Unforeseen Circumstances
NZ Warriors' slow start, All Whites shenanigans, Kiwi-NRL 2-0 crew, domestic cricket, Oceania football, NBL Finals & more
Podcast
Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Youtube
Reading Menu
Kiwi-NRL Spotlight: Deine Mariner's Flashy & Tough Start To 2024 (Rugby League)
Ben Old Has Dribbled His Way Into Golden Boy Status At The Wellington Phoenix (Football)
Flying Kiwis – March 13 (Football)
The Breakers Have Bowed Out Of NBL24, But It Wasn't Without A Fight (Basketball)
White Ferns vs England: Sneaky Player Stats & Trends (Cricket)
27fm Weekly Playlist: March 15 (Music)
Scotty’s Word
While the NZ Warriors loss to Storm wasn't that bad, the reality of trying to back up last season has permeated across all NZW teams. The NRL season is a long, windy journey and NZW have plenty of space for improvements. Don't forget that they are playing without their starting fullback in Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and starting hooker Wayde Egan didn't play vs Storm. Take two starting spine players out of any NRL team and they probably won't win.
They top three grades for NZW are 1-5 to start this season. U21s have the same 0-2 record as the NRL team and the NSW Cup lads are 1-1. All three teams have conceded more points than they have scored. My intuition is that all three teams have good players and I'm not fussed by results below NSW Cup. The total package here signals that the 2024 season hasn't started as most would have hoped.
NRL
14th | 0-2 | -8 points difference
NSW Cup
9th | 1-1 | -16 points difference
U21 Jersey Flegg
14th | 0-2 | -54 points difference
U19 SG Ball
10th | 3-4 | +40 points difference
U17 Harold Matthews
6th | 4-2 | +5 points difference
The only NZW team with a winning record is the U17 crew and that's the least important. Having a full pipeline of NZW teams offers clear insights when a selection move at the NRL level flows through the grades. Egan's absence saw Chanel Harris-Tavita promoted from NSW Cup which opened a halves spot for Luke Hanson, who moved up from U21s.
Phranklyn Mano-Le-Mamea moved from fullback to partner Cassius Cowley in the halves for U21s and Nehemiah Amoroa went from wing to fullback. Mano-Le-Mamea was played nearly every position in men's footy last year (Fox Memorial and NZRL National Premiership) which is on display in this rotation. Amoroa seems like a fabulous fullback prospect with speed and rugby union play-making skills - probably too slick for wing.
Another U21 thing was Noah Harmer-Campbell getting a spot on the bench. A Hornby junior from Christchurch, Harmer-Campbell was part of the St Thomas of Canterbury College team who won last year's National Secondary Schools championship. This resulted in him being named starting hooker in the tournament team and it looks like it was his second year in a row making this squad.
I'm learning about more Canterbury lads in the mix for Bulldogs like Callum Donaldson who is actually from West Coast but the Canterbury/Bulldogs combo probably applies here. Donaldson was the starting lock for Bulldogs U21s this weekend and I'll chuck in Riley Pascoe who is from West Coast Rugby League and he's hunting game time for Dragons U21s.
Rugby league is stewing in the South Island. NZW play in Christchurch this weekend for the second time this season and there was news last week of a new bid for an NRL team based in Christchurch. There has been a notable increase in Kiwi-NRL juniors from the South Island across all grades (and women's footy) which includes most of the STOCC championship winning team.
From a similar zone in my brain...
NRL is trying to crack the USA market while NFL is trying to expand overseas.
I don't know what that means, it's just a thing that's happening. Rugby union and Sevens are making moves in USA, plus cricket wants to tap into USA (although you can check in with Peter Della-Penna to see what a shambles cricket in USA is). At the same time, all I'm hearing from my podcast/video rotation is that NFL is dominating the sport market and goofy ol' NCAA sports is sizzling.
NRL teams who are 2-0...
Raiders
Matthew Timoko, Joseph Tapine, Jordan Rapana, Sebastian Kris, Danny Levi, Ata Mariota
Timoko has a case for the best centre in NRL. Up from 153m/game last year to 193m/game this year. Tapine is awesome, averaging 150+ metres per game for the third year in a row. Tapine, Rapana and Levi are from Wellington.
Cowboys
Griffin Neame, Jason Taumalolo
Neame's played 33mins in each of his first two games. Career-best 97.7% tackling efficiency this season. Taumalolo has a bung knee.
Sharks
Ronaldo Mulitalo, Briton Nikora
Love watching these two lads and how energetic they are. Also love the Sharks Kiwi-NRL pipeline.
Sea Eagles
Josh Aloiai, Jaxson Paulo
Northcote junior Paulo looks faster and more dynamic than he did for Rabbitohs then Roosters. Sea Eagles also picked up Halswell junior (Canterbury reminder) Oliver Lawry from Tigers just before the season started and Lawyer has shifted from halves to centre for their U21s.
Storm
Jahrome Hughes, Will Warbrick, Reimis Smith, Joe Chan, Alex MacDonald .. Nelson Asofa-Solomona
Hughes and Asofa-Solomona are also from Wellington, so five lads from Wellington are in these five winning teams. Asofa-Solomona had some dramas headlines last week and hasn't played yet. Smith bolsters possible Kiwis centre depth. Don't overlook MacDonald - he's made 48 tackles @ 100% as a middle forward.
Sophie Devine is a WPL champion after defeating Amelia Kerr in the final. Kerr won last year's WPL so kiwis have won the first two. These two won't play the first T20 vs England and Mikaela Greig has been called up as cover as per our North vs South observations. Devine and Kerr were solid in WPL, credit to them for winning mahi. These stats won't help White Ferns beat England though...
Sophie Devine: 136 runs @ 15avg/125sr | 6w @ 29avg/7.9rpo
Amelia Kerr: 215 runs @ 35avg/129sr | 7w @ 31avg/9rpo
Here is an overview of the tour games played between Aotearoa and England. NZ won the two games against England A as they should, then England A snared two wins against NZ-A over the weekend...
NZ vs England A overview
Game tahi: NZ won by 15 runs
Game rua: NZ won by 6 wickets
NZ-A Stats vs England A
Game tahi: England won by 30 runs
Game rua: England won by 8 wickets
Stats for NZ-A vs England A (meh series for Greig)...
Batted Twice
Kate Anderson: 63 runs @ 63avg/106sr
Georgia Plimmer: 46 runs @ 23avg/97sr
Mikaela Greig: 27 runs @ 13avg/81sr
Saachi Shahri: 24 runs @ 12avg/88sr
Batted Once
Polly Inglis: 20 runs @ 125sr
Hayley Jensen: 16 runs @ 123sr
Leigh Kasperek: 16 runs @ 123sr
Prue Catton: 6 runs @ 100sr
Claudia Green: 3 runs @ 60sr
Molly Penfold: 2 runs @ 50sr
Bowling
Hayley Jensen: 3w @ 14avg/6rpo
Molly Penfold: 3w @ 14avg/6rpo
Leigh Kasperek: 2w @ 25avg/7.2rpo
Claudia Green: 4ov @ 9.2rpo
Sarah Asmussen: 6ov @ 10rpo
Bree Illing: 4ov @ 11.7rpo
Three youngsters have centuries in the Plunket Shield games currently being played. Dale Phillips hit 127 runs for Otago vs Wellington and Gareth Severin hit 105 runs for Wellington. Mitch Hay hit 146 runs for Canterbury vs ND. Cole McConchie also scored 106 runs for Canterbury, Tom Bruce led CD's batting innings vs Auckland with 95 runs and Peter Younghusband followed up his 5 wickets with 80 runs as nightwatcher for Wellington.
The youngsters are getting the spotlight here though. Severin and Hay have FC averages over 40, while Phillips isn't far behind. Interestingly, all three do their best mahi in the longest format and along with lads like Curtis Heaphy, these youngsters are showing longform run-scoring traits: patience, maturity, craft.
Gareth Severin - 24yrs
FC: 45avg/49sr
LA: 20.4avg/62sr
T20s: 23avg/106sr
Mitch Hay - 23yrs
FC: 41avg/54sr
LA: 22avg/74sr
T20: 19avg/148sr
Dale Phillips - 25yrs
FC: 36avg/52sr
LA: 25avg/81sr
T20: 16avg/109sr
Musical jam…
Wildcard’s Notebook
It was a strange sensation writing about a NZ Football squad, the All Whites in this case, having seen several important players all recover from injury in time to partake, leaving no major injury absentees (except for Ryan Thomas but he’s only gotten one cap since Hudson). So it goes without saying that the last weekend of club fixtures prior to the international break was going to be a painful one.
Tim Payne limped off with what looked like a hamstring issue for the Wellington Phoenix. Hard to see him making the trip. Plus there were less severe, but potentially more significant, issues for both Chris Wood and Sarpreet Singh. Wood scored for Nottm Forest but had to be subbed off with quarter of an hour to go. His manager called it a precaution. Premier League managers do tend to play tug of war with injured players around this time. Singh was listed as doubtful ahead of Hansa Rostock’s latest and was then left out of the matchday squad. The All Whites with Wood + Singh versus the All Whites without Wood or Singh are two vastly different creatures so prayers for what the coming days entail.
Wood did score on the weekend though. Bagged his 150th English league goal (there are more in various cup competitions, of course) in a 1-1 draw vs Luton Town. And if you follow The Niche Cache on the various social media yardposts then you’ll know that we’re in a glorious moment for Flying Kiwis goals right now. This month alone, every one of the following footballers has scored for their club teams:
Chris Wood, Paige Satchell, Indiah-Paige Riley, Marko Stamenic, Alex Greive, Max Mata, George Stanger, Andre De Jong, Meikayla Moore... plus if you want to count the A-League then we can add in Ben Old, Hannah Wilkinson, Deven Jackson, Michaela Robertson, Alyssa Whinham, Kosta Barbarouses, Oskar van Hattum, Marco Rojas, and Macey Fraser.
By the way, since they moved the All Whites games from UAE to Egypt, the kickoff times are slightly different. Instead of 7am kickoffs NZT, they’re both now going to be 9am kickoffs. NZ vs Egypt on Saturday morning, then it’s either Tunisia or Croatia on either Tuesday or Wednesday morning depending on if it’s the final or the classification game (in other words, we get an extra day’s rest if we beat Egypt).
And there’s been an incredible update with the tournament itself. Originally it was the W Cup, which stood for Winsunited Cup. Winsunited being “An International Sports Management Agency” which specialises in many organisational middle-man duties such as arranging fixtures and tournaments, player representation, brand endorsement, and sponsorship/partnerships. However their website is super unspecific about it all, with their list of clients only being the four nations of this event and a few UAE teams. Like, that’s it. Rather dodgy, don’t you reckon?
Yeah so, well, then the four nations ganged up and moved the tournament away from the UAE because they felt that the hosts weren’t fulfilling the terms of their contract. They moved it to Egypt and it seems that now the W Cup has become the ACUD International Football Cup (ACUD is a sort of manufactured business district outside of Cairo, built to help ease congestion in the capital city - though the 90,000+ seater stadium in ACUD isn’t done yet so they’re still playing in Cairo). This tournament has also been swept up until the wider FIFA Series of mini-tournaments designed to help middling/smaller nations get more organised fixtures.
This is what NZ Football said in their own statement:
“The change in location comes after the four football federations of Croatia, Egypt, New Zealand and Tunisia simultaneously notified the organiser of the previously agreed W Cup of breaches of the key contract clauses, and proceeded to find a suitable new solution.”
Meanwhile the Egyptian side of things used the phrase “sponsorship issues” to explain the situation. The tournament’s Wikipedia page was redirected to a section in the 2024 FIFA Series page over the weekend, but before that happened there was an edit made which claimed the reason for the move was that “the organizing company was just a fake company”.
The citation there is the one I’ve linked in that sponsorship issues one earlier in this paragraph, which says nothing about fake companies so it’s not exactly a verified piece of information. It’s also been scrubbed pretty rapidly scrubbed from the internet. For what it’s worth, Winsunited blamed the issues on “unforeseen circumstances” and referred to the tournament as having been “cancelled”.
With that trip into the murky territory or organised footballing activities complete, let us now venture into the much more wholesome and unforeseen-circumstance-free zone of... *checks notes... then gulps*... Oceania Football. Where the Women’s Champions League has been ongoing, with Auckland United becoming the first ever NZ representatives in the competition, after Eastern Suburbs withdrew a year ago.
Auckland United have lost a few players since last year’s National League title. Not sure where to because there’s nowhere to really track that stuff. But the squad they took to the Solomon Islands didn’t include goalie Aimee Hall, defender Chelsea Elliott, fullback Suya Haering, and midfielder Maisy Dewell - all of whom started the grand final. Haering has gone to Turbine Potsdam in Germany, dunno about the rest. Maybe they just couldn’t get time off work. Anyway, that meant a very young team with all but two of the 18 players picked being born after 2000, and exactly half of them born from 2005 onwards. Only one major new signing, that being Canterbury striker Charlotte Roche.
AUFC drew their first match against Labasa (Fiji). Bree Johnson popped up with an important goal as she often does (in the 63rd minute) but they conceded a controversial late penalty to have to settle for a share of the points. That left them probably needing a win against AS Academy (New Caledonia)... so Rene Wasi (who’d set up BJ’s goal) scored a hat-trick with three excellent finishes. First of them after only four minutes. The second in first half stoppage time. Third on 55’. Penny Brill and Charlotte Roche would each score late goals to make the margin even bigger, a 5-0 win for Auckland United.
That win effectively did the trick so they made six changes (with an 18 player squad, that’s almost as many as they can make) to their starting team and that led to a 1-0 win against Veitongo FC (Tonga). Poppy O’Brien with the 29th minute strike. Probably should’ve added more but they didn’t need to. Cruising through in first place of their group to face Tafea FC in the semi final on Wednesday afternoon. Hekari United (Papua New Guinea) vs Labasa (Fiji) is the other semi. Sturdy enough progress so far.
Meanwhile the second leg of the Men’s OCL qualifiers turned out to be a belter of a match. Wellington Olympic were 1-0 down after the away leg due to a Stipe Ukich goal, the Auckland City youngster - part of last year’s U17 World Cup squad - demanding his share of their U20s minutes for 2024 with a crucial goal. But Olympic weren’t messing about in the home leg. Hamish Watson tied things up on aggregate after 20 minutes before Jesse Randall sent them ahead after 23 mins. Mario Ilich responded for ACFC (27’) only for Watto to immediately retaliate (28’) and with half an hour gone it was the Greeks who led 3-2 on the aggs. They kept that going into half-time too.
But then Auckland City did what they did to this lot last year by triumphantly sprinting to the finish line, overcoming a late deficit just like Geordie Beamish on the track. Reggie Murati scored three minutes into the second half. Then Cam Howieson banged one home in the 82nd minute to send Auckland City into the Oceania Champions League with a 4-3 aggregate result.
Strange game because once Hamish Watson opened the scoring, it looked like there would be no stopping Olympic. Then they got weirdly passive in the second half as though they were protecting the lead rather than playing the game. That caught up with them in a harsh manner. Still, it was another excellent contest between the two best club teams in the country and we can only look forward to their fated rematch in the National League later in the annum. Possibly in the Chatham Cup as well, who knows.
Game one of the NBL Finals saw Melbourne United strut their way to a 104-81 victory over Tasmania JackJumpers. They were just locked in, too good, could not be stopped. Shea Ili played 26 minutes and had 8 points, 3 assists, 2 rebounds. Missed a few shots, going 2/8 overall and also only 3/7 from the free throw line. But his team was +17 in his minutes and you probably don’t even need to be told that it was the defensive end with which United took control, the area in which Defensive Player of the Year Shea Ili thrives more than any.
Also thanks to the hefty margin of victory, both Flynn Cameron (Melbourne) and Tom Vodanovich (Tasmania) were able to get the last minute or so of action. Finals debut for Cameron, but Tommy V is an old hand on this stage. As mentioned on Friday, he’s now made the NBL Finals in three consecutive years and with a different team each time. He’s the lucky charm of the NBL. Game two is on Friday, game three on Sunday... and it’s best of five in the finals.
Oh yeah and if you were paying attention on Friday, the Breakers did indeed announce the signing of Sam Mennenga for next season, following his mutual release from Cairns Taipans. Another instance of the Breakers waiting to see if a dude is any good at a rival team before pouncing on him. As they did with Izayah Le’afa. As they did with Yanni Wetzell. Would be nicer if they’d trust kiwi players from the get-go but at least they’re going out and getting them when they’re ready. With Mennenga on board, the Breakers are now up to two contracted players: Dane Pineau and SM. Hopefully that means Mennenga starting centre but we shall see how that goes.
Finally, allow me to introduce you to the earworm in my head...