year, also tacking more efficiently with 87.8% going up to 92.8%. Timoko also averaged 4.8 tackle busts per game, with 4 tries and 4 try assists in his 10 appearances.
Lots of fun Kiwi County Tour antics going on in England. Full yarn will be on the website tomorrow, otherwise here are the overall stats for the kiwi lads playing County Championship...
Doug Bracewell: 15w @ 22.33avg/4.35rpo
Matt Henry: 50 runs @ 128sr | 4w @ 18.25avg/3rpo
Daryl Mitchell: 105 runs @ 105avg | 3w @ 14.33avg/2.38rpo
Colin de Grandhomme: 119 runs @ 23.8avg/80sr | 6w @ 40avg/3.5rpo
Will Williams: 15w @ 23.13avg/2.6rpo
Matt Quinn: 9w @ 23.33avg/3rpo
Ajaz Patel: 21ov @ 2.71rpo
Carlos Ulberg had a win in UFC, defeating Ihor Potieria with a clean crisp strike..
This looks rather similar to Israel Adesanya's win over Alex Pereira, both fights finished with a punch landing behind the ear. Ulberg has now won four fights in a row in the light heavyweight division and the funky wrinkle here is that this division isn't flush with talent. As of Monday morning, Ulberg is outsite the top-15 per the UFC rankings and he could enter the rankings after this win, while a top-10 spot would arrive quickly if he grabs another win.
Ulberg, Israel Adesanya and Kai Kara-France are the notable CKB lads in UFC right now. Adesanya reclaimed his middleweight championship, Kara-France (#3) headlines the Fight Night event in early June against Amir Albazi (#7). Dan Hooker is also lined up to fight Jalin Turner at UFC 280.
Musical jam...
Wildcard’s Notebook
Big story over the weekend surrounding the Western Springs senior women’s football team, where disputes over a lack of support at club board level has led to a potential walkout of players from the team that finished second in the National League last year.
The original scoop was over on the Herald website, it’s paywalled though there are ways around that (but I’m not gonna be a dick and share them here given how we rely on reader support ourselves, albeit voluntarily – shout out to our lovely Patreons and Substack subscribers).
Sounds like the team have been frustrated for a long time about being considered as beneath the men’s top side – who didn’t qualify for the last National League – when it comes to resources and training pitches and even just general giving-a-damn. Presumably if the board at Springs had taken action at the time then things could have been avoided. Instead they ignored it or at least didn’t do enough to appease the team, who wore ‘Equality’ shirts during warm-up and asked for their names to be replaced by numbers and positions in the teamsheet graphic and a few other acts like that. Still no positive response.
Eventually they pushed back harder and then the board apparently accused them of blackmail (again, this is all just going by the article so there’s room for debates of perspective... but the specifics aren’t as important as the overriding pattern of ‘disrespect’, as an anonymous player is quoted saying in the piece). Their coach, Ryan Faithfull, then stood up for the players… and was promptly fired. This a bloke who took them to the NL grand final last December, remember. Faithfull was also head of women’s football at WSAFC, whose chairman was quoted on their website as saying: “… it has now become apparent that we have different views on the approach to the Girls’ and Women’s program”. Funny thing to say about a bloke whose entire job was to determine the approach to the Girls’ and Women’s program.
In the wake of that, the team have gone public with their grievances with the story on NZH. Pretty soon NRFL stepped in to organise some sort of mediation.
Chances are a lot of those players will leave anyway. Springs already had a few key players leave at the end of last year for overseas things so from a competition standpoint this could really shake up the NRFL Premier Division – especially as another of last year’s NL team, Northern Rovers, are also rebuilding after a mass exodus of players (in that case following departing coach Ben Bate over to Auckland United - no need for nationally syndicated press coverage with that one, although it’s been mentioned a few times in this email).
But that mediation process feels hugely important either way. Because while the Western Springs situation has to have been very bad to have reached this stage, you can guarantee that many other clubs, big and small, are similarly dismissive of their women’s teams. There are English Premier League clubs in the same bag so of course there’ll be local kiwi clubs with that same antique mindset. Springs are the ones in the spotlight but I’d hope that anybody involved in the decision-making at a footy club is paying attention and then looking in the mirror. That doesn’t have to mean diverting massive resources, necessarily, but it at least means giving the women’s side it’s fair due and not making things harder than they need to be. Otherwise it’s to the detriment of your own club, right? And on the flipside: a rising tide raises all ships.
It also feels like this is an important hurdle to get past for football in this country at this time because it’s a reminder that all the benefits and flow-on effects of co-hosting the World Cup won’t happen by themselves. There have got to be people in place to capitalise, people who care. Everybody wins in the end – in no way does boosting up a women’s team have a negative influence on the men’s. Sometimes it takes a bit of a kerfuffle like this to shake things up. All power to them Western Springs gals.
The final squads for the U20 Men’s World Cup were confirmed by FIFA over the weekend so we now know that Fiji have got two blokes based in Aotearoa within their ranks. There’s goalkeeper Aydin Mustahib from Auckland United and Apisai Rabuka from Coastal Spirit. You may remember Rabuka’s brother Mika who played National League for Christchurch United last year. They’ve also got midfielder Josh Laqeretabua from Charlton Athletic in England which is cool to see.
Manurewa winger Caleb Prasad had been part of qualifying but he didn’t make the final squad. Neither did UK-based Oliver McFadyen and Peter Ravitisai who were also used in qualifying. There are a couple of other Australian-based lads but the rest are all locally based fellas. Curious to see them spread the net quite wide then not actually pick very many of that lot. They had a lad in the Vancouver Whitecaps academy not selected as well - whereas the NZers have two players from the Caps II team (Jay Herdman & Finn Linder).
It’s been a wonky few months for this Fijian team. Argentinian coach Rodolfo Zapata was sacked five weeks out from the tournament following an awful showing at the quad-series in Indonesia in February which the NZ U20s team was also involved in. Fiji lost 4-0 to Indonesia, 3-1 to Guatemala, and 3-0 to New Zealand. The Indonesian game saw them pick up three red cards including one player who was immediately put on a plane and sent home after having punched an opponent. Needless to say that bloke did not make the World Cup squad.
Neither did Zapata, whose fate was sealed after an independent review found that his players didn’t actually want to play for him, that they found his methods a poor fit. So he was sacked a mere two months after having been hired in the first place (he wasn’t there for the qualifiers). Englishman Bobby Mimms is taking them at the World Cup. A former goalkeeper who was part of Blackburn Rovers’ Premier League winning squad in 1994-95. The 59yo is the current goalkeeping coach for the Fijian men’s senior team.
In other news, FIFA have confirmed that kiwi defender Lukas Kelly-Heald, at 198cm, is the equal tallest player at the tournament and the tallest outfielder – the other two being goalkeepers (Ebrima Jaiteh and Youkasseh Sanyang, both of Gambia).
Also with eight players officially partaking, the Wellington Phoenix will be tied with Uzbekistan’s Pakhtakor for the most represented team at the U20 World Cup. As we know, the link runs deeper than eight players when you dig into academy roots too.
And apparently Oli Colloty is one of only two players classed as free agents for the tournament. Henry Gray might’ve joined him but he’s now had his move to Ipswich Town confirmed. Free agency can be a sketchy definition when we’re talking about youth players though.
Check out the full squad lists over here.
Aotearoa plays it’s first game on Sunday at 6am against Guatemala. Then it’s Uzbekistan on Wednesday also at 6am and they finish off their group stage against hosts Argentina at 9am on Saturday. Fiji face Ecuador, USA, and Slovakia in their group with the latter up first at 9am on Sunday.
Speaking of Oceania Football, the OFC Champions League began for the fellas over the weekend (inaugural women’s edition, featuring Eastern Suburbs, kicks off at the very start of June). That means Auckland City are on a quest to win the thing once again... although they had some trouble against Solomon Warriors (Solomon Islands) in game one of the group stage, finding themselves down 1-0 after eight minutes and they were still trailing at half-time.
But you know what them City lads are like. They were just waiting for the water to heat up, second half they brought it to a boil as Gerrard Garriga won a penalty which Angus Kilkolly scored. 55 mins gone. Warriors keeper was sent off for the challenge that led to the spotty so it was only ever going one way after that. Garriga himself scored the goal that put ACFC in front after 77 mins. Then a Ryan De Vries close-range header polished things off on 82’. 3-1 to Auckland City final score. Came through a tough test first up and will fancy themselves for an 11th OCL title from here.
Auckland City plays Suva (Fiji) at 4pm on Wednesday and then Lupe o le Soaga (Samoa) at 1pm on Saturday. Suva won 6-0 when those other two teams met on the opening matchday.
Which brings us to the Domestic Football Roundup for this week…
Less going on than usual thanks to round one of the Chatham and Kate Sheppard Cups although the men’s Northern League did still squeeze in a round of fixtures. And there was one very significant non-sporting story from the domestic footy realms with the shenanigans going on at Western Springs... but we’ve already covered that.
Kate Sheppard Cup featured some typically huge round one wins. Waterside Karori took the cake with a 12-0 victory against North Wellington. Renee Bacon and Kaley Ward (two proved National League goal scorers) each got hat-tricks while Kennedy Bryant and Sarah Morton were also amongst the goals – those two were teammates for Southern United last year. Wild thing is Karori and N.Welly are in the same division, albeit at opposite ends. Wellington United and Waterside Karori have both gone 3/3 to start the Central League season so once again they’ll be the teams to beat.
Some other hefty KSC wins include Petone beating Brooklyn Northern 9-0 (Ashleigh Gill with three goals), Miramar Rangers doing Lower Hutt City 8-1 courtesy of seven different goal scorers, and a 7-0 Fencibles win against Greenhithe. The closest game was Birkenhead vs Franklin which went all the way to penalties after a 0-0 draw, with Birko prevailing 3-1 in the shootout.
All the top Auckland clubs had byes for the first round of the KSC. Same deal with the Chatham Cup in both Northern and Central (keep in mind the cups are still regional at this phase – we don’t get inter-regional games until the quarters). No worries for Christchurch United who kicked off the round with a 9-0 win over Parklands United, although Cashmere Tech had a puzzle getting past a tough tie against Selwyn Utd, only winning 1-0 thanks to an Andrew Storer goal. Biggest win of the round went to East Coast Bays who won 13-1 against Rapa Nui, a Sunday League team.
As for those Northern League games, Auckland City obviously weren’t there which gave Eastern Suburbs the opportunity to move clear into first place. That they did with a 2-0 win over Birkenhead. Two quick goals after half-time did the trick.
Manurewa triumphed in the South Auckland Derby as they beat Manukau United 3-0. Tightly fought first half but Will Mendoza’s sharply-taken goal had already split them at that point before Rewa took more control in the second spell. They’re chilling in third after 9/22 games. Very much in contention for the National League... especially after fourth and fifth placed Auckland United and Western Springs drew 1-1... AUFC have only won once in their last five games.
Down the bottom of the ladder, Bay Olympic beat Takapuna 2-1 away to crawl out of the relegation zone at Manukau’s expense. Big shift from that lot. Melville United also protected home advantage with a 3-1 victory against West Coast Rangers. Taka are on 2 points. Manukau on 5 points. Bay are on 6. Then it’s Hamilton Wanderers, who had a bye this week as they were due to face Auckland City, on 9 points.