[Sport]: Rage, Rage Against the scoring of the Goal

It’s been a little while since I did a “real” sports post so I’m going to try. The problem is that with Dom covering baseball and Dave doing basketball there has been no real sport going on for me to cover.

What’s that? Sounds like a whiney whimpering voice saying (in-between sobs) “But what about the cricket and the Super 12”. Dry your eyes mate. They aren’t real sports. Well cricket’s definitely not. And the Super 12 is a farce. There that should keep you reading.

Well done Lou Vincent. Lil’ Lou got 224 runs against Sri Lanka yesterday at the Basin Reserve. That is the seventh-most for a NZ batsman ever, 5th most at the Basin and quite a bit more than what everyone else got. See, he’s not just a big chin. So with big scores like that we might actually draw the test. Sorry, that was a joke. I am actually surprised they were playing at all. It was bloody freezing yesterday in the Capital and the Southerlies were no fun.

Lou was apparently happier with getting one hundred than with getting the second one. He hadn’t had a century in a while and really wanted one. That is why he got the second hundred in half the time. So that has to be the Black Caps strategy from now on. Just don’t give a shit and you play better. They should just wander out listening to a walkman, shirt un-tucked and wearing an armband that says “Glenn McGrath stole my car”; stand in a baseball stance and then smack the red leather off the mofo. Better yet, go to the crease and then put a solid black visor over your helmet (“But with the blast-shield down, how am I supposed to bat”) and let the Force do the rest.

(By the way check out Shane Warne at the bottom of this page, had a little too much sun)

I was planning on blogging about how boring Test Cricket is, but that seems sort of rude now.

The Super 12 is shaping up to be what it always is: predictable. With the possible exception of the Hurricanes; but ‘Canes fans don’t get your hopes up. I still don’t like bonus points. It should be Win or Lose. There should be no consolation for the losers. Actually I’m not that harsh, but it irks me that you can win more games but still be behind a team that lost a few close ones, like the Waratahs. The current table looks like this:

Rank Team P W D L BP Points
1 Waratahs 7 5 - 2 7 27
2 Hurricanes 7 6 - 1 1 25
3 Highlanders 7 5 1 1 1 23
4 Crusaders 6 4 - 2 4 20

It should look like this:

Rank Team P W D L BP Points
1 Hurricanes 7 6 - 1 1 24
2 Highlanders 7 5 1 1 1 22
3 Waratahs 7 5 - 2 7 20
4 Crusaders 6 4 - 2 4 16

The use of bonus points should only be for tie-breaks.

The Super 12 is just dull. And don’t think that’ll it’ll get better as the Super 14. It’ll just be duller for longer. Perth and…hey, who is the other team. Any way, they will either occupy the bottom of the table for their entire existence (which I give 3 years max) or they will come flying out of the blocks almost make the playoffs and then occupy the bottom of the table for the rest of their entire existence (which I give 3 years max). Ah, the other team is (according to this) is going to be the Central Cheetahs. The Mighty Elephants (mentioned in the article) sound cooler though, and do the South Africans really want a team called Cheetahs before they even get on the field?

[[Update: Dom informed me that the new contracts run for 5 years, I believe that these guys probably wont make it that far though]]

Also I just found this article which claims that there will be Monday night matches in the Super 14 and the season will be shorter. Well that’s good to hear. Of course the article sites the NFL’s very popular Monday Night Football, but fails to mention the horrible period of adjustment that it took the NFL to work through. Also it doesn’t mention the fact that the NFL players start their MNF games close to midnight in order to fit into TV scheduling. Are our rugby players going to submit to TV times? There are no convenient breaks in rugby for ads either, so it will still be on Sky.

SANZAR had it in their hands to make the competition interesting by inviting the Japanese and the Islanders to play (which may in turn help their respective nations for the next World Cup). But instead went with dull, boring, PREDICTABLE rugby. They should have listened to me.

Away now to the asexual parent of rugby football: Football (actually played with the feet). The beautiful game. Here is another article about the Milanese soccer “fans”. According to the BBC article:

“In Holland, the fans tend to riot when they win whereas British or Italian fans
tend to object with anger when results turn against them.”

Note: in Holland it's "riot", in England and Italy it's "object with anger".

This is another reason why I like NZ. If our team wins we have a “good on ya well done, but don’t get a big head” attitude. If our team loses we have a “don’t worry we’ll get ‘em next time and we are just a small country” attitude, except for our poor cricketers recently and the All Blacks at the 1999 World Cup. (I remember a TV One poll done in December of 1999 getting people to rank the worst tragedies of the 20th Century, losing the ’99 World Cup beat WW1).

The moment we lose this we become Australia. And nobody wants that, except maybe Winston Peters.