The Diamond
Combat Sports Shenanigans, Penalty Shootout Guidance & Olympic Footy Underdog Battles
Podcast
TNC Variety Show - Episode 24
The Niche Cast: Like The Honey Bee (NZ Sports Culture & Blackcaps T20)
Reading Menu
Hypothesising What A Wellington Phoenix Women’s Squad Might Look Like (Football)
Flying Kiwis – Sarpreet Singh’s Going Back Out On Loan (Football)
Rounding Up The Exploits Of The Kiwi Contingent In NBL21 (Basketball)
2021 Kiwi County Tour: County Championship + T20 Blast Wrap (Cricket)
2021 Kiwi County Tour: T20 1st 11 (Aotearoa T20 Depth) (Cricket)
Scotty’s Word
Dustin Poirier (vs Conor McGregor)…
UFC is a strange old thing. Throughout all the coverage of UFC 264, Dustin Poirier played second fiddle to Conor McGregor and while Poirier was at peace in that space, there’s a major difference between folks tuning in to see McGregor fight and those who tune in knowing who Poirier is let alone what he is capable of. This is prize-fighting after all and as McGregor draws in an audience that is probably bigger than the regular UFC fanbase, the casual audience following McGregor holds sway.
The McGregor phenomenon has been fun, even I was captivated my Mystic Mac. At some point though, I moved into a greater appreciation of Poirier and this coincided with a greater understanding of UFC as well as finding my favourite comedian Theo Von. McGregor defeated Poirier in 2014 as his takeover of combat sports began, McGregor blasted off into the spotlight and the fact that a McGregor fight in 2021 is still the biggest combat sports event in the world is residue from McGregor’s peak.
This is a tale of two different paths. While McGregor enjoyed blast off and all the positive and negatives that come with that, Poirier quietly went about his business. Poirier’s last eight fights are all against top-tier opponents with wins over Anthony Pettis, Justin Gaethje, Eddie Alvarez and Max Holloway (2017-2019) before a loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2019. I really tapped into Poirier when he fought Aotearoa’s Dan Hooker to start 2020. As ruthless, tough and skillful as Hooker is, Poirier had a bit more of all that.
Now Poirier has back to back wins over McGregor and I resonate with Poirier’s journey far more than McGregor. This is slow-cooking vs fast food. While all the glitz and glam was McGregor’s, Poirier consistently improved over a long period of time my experience is that great things happen when daily mahi compounds. Daily mahi becomes years of mahi, 10,000 hours of expertise and quick rewards aren’t present, yet the long-term foundations get built for those rewards to settle upon.
Everyone says they want to be McGregor because of his wealth. Poirier is a lovely dude, who does ample charity work and lives by a respectable code. Poirier is from the slums just like McGregor and has gone about his life in a vastly different fashion.
Apparently judges score the first round 10-8 in favour of Poirier (scoring fights is so dumb but that basically means Poirier won in strong fashion). Poirier landed 36 significant strikes, while McGregor landed 27. Poirier spent 3:18mins in grappling control, McGregor tried a submission but registered zero time in control. Add that on to Poirier’s KO win earlier this year and Poirier is simply the better fighter - and better bloke.
I was once captivated by McGregor and I’m not alone in that regard. To be honest, McGregor and the growing Kiwi-UFC stocks back in 2013ish lead me to diving deeper into UFC. In diving deeper though, while growing as a human, I draw far more inspiration and connection with Poirier. With who Poirier is, how he lives his life and his journey to the peace that he’s so obviously found.
There are folks around Aotearoa who fit into these two themes. Whether they are the ‘famous celebrities’ in kiwi culture who have had a swift rise based upon money and materialism, or those in your social circles who are the folks who enjoyed great success straight out of high school/university/whatever and it hasn’t amounted to anything. It’s not that those are bad folks, or wrong. It’s more about the Poirier route, the slow-cooking process being just as viable and beneficial.
If not more beneficial when pondering happiness, peace and well-being.
UFC business kinda sucks… unless you’re Israel Adesanya. The UFC signed a big deal with ‘Crypto.com’ and in typical UFC fashion, there is minimal profit-sharing. Fighters don’t get a direct slice of any such sponsorship pies, fighters barely get anything considering retirement packages, flexibility etc. The UFC does allow certain fighters to work with the brands who UFC partners with and Adesanya is one of a very few UFC fighters who have that leverage…
UFC fighter pay is often in the news. Whether it’s a fighter demanding more money and being iced out of getting any fights, or brave journalists highlighting the minimal profit sharing. I don’t know what this means, yet I know that there are no complaints from Team City Kickboxing. There may come a time for that though and it’s just something low key to keep an eye on.
Two relevant sporting ideas…
Lots of international rugby union going on and this reminded me of the 60 minute theory; All Blacks roll their subs around the 60-min mark and every other nation started to copy … without the same depth of talent.
Everyone copies the All Blacks - second-man plays, three-man pods etc. Other teams would love to think that they have competitive depth and thus, they can also roll the bench on after 60mins. No team has the talent coming off the bench that the All Blacks do though and this staple of All Blacks footy usually results in a tight game being blown out.
Lots of T20 Internationals being played leading into the T20 World Cup. These international T20 teams are all fairly even with talent and I’m pondering the importance of salvaging an innings with the bat, plus squeezing in the field when new batsmen come to the crease. These are interesting ideas because teams want to keep hitting and often lack the nous to tighten up, build for a few overs and then explode.
Alternatively, I’ve seen teams bring in a slip for a new batsman as if that is applying pressure. I’m thinking about bringing men off the boundary to stop singles, squeezing the new batsman and playing into their mindset of scoring quickly.
At an event like a T20 World Cup, this is amplified. The best team will deal with early wickets the best, will be able to salvage an innings after a middle-order collapse. When fielding, they won’t allow their opponent to do that.
Gritty cricket isn’t associated with T20. I reckon it will be a deciding factor come World Cup time.
Wildcard’s Notebook
The Thing About Penalty Shootouts...
...is that they’re there to separate two teams that couldn’t be separated in 120 minutes prior. They’re about fine margins and close calls. That’s the nature of them. There are little things that you can do to prepare best for that stage but there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do to properly simulate that ultimate moment of twelve yards, a goalkeeper, a goal-frame, millions of people watching, and you’ve got one opportunity to put a ball perfectly where you wanna place it. Even if you connect with it perfectly there’s a chance that the goalie guesses right and saves it anyway.
So rather than overanalysing the misses and makes of that Italy vs England European Championship final maybe we just gotta chill with that all in mind: sometimes you miss. Marcus Rashford is a brilliant penalty taker, he’s scored from the spot at crucial moments. He took an injury time penalty for Manchester United against PSG a few years back which secured an away goals knockout tie win. Miss and they lose, score and they win. He scored. Just as he scored in the Europa League final a couple months back.
Yet people are out there right now, living people with pulses (despite the evidence), complaining that his run up was too stuttered and he was doomed from the beginning even though he sent the keeper the wrong way and hit the post, six inches from perfection. Probably not even that much. Old mate didn’t step up to miss it and neither did Jadon Sancho or Bukayo Saka... or Jorginho who also shoots with a stuttered run up and is one of the very best penalty takers on the planet. They just didn’t quite execute properly in the moment and when a major final has been drawn unfortunately those tiny margins have to be the difference that separates them. Sometimes you miss.
And now either England’s football watching population will accept that fact and continue to build up this young squad of players who can therefore carry on and compete for major trophies for the next decade... or they can tear them down because they were that close to winning and didn’t quite and thus ensure that no Englishman ever has the confidence to take another penalty in a shootout and that this potential golden generation (for real this time) never gets this close again.
Angry Tom
When Tom Sermanni was hired to coach the Football Ferns, his reputation as a steady presence and a nice bloke was a big part of that. It was after the Andreas Heraf debacle and the Ferns needed a wise old head to set the reset button. Sermanni’s a chill bloke. He’s come exactly as advertised. Which is why it was kinda shocking to see him speaking in such blunt terms about a couple NWSL units over the weekend...
“It's outrageous. These athletes are all going to the same major tournament and those clubs have released every single Olympic athlete except for the New Zealanders. It's unprofessional, unethical and shows a complete lack of respect for the players and New Zealand football. In fact, it reeks of discrimination.”
Specifically what he’s talking about there are the Orlando Pride and North Carolina Courage NWSL teams who managed to release their Canadian and Brazilian athletes to head to Tokyo last week but somehow needed to keep Ali Riley and Abby Erceg around for an extra match. And don’t even ask about the USA internationals, they’ve been gone for weeks. Already played a couple friendlies against Mexico before travelling. Technically the FIFA-enforced release date isn’t until today (Monday 12 July) but Sermanni’s got a point about how New Zealand does appear to be getting taken advantage of here.
“We asked back in May if we could have our players available by this weekend and were told that these two clubs would not be releasing them. Then I see pictures of the two Brazilian players from the same clubs, on their way to Tokyo, and it makes my blood boil. Marta and Debinha may be important to the Brazil team but Ali and Abby are crucial to the New Zealand team and this suggests that North Carolina Courage and Orlando Pride are dismissing New Zealand football as unimportant as opposed to Brazil being of more importance. It is completely disrespectful.”
Very rare to see Tom Sermanni with his blood boiled, tell ya what. Awkward thing here is not only did Tom Sermanni once coach the American women’s team but he also, not so long before getting the NZ gig, was coach of this very same Orlando Pride club. Oh and of course the USA is in our group in Tokyo too. See, this is what it’s like being the underdog, aye? Getting stitched up by the bigger canines. S’pose it’s to be expected in a society where rich-get-richer capitalism is the going way.
On a similar note, the OlyWhites had all of their players in camp as of late last week with the exceptions of Michael Boxall and Marko Stamenic. The latter had been off with club team FC Copenhagen on a preseason camp in Austria until yesterday so he might be on his way to Tokyo this very minute. Would assume that was an agreement with the club that he’d stay for that whole yarn – he started their first preseason match against CSKA Moscow (captain Carlos Zeca, a fellow midfielder, missed the tour after getting coronavirus). There’s no FIFA window for the men’s Olympic footy since it’s an U23 competition (U24 this time but you know what I mean) so it was up to club’s to agree to release players and this will have been a tidy compromise. Stamenic played the second half against Rapid Wien on Sunday NZT before skipping out.
Michael Boxall, he’s a different case because he got injured in what would’ve been his second to last game for Minnesota United before leaving to Tokyo and suddenly things are a major doubt there. He had an MRI scan on his leg but honestly the updates have been slim outta that camp ever since. Here’s what his coach Adrian Heath had to say...
“He’s got a problem at this minute in time and he probably won’t be going I would think.”
Which sounds bad but also remember here’s what he had to say when Boxall was first named...
“Obviously, it's a big decision for us because he's such an integral part of what we do. We've still got a bit of stuff to sort out because the least amount of games he misses, the better. In one way, I'm pleased for him. In another, I'm disappointed for us because he's the cornerstone of our back four here. We could say no, but when you speak to the kid, I get it. Maybe the World Cup is something that's not going to happen for him. This is the next thing for him, so we reluctantly agreed. We're reluctant to let him go, but we hope he's back sooner rather than later.”
Bit hard to trust a man who admittedly didn’t wanna release the dude in the first place. Problem is that the squad announcement deadlines are past and so the OlyWhites actually cannot name a replacement player for him. Gotta roll with just the two overagers if that’s the deal. Which isn’t even that much of a set back considering how much trouble other nations have had selecting overage players with clubs not needing to release them and with Copa America and the Euros both only just finishing (and the Gold Cup for Concacaf just beginning). Romania, who are in our group, didn’t name a single overage player. Aussie only named two and one of them is only overage by literally a few days.
This Guy Right Here...
Zach Riley, folks. Remember the name.
Murky Boxing Yarns
Among the things you really don’t want to see when Joseph Parker is preparing for a second crack at Dereck Chisora, this would be right up near the top of the list...
Except that then Parker, like a day later, was chucking up snaps on his Insta stories from the UFC bout on the weekend, Mayweather vs Poirier. Clearly can’t be out an about when he has a deadly infectious disease... except then Dangerous Dave Higgins told Sky Sports UK that Parker does not, in fact, have covid. Tyson Fury definitely does though so the fight against Wilder (the second rematch) has been pushed back til October instead of taking place in a couple weeks.
But Parker soon deleted that IG story, making this whole situation look even more suspicious. Given he was at the fights, you’d figure Parker probably doesn’t have covid after all but that only fuels folks suggesting that maybe Fury doesn’t have it either and it’s all a ploy to delay the fight so he can get in better shape or something. I dunno. I just wanna watch the good boxing bouts and dumb stuff keeps getting in the way. At least Parker’s break means he’s still on pace to fight Chisora (who just split with manager David Haye) later in the year. October/November was the last target date I heard. Bit far away but everything’s kinda on hold while Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua sort out all their business.