The Vale
Blackcaps in T20 World Cup final, Warriors vs Roosters, Ben Waine, White Ferns/Melie Kerr, Plunket Shield, Auckland FC & Wellington Phoenix, Kiwi-NRL, and more
Scotty’s Word
Very busy Monday so dont’t have any other Blackcaps thoughts aside from gratitude being a potion for melancholy. Bummer that we still can’t taste World Cup glory but grateful that little ol’ Aotearoa is always in the mix.
White Ferns are 2-0 up in their ODI series vs Zimbabwe. Melie Kerr took 7 wickets in the second game and her mahi since returning from the WPL has been typically fantastic...
Scores: 6, 128, 4, 101*, 82, 15, 45
Wickets: 1, 0, 3, 2, 1, 1, 4, 7
11 wickets in the two ODIs vs Zimbabwe takes Kerr to 117 ODI wickets. She is second for the most ODI wickets taken by kiwis and with Lea Tahuhu retiring from ODIs, Kerr will soon overtake her 125 wickets. Tahuhu and Kerr (both 28avg) the only players averaging below 30 in the group of six who have 80+ wickets for New Zealand.
Kerr is currently eighth in the run-scoring charts. Of the eight batters with 2,300+ runs, Kerr (40.7) and Debbie Hockley are the only players averaging over 40. When Kerr hits 3,000 ODI runs she will be one of five batters to reach that mark and she is one of five batters who have hit at least four ODI centuries for Aotearoa.
Brett Randell also took 7 wickets in an innings for Central Districts vs Northern Districts. He’s a really good bowler...
FC: 25.84avg/2.8rpo
LA: 21.98avg/5rpo
T20: 27.72avg/9.1rpo
For paid subscribers
White Ferns spotlight on Brooke Halliday and Molly Penfold
Curtis Heaphy’s crazy List-A average
Northern Districts seamers used this season
Kiwi-NRL deep cuts
NZ Warriors U21 notebook
2025/26 Plunket Shield: Round Five Basics
2025/26 Plunket Shield: Five Funky Hot Pockets
Winning Start To 2026 NRL Season For New Zealand Warriors
Kiwi-NRL Spotlight: Debuts For Setu Tu & Siale Faeamani
The main thing from the NZ Warriors win vs Roosters: ball movement.
More offloads than usual and crisp passing. Add that on top of fundamentals that have continued through the two Andys era like high completion rates and few penalties conceded. NZW didn’t dominate the physical battle and it’s very difficult to do so against a powerful Roosters team, but they still found offloads and were excellent in moving the ball during chaotic passages.
Here’s how the completion rate and offloading combo vs Roosters compares to the last three seasons (completion rate | offloads per game)…
2023: 79% | 7.25
2024: 82% | 7.41
2025: 81% | 7.72
2026: 81% | 16
Naufahu Whyte vs NZW: 59mins, 17 runs - 191m @ 11.2m/run, 2 tackle breaks, 26 tackles @ 92.8%
Whyte has progressed to be a dominant force for NZ Kiwis and is the best Roosters forward right now. He was recruited by Roosters while in Auckland at Kelston Boys High School and while there is a trend of Kiwi-NRL juniors leaving Roosters, they are still flush with youngsters from Aotearoa who they recruited into their system. Here are the Kiwi-NRL juniors in their system from the weekend’s footy…
NRL (loss vs NZW)
Naufahu Whyte (Bay Roskill), Benaiah Ioelu (Otara), Siua Wong (Mt Albert Gramar), Salesi Foketi (Manurewa)
NSW Cup (win vs NZW)
Kanaan Magele (De La Salle College), Foketi
Jersey Flegg Cup (loss vs NZW)
Jackson Stewart (Hornby), Tyrone Hurt-Pickering (Marist), Ryder Williams (Marist), Magele
SG Ball Cup
Bastion Armstrong (Otahuhu), Charleston Te Rore (Otara), Nathan Lopamaua (James Cook High School)
Wahine from Aotearoa who played in the U19 Panthers vs Bulldogs game this weekend...
Panthers
Jhaya Katyal (Taniwharau)
Olive Connolly (Linwood)
Malena Lavea (Richmond)
Tyali Raihe (Taniwharau)
Monica Ben (Otara)
Bulldogs
Tiare-Anne Leauga (Mangere East)
Violet Hiku (Manurewa High School)
Limilaiti Paea (Mangere East)
Evelyn Roberts (Mangere East)
Giovanna Suani (Mangere East)
Shafenior Lui (Mangere East)
Lahnayah Daniel (Waitakere College)
Josinah Filisi Tauiliili (Mangere East)
Musical jam…
Nick’s Notebook
It wasn’t to be in the T20 World Cup final. The Blackcaps got absolutely pumped by a better team, so it goes. It’s not even an excuse any more, it’s just the fact of the matter, that things are always going to be slightly against the Blackcaps in these tournaments – it’s not only that we’re the smallest full-member team, it’s that those bigger more powerful nations are also the usually ones who get to host these things and often get favourable conditions even when they don’t. The chips are stacked against the Blackcaps in so many ways yet they continue to turn up and compete more consistently than any nation apart from India. That’s amazing.
Here’s an update of last Thursday’s graphic of all the ICC tournament results since 2015 (now with added grand final hosts!)...
Runners-up on five occasions is rather nasty, not a fan of that statistic at all (nor the experience of watching those games). But, like, which of those games were we supposed to win? Not the World Test Championship final against that stacked Indian team, that’s for sure. Yet win we did.
Other than that, we got smoked in the 2015 final away against Australia in a tournament that we co-hosted... meaning that our only game outside of Aotearoa was that fnial. A similar thing happened in the 2025 Champions Trophy where we played in Pakistan throughout until meeting India in Dubai for the final, where they’d been posted all along (Bangladesh withdrew from this T20 World Cup for political reasons but India got to play neutral games, including the grand final, when caught in the same situation).
We got smashed by the hosts this morning. Tied with the hosts in England 2019 at the ODI World Cup only to get stiffed by a random tiebreaker. And the other was a loss, also in Dubai, against Australia in the T20 World Cup of 2021. Our only final before this 11-year period was the 2000 Champions Trophy where we beat India by four wickets in Kenya (imagine Kenya getting to host a major tournament these days... imagine any associate nation other than USA getting to host a major tournament these days).
So… shout out to Australia for being the only nation to beat the Blackcaps in an ICC tournament grand final in truly neutral conditions.
None of this is to say that India weren’t complete and utterly deserving of this championship though. No team had even scored 200 in a T20 WC final before and they put up 255/5 in one of the most incredible sustained hitting displays you’ll ever see. The wickets in India were flat as anything, nothing in it for the bowlers, everything in favour of enormous batting scores... but it was the same for both teams and India got more out of those conditions with both bat and ball. A comprehensive win which flows on smoothly from their 4-1 series win against the Blackcaps right before this tournament began. NZ’s squad was slightly different to what they had for the main event however the picture didn’t change. India smashed boundaries the entire way.
T20 World Cup Final | T20 Series vs India Pre-Wc
Matt Henry: 1/49 @ 12.25 rpo | 3/93 @ 11.62 rpo
Glenn Phillips: 0/5 @ 5rpo | 0/53 @ 13.25 rpo
Jacob Duffy: 0/42 @ 14.00 rpo | 6/189 @ 10.60 rpo
Lockie Ferguson: 0/48 @ 24.00 rpo | 2/41 @ 10.25 rpo
Mitchell Santner: 0/33 @ 8.25 rpo | 5/178 @ 11.86 rpo
Rachin Ravindra: 1/32 @ 16.00 rpo | Didn’t Bowl
James Neesham: 3/46 @ 11.50 rpo | Didn’t Play
In case you’re wondering, everyone else who bowled during that series got smashed too. Ish Sodhi bowled 15 overs at 12.93 rpo. Kristian Clarke bowled 4 overs at exactly 10 rpo. Kyle Jamieson 9 overs at 14.44 rpo. Zak Foulkes went for 16.00s off his six overs. Even Daryl Mitchell had a bowl... going for 23 runs of eight deliveries (17.25 rpo).
Across these six games against India, this is the carnage that they inflicted upon our poor bowlers...
#1 T20: 238/7 (RR: 11.90) – India won by 48 runs
#2 T20: 209/3 (RR: 13.63) - India won by 7 wickets
#3 T20: 155/2 (RR: 15.50) – India won by 8 wickets
#4 T20: 165/10 (RR: 8.83) – NZ won by 50 runs
#5 T2O: 271/5 (RR: 13.55) – India won by 46 runs
WCF: 255/5 (RR: 12.75) – India won by 96 runs
You can’t say the Blackcaps didn’t know what to expect. Six games deep and they still didn’t have an answer, so it goes.
Happily, there was one great kiwi sporting outcome from that 2.30am window... Ben Waine scored the winner as League One cellar-dwellers Port Vale won 1-0 against Premier League club Sunderland. 57 places above them in the EFL pyramid but they knocked them out. This coming just five days after Waine scored in extra time to beat Bristol City. Tell you what else, this was the third time in the last four rounds that Port Vale have won 1-0 with Ben Waine scoring the only goal. He’s resurrected his PVFC career from where he couldn’t even earn a seat on the bench as recently as November to scoring consecutive winning goals as The Vale made it to the quarters of the FA Cup for the first time in 72 years.
Ben Waine pre-December:
L1: 5/18 appearances | 0 goals in 184 minutes
Overall: 7/25 appearances | 0 goals in 364 minutes
Ben Waine December onwards:
L1: 14/16 appearances | 3 goals in 548 minutes (182 m/g)
Overall: 21/23 appearances | 8 goals in 1105 minutes (138 m/g)
Port Vale in the 2025-26 FA Cup
1R: Won 5-1 vs Maldon & Tiptree (Paton 15’, 18’, Hall 16’, Cole 24’, 56’)
2R: Won 1-0 vs Bristol Rovers (Waine 47’)
3R: Won 1-0 vs Fleetwood (Shipley 45+2’)
4R: Won 1-0 [AET] vs Bristol City (Waine 111’)
5R: Won 1-0 vs Sunderland (Waine 28’)
Across his whole time in England, Ben Waine has scored 8 goals in 2324 minutes in league action (a goal approximately every 290 minutes), spread between the Championship and League One while playing for Plymouth Argyle, Mansfield Town, and Port Vale. Meanwhile in the various cup competitions – FA Cup, League Cup, EFL Trophy – he has scored 11 goals in 1337 minutes (a goal approximately every 122 minutes).
His Wellington Phoenix numbers weren’t much different. In the A-League he scored 17 goals in 3177 mins (186 mins per goal) and in the Aussie Cup, back when the kiwi teams were still allowed in that tournament (not that we’re gonna miss it), he scored five goals in 661 minutes (132 mins per goal). There’s something about knockout footy that agrees with him. Better watch out when the All Whites crack the knockouts at the World Cup in a few months.
There were draws for both NZ A-League sides. Auckland FC drew 2-2 at home against Perth Glory. It was a game that they probably should have won, although this did feel different to the messy dropped points from a month ago when they kept wasting chances and blowing leads. This was a case of two sloppy goals, being a wee bit vulnerable in transition without Louis Verstraete (who returned off the bench for the last twenty mins), but otherwise delivering a mostly solid performance that required a very good tactical approach from the visitors to deny them. Frustrating but not indicative of a form skid.
Keep in mind this also wasn’t AFC’s best team by any means. No Hiroki Sakai who is set to miss the next few weeks with another injury. No Nando Pijnaker either - Jake Girdwood-Reich is potentially doing enough to keep Nando out of the eleven but without Sakai it’d help their flexibility if Pijnaker was available for the back three flip-a-roo (they had to put Jesse Randall at RWB for the closing stages vs Perth).
I do think this was their best front four now that May has found some form and there’s at least the inklings of some sort of combination between he and Sam Cosgrove finally... harsh on Lachlan Brook but they need a punch off the bench if they’re going to do something in the playoffs and he’s really good at coming on and running at tired defenders. And they’ve been better with Logan Rogerson’s workrate all season, even if his shooting has reverted to a pesky degree.
And personally I’d rather see the Verstraete/Brimmer midfield that they ended with rather than the Gallegos/Howieson combo they started with (or any other mix-and-match of the four). Respect to Cam Howieson though... first time he’s started three games in a row for AFC. In his eight starts, Auckland have won five, drawn two, and lost one with +12 goal difference so the track record is great. Would be curious to see what it looks like with him and Verstraete together if Brimmer’s not gonna be trusted for ninety.
Remaining Fixtures in ALM Minor Premiership Race
Newcastle Jets (40 PTS, +13 GD)
Auckland FC (H)
Sydney FC (A)
Macarthur (A)
Adelaide (H)
Melbourne Victory (A)
Central Coast (H)
Auckland FC (36 PTS, +14 GD)
Newcastle (A)
Macarthur (H)
Adelaide (A)
Melbourne Victory (H)
Central Coast (H)
Sydney FC (A)
Six games to go each, Newcastle Jets now have a four point advantage... though that could be cut to one point if they lose to AFC next weekend. They play each other there and then they have the same five opponents across the rest of the regular season – those five teams all currently perched between 3-7 on the ladder. Difficult games throughout. Slightly more difficult for AFC who not only have the points margin to overhaul but also have to do a lot more travelling with only one of Newcastle’s remaining matches being outside of the wider Sydney area. But everything still to play for.
And if you want the Welly Nix yarns... I’ve got a few in the paid section. Help support Aotearoa’s premier independent sports website and get bonus reckons as a reward. Now that’s a good deal.
Musical Jam...
