Stomach Punches
Steven Adams' passing, Aotearoa Kiwis wider squad, further NWSL fallout & more
Podcast
TNC Variety Show - Episode 35
The Niche Cast: Between Eras (Benji Marshall/All Whites/Steven Adams/Plunket Shield)
Reading Menu
Aotearoa Warriors Diary: No Young Halves Could Be Good (NRL)
Winter’s Over And The New National League Is Now Upon Us (Football)
Flying Kiwis – October 5 (Football)
Rounding Up The Tall Ferns’ Exploits At The 2021 Asia Cup (Basketball)
First Impressions Of Steven Adams With The Memphis Grizzlies (Basketball)
Building 2021 Plunket Shield Fizz: The Blackcaps (Ross Taylor, Finn Allen, Jacob Duffy) (Cricket)
Building 2021 Plunket Shield Fizz: Notable Youngins (Will O'Donnell, Luke Georgeson, Fraser Sheat) (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
NZRL Aotearoa Kiwis wider squad and ‘wishlist’…
NZRL announced some pretty weird stuff yesterday and the most important thing I can think to sum these announcements up is that it all falls under the trend umbrella. Having covered Kiwi-NRL footy closely and doing the annual ‘Meet The Junior Kiwis’ yarns I am familiar with how NZRL cast their initial net extremely wide. The ‘Notable Kiwi Players’ list is the latest installment of this as it includes players born and raised in Aotearoa as well as players born and raised in Australia. It also features players from as far down as U16s to certified NRL players and thus makes it an extremely weird list to throw out.
The wider squad named for next year’s World Cup is a bit more fine-tuned, although Josh Schuster has already stated that he wants to play for NSW and Australia. I kinda hoped that coach Michael Maguire had touched based with all the players to suss out their Kiwis vibe, but in the case of Schuster the vibe seems more in tune with that ‘notable players’ group. NZRL aren’t exactly subtle, most of their squads named start very wide and come as surprises to many players who barely pondered their eligibility.
Take these squads with a fair bit of salt. NZRL’s wide net antics have been to the point where I tend to wait for actual squads for actual games as every ‘wider squad’ features super unrealistic selections.
NZ Warriors halves…
I wrote this about how Sebastyan Jack was the only Aotearoa halves junior in the Warriors/Redcliffe system. The Warriors are apparently signing Ash Taylor on a bargain deal and have apparently snared young Sharks halve Luke Metcalf for 2023, while trying to get him to make the move a year early - next season.
In that yarn I pondered a move to establish a solid group of NRL halves; Shaun Johnson, Chanel Harris-Tavita, Ash Taylor. Metcalf is a youngster so this dampens my theory a bit, although Metcalf is still a half from Australia and the Warriors still lack talented halves in their current system. Today I wrote about the Warriors/Redcliffe connection and laid out how Warriors have an abundance of depth in outside backs and forwards, which is direct contrast to their halves situation.
This has me doubling-down on my belief that the Warriors are zoning in on developing Aotearoa juniors in positions that provide an easier entry to NRL. I kinda like it as the Warriors have already and will continue to promote their juniors to plug holes at wing, centre and forwards while signing talent better equipped to play as an NRL half.
Boil it down further and I reckon this is Peter O’Sullivan salary cap management 101.
Build a pool of cheap (rookie deals) juniors in positions that are easier to play at an NRL level. Depth ensures cover for injuries/suspension and with a flow of talent on tap, players who develop to want more money are free to leave as the junior system keeps stocks full.
Invest in positions that are harder to play and require experience/expertise.
No Kiwi-NRL juniors at Melbourne Storm!?
Taranaki’s Judda Turahui was the only Kiwi-NRL junior in the Storm system and all signs point to Turahui signing with Bulldogs for next season. I’ve always had Storm as a fantastic Kiwi-NRL club and their NRL crew is stacked with high quality talent from Aotearoa, although the diminishing number of Kiwi-NRL juniors with Storm has them falling behind the likes of Roosters and even Gold Coast Titans in Kiwi-NRL recruitment.
No I’m pondering what Storm are up to. They signed Turahui from the same Kings College 1st 15 team as Junior Ratuva and Ratuva was released to partake in Canterbury rugby union before joining NZ Warriors. Now Turahui seems to have been released as well, not to mention Kelma Tuilagi who was in the Storm system for a few years before being on a ‘Development Contract’ for Storm last season. Tuilagi then left for Wests Tigers and made his NRL debut for Tigers this year.
The list of players who don’t crack NRL/professional sports is always longer than those who do. That is to say that there are many from Aotearoa who Storm recruited and didn’t kick on with Storm (Jirah Momoisea was recruited by Storm from St Paul’s College and then made his debut for Knights this year).
Storm may be switching up their recruitment tactics. They were the best at recruiting from Aotearoa and viewed Aotearoa as equal with Queensland for talent identification, which resulted in Matt Duffie and Suliasi Vunivalu joining Storm from St Kents 1st 15. Nelson Asofa-Solomona and Tohu Harris were recruited by Storm having a presence in Wellington.
Maybe it’s covid. Maybe it’s because Storm have found a better patch to farm. Maybe it’s just a dip before Storm get busy again in Aotearoa. Right now I don’t see any Kiwi-NRL junior in the Storm system and I’m curious as to what happens next.
Wildcard’s Notebook
Steven Adams, Point God
I wrote up a thing yesterday, offering some analysis on Steven Adams’ first preseason game with the Memphis Grizzlies. As I write this now his second game is only about an hour away (it’ll already be underway by the time this goes out) but that’s cool, it’s only the first game where you get to see first impressions. After that it tends to be more of the same. Most of what we saw from Steve-o in that game was prime stuff from the big man: he was grabbing offensive rebounds, he was good on defence, he was getting those monster screens in there. All the things you expect from him.
But there was something unexpected as well: a clear emphasis on his passing game which, having covered the Steven Adams beat for many years, is immensely exciting. His assist rate took a huge surge two years ago after Russell Westbrook left the Thunder and while he didn’t maintain that level in New Orleans he still threw more of them dimes around than he had prior. Remember he had a bloody triple-double in there.
Anyway, the Memphis locals noticed the trend too, obviously, and asked a few questions...
See, now those are the wrinkles that you only get from on-the-beat local reporters. Darko Rajaković is a career coach hailing from Serbia, initially coming up in youth stuff in his home nation but moving to the Tulsa 66ers – the first non-North American head coach in G-League history - in 2012 and then from 2014 to 2019 he was an assistant coach with the OKC Thunder. Since then he’s had a stint with the Phoenix Suns working under Monty Williams (an ex-Thunder colleague) and for the last 13 months he’s been at the Memphis Grizzlies. He’s also worked as an assistant for the Serbian national team.
As you’d expect from a guy who started in youth and reserve leagues, he’s got a reputation for being a coach who helps develop younger players. Even at the height of OKC’s success in his time there he always had plenty of case studies there. Steven Adams is one of them and there was a great story that did the rounds in 2016 about the unorthodox ways in which Rajaković tried to help him with his notoriously streaky free throw shooting...
“So what he does is, he'll come and, like, punch me in the stomach. I swear to God. He'll come punch me in the stomach or slap me on the arm really hard and he'll just say, ‘Make a free throw' ... That's what he does. It's not fun. I didn't say it was fun, mate. I'm telling you, getting a beating by a little Serbian, it's no good, mate. No good.”
Rajaković has seen what Adams can do as a passer up close and he’s been flying the flag for that strategy with the Grizzlies. Thus we can expect plenty more where those first three assists came from. Cannot wait. How good.
Brayden Inger
There we go. Back up to 18 contracted kiwis in the NBL after the Cairns Taipans snapped up the 22 year old forward as a development player. Beautifully done.
Inger will be a new name to many kiwi hoops fans. He was a gun for Rangitoto College back in the day and had been offered a scholarship to go to Mount St. Mary’s to play Division 1 NCAA stuff but then they changed their coach late and that opportunity was swept away from him. So instead he went and played NBL1 in Western Australia for the Geraldton Buccaneers. Straight out of high school no less.
He made his NZ NBL debut for the Southland Sharks earlier in the year where he averaged 14.3pts, 4.6reb & 1.3ast for a team that made the semi-finals. He joins Jordan Ngatai and Jarrod Kenny as NZers on this current Taipans roster. Jordan Hunt was a DP for them last season too.
CT head coach Adam Forde:
“I coached against him when I was in New Zealand, but I also watched him play for the Buccaneers in WA as well, so I’ve seen what he is capable of and I’ve been aware of his potential. He’s a 6’8” pick-and-pop type player and I definitely think that is worth exploring. He has what it takes be an NBL player and it's common knowledge that he has been flagged by Basketball New Zealand as a future Tall Black. We will work in conjunction with Leonard King and the Basketball New Zealand high-performance staff to help with his development. He’s at the beginning of a promising career and his involvement with the Taipans will be beneficial for all parties.”
18 players is more than we had this time last season and there’s a solid chance of more. The odd injury replacement could pop up and not every team has filled out their rosters to begin with. Especially the DP spots. The Breakers signed Jeremiah Martin a week ago to complete their international spots, a typically exciting signing who may or may not be able to deliver the goods in this NZB system, but they still have one more local spot to fill after Tai Webster’s departure.
NWSL Scandal Fallout
On Monday I wrote a whole heap about the investigative report into former North Carolina Courage head coach Paul Riley, which led to him losing his job and to a major moment of reckoning within America’s top women’s professional football league. In particular I got into some of the unfortunate kiwi connections.
That weekend’s games were cancelled after the players’ union basically demanded it, so the games on Thursday NZT/Wednesday USA were the first since the scandal was made public and, positives first, the first two simultaneous kickoffs both saw displays of solidarity from players in the sixth minute of the games (sixth minute for six years of silence since the reported incidents), including Abby Erceg’s NC Courage...
Quite a powerful moment there, everyone down-tooling and all the subs running on and everything. The Courage were obviously at the heart of things here so especially poignant from their point of view. The players’ union earlier released a trio of demands to the new NWSL administration basically wanting wide-ranging investigations into this apparent culture of abuse and for cooperation from all teams and team executives.
The Portland Thorns, who Paul Riley was coaching at the time of the incidents, and who played their part in keeping their own investigation all hush hush despite parting ways with Riley in the wake of it, also had separate demands put upon them by their own playing base. Demand number one being that New Zealander Gavin Wilkinson be placed on administrative leave for the duration of a fresh investigation into what happened back in 2015...
That demand was swiftly met...
Sorry ‘bout it Gav but this one isn’t going away quietly.