Weekend Wrap
It had to happen – after nine weeks, all the favourites at the tote won in the weekend’s Super 14, although the shortest-priced of them (the Crusaders) did their level best to go to sleep after threatening to run up a cricket score against the Tahs. Question: if you’re supposedly the best side in the competition, and are up 22-5 after half an hour against the team sitting second to last, how the fuck do you end up relying on a missed conversion to win the game?
A salutary lesson on why you never, never, NEVER back short-priced favourites, at least if you want to avoid a heart attack. The Crusaders have some history here, drawing against the winless Force last year and before that squeaking home against the Cats by 3 points when $1.03 at the TAB.
Unfortunately it’s given the red and blacks a wake-up call and I fear for the next 6 weeks we’ll all be sitting twiddling our thumbs why we wait for the inevitable Blues-Crusaders final with the only mildly interesting question left is whether it’ll be in Auckland or Christchurch.
And it’s similar at the Cricket World Cup, where we sit and wait for NZ, Aus, SAF and SL to get to the semis when the competition will finally start. That’s 3 weeks away, and in the meantime we have to endure such match-ups as Ireland v Bangladesh. Actually, to be fair that might be half interesting and in one of the few light-hearted moments at the World Cup this was one of the few pre-sold sell-out games in the comp. Why? Remember this was supposed to be India v Pakistan.
If you detect a bit of a blue mood, you’re not wrong – sick as a dog, rings around my eyes worse than Mike Moore’s with 1 a.m. starts to make money and enthusiasm levels waning. I need a holiday.
So let’s do a bit of shit stirring. Currently there are World Championships in both Cycling and Swimming going on and little ol’ NZ have been doing their level best to mix it with the heavyweights and I was about to congratulate butterfly swimmer Moss Burmester and the Men’s Pursuit team on their fourth placings in their events.
But hang on. Remember 12 months ago? Melbourne Commonwealth Games anybody? Fourth placings? SPARC boss Nick Hill reminding us (and I quote) – “We need to front up, a fourth is a failure”
So why our sporting media are using superlatives like “astounding” when reporting on these (lack of) achievements is beyond me. They obviously haven’t heard the word from SPARC central that winning is the only thing that matters and in the words of No Fear, second place is the first loser.
So can someone explain why we pour millions of dollars into elite sport in this country so we can become the world’s experts at gathering tin medals?
And if you haven’t read the Sunday Star Times, an interesting postscript to the swimming funding fiasco can be found here. So SPARC – despite being in existence for over 4 years, don’t even have the systems in place to ensure athlete grants are paid on time. What a joke. But what I find intriguing is – why didn’t any national sporting organisation get on the phone and give them a rark up. Think about it – if your employer “forgot” to pay you on time, you’d be up to the boss’ desk faster than a rat up a drainpipe asking for your dosh.
It says a lot about the relationship between NSO’s and SPARC that a NSO can’t even contact the funding agency to say “excuse me, but aren’t your athlete grant payments overdue?” As the artcle quotes from a CEO - "we know SPARC are useless ... but we can't afford to go public"
It's actually a sorry state of affairs - national sporting organisations unable to question or criticise SPARC for fear of retribution.
As I’m unwell, I won’t be posting until Thursday – so have a good week.
A salutary lesson on why you never, never, NEVER back short-priced favourites, at least if you want to avoid a heart attack. The Crusaders have some history here, drawing against the winless Force last year and before that squeaking home against the Cats by 3 points when $1.03 at the TAB.
Unfortunately it’s given the red and blacks a wake-up call and I fear for the next 6 weeks we’ll all be sitting twiddling our thumbs why we wait for the inevitable Blues-Crusaders final with the only mildly interesting question left is whether it’ll be in Auckland or Christchurch.
And it’s similar at the Cricket World Cup, where we sit and wait for NZ, Aus, SAF and SL to get to the semis when the competition will finally start. That’s 3 weeks away, and in the meantime we have to endure such match-ups as Ireland v Bangladesh. Actually, to be fair that might be half interesting and in one of the few light-hearted moments at the World Cup this was one of the few pre-sold sell-out games in the comp. Why? Remember this was supposed to be India v Pakistan.
If you detect a bit of a blue mood, you’re not wrong – sick as a dog, rings around my eyes worse than Mike Moore’s with 1 a.m. starts to make money and enthusiasm levels waning. I need a holiday.
So let’s do a bit of shit stirring. Currently there are World Championships in both Cycling and Swimming going on and little ol’ NZ have been doing their level best to mix it with the heavyweights and I was about to congratulate butterfly swimmer Moss Burmester and the Men’s Pursuit team on their fourth placings in their events.
But hang on. Remember 12 months ago? Melbourne Commonwealth Games anybody? Fourth placings? SPARC boss Nick Hill reminding us (and I quote) – “We need to front up, a fourth is a failure”
So why our sporting media are using superlatives like “astounding” when reporting on these (lack of) achievements is beyond me. They obviously haven’t heard the word from SPARC central that winning is the only thing that matters and in the words of No Fear, second place is the first loser.
So can someone explain why we pour millions of dollars into elite sport in this country so we can become the world’s experts at gathering tin medals?
And if you haven’t read the Sunday Star Times, an interesting postscript to the swimming funding fiasco can be found here. So SPARC – despite being in existence for over 4 years, don’t even have the systems in place to ensure athlete grants are paid on time. What a joke. But what I find intriguing is – why didn’t any national sporting organisation get on the phone and give them a rark up. Think about it – if your employer “forgot” to pay you on time, you’d be up to the boss’ desk faster than a rat up a drainpipe asking for your dosh.
It says a lot about the relationship between NSO’s and SPARC that a NSO can’t even contact the funding agency to say “excuse me, but aren’t your athlete grant payments overdue?” As the artcle quotes from a CEO - "we know SPARC are useless ... but we can't afford to go public"
It's actually a sorry state of affairs - national sporting organisations unable to question or criticise SPARC for fear of retribution.
As I’m unwell, I won’t be posting until Thursday – so have a good week.
Labels: post mortems
posted by Rob Crawford at 5:02 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home