Falling Dominoes
Tall Blacks World Cup efforts, Blackcaps T20s, White Ferns squad, Bulldogs shenanigans, Kiwis in NBL/WNBL, Flying Kiwis transfers & more
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Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Big Crowds & Tough Wins (Rugby League)
Kiwi-NRL Spotlight: King Charnze (Nicoll-Klokstad) (Rugby League)
Further Impressions From The Wellington Phoenix Lads In The Aussie Cup (Football)
Flying Kiwis – August 29 (Football)
Here Are Six Future Football Ferns To Help Solve Our Goal Scoring Issues (Football)
Thoughts And Reflections From The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup (Football)
Previewing the Aotearoa Tall Blacks at the 2023 FIBA World Cup (Basketball)
Blackcaps vs UAE T20I Series Debrief (Cricket)
Five Things From Blackcaps T20 Tour Games In England (Cricket)
27fm Weekly Playlist: August 28 (Music)
Scotty’s Word
Blackcaps lost their first T20I against England and were thoroughly dispatched. All good as this T20I series is merely a stepping stone towards ODI World Cup prep and I'm always intrigued about how Blackcaps work their way through a series. Expect tweaks and improvements, though maybe not wins as England are running hot in their white-ball mahi.
Glenn Phillips scored 41 runs to lead the kiwis and he's a lad to watch out for considering he has 65 runs @ 16.2avg/84sr in T20Is this year. Southee was the best bowler with 1w @ 8.3rpo. Sodhi and Ferguson also took a wicket, conceding over 10rpo alongside Santner and Adam Milne. Southee has a fabulous record in T20Is this year (see below) and has also snared 6w @ 24avg/5.9rpo in ODIS this year.
Here are the best T20I Blackcaps this year who are in the squad against England...
Batting
Mark Chapman: 493 runs @ 49.3avg/144sr
Daryl Mitchell: 261 runs @ 26.1avg/129sr
Rachin Ravindra: 74 runs @ 14.8avg/125sr
Finn Allen: 70 runs @ 17.5avg/134sr
Mitchell Santner: 70 runs @ 14avg/106sr
Bowling
Adam Milne: 11w @ 22.4avg/9.1rpo
Ish Sodhi: 8w @ 32avg/7.5rpo
Tim Southee: 7w @ 15avg/7.2rpo
Matt Henry: 6w @ 20avg/7.5rpo
Mitchell Santner: 6w @ 27.8avg/6.4rpo
Fascinating stuff in the Aotearoa A vs Australia A unofficial Test in Brisbane. The kiwis won largely due to Scott Kuggeleijn taking 5w, then hitting 101* @ 119sr before taking 4w. Here's a mini breakdown of the game...
NZ A - 147
Tom Bruce: 37 runs
Brett Randell: 34* runs
Australia A - 263
Scott Kuggeleijn: 5w @ 3.7rpo
Jacob Duffy: 2w @ 3.6rpo
Sean Solia: 2w @ 2.9rpo
NZ A - 468
Sean Solia: 91 runs
Tom Bruce: 51 runs
Muhammad Abbas: 55 runs
Scott Kuggeleijn: 101* runs @ 119sr
Australia A - 127
Scott Kuggeleijn: 4w @ 4.3rpo
Sean Solia: 3w @ 2.1rpo
Kuggeleijn and Blair Tickner were the main benefactors of Test absences last summer. Tickner's currently out of the Blackcaps mix on daddy duties and it makes sense that the next-up Test player from last summer Kuggeleijn has dominated the Aussies, in Australia. Kuggeleijn is a powerful batter down the order and is one of the fastest bowlers in Aotearoa which is boosted by this performance; Kuggeleijn now has 9w in Australia to reinforce his domestic performances.
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A deeper breakdown will be coming over the weekend. Two more quick things...
Muhammad Abbas is 19-20yrs with a century and four scores over 50 in his first six games of First-Class cricket. Abbas has 508 runs @ 46avg overall. Abbas was the only youngster in the NZ A team and despite grabbing a duck in his NZ A outing last summer, Abbas continues to rise as one of the leading youngsters in kiwi cricket.
Ajaz Patel has not taken a wicket in six consecutive innings of cricket. This includes two 2nd 11 T20 games for Durham, two innings of County Championship and then two innings vs Australia A. Patel took 1w @ 3.3rpo and then 0w @ 8.7rpo in his outing for NZ A last summer and since that second innings against Aus A, Patel has eight innings without a wicket (including six in a row) and two innings with 5w in the same game for Durham.
The White Ferns squad to tour South Africa was announced with Kate Anderson selected for the ODIs and T20Is, while Bella Armstrong gets the nod for T20Is. Armstrong swaps with Izzy Gaze who is only selected in the ODI squad. The selection of Anderson is fabulous as Anderson has been the most dominant domestic cricket yet to play for White Ferns. Anderson genuinely deserves ample White Ferns opportunities through her domestic cricket performances.
The selection of Bella Armstrong is typical White Ferns shenanigans though. Fair play to Armstrong as she does hit the ball hard and she is a good fielder as coach Ben Sawyer said. Armstrong has flashed her ability without regular dominance. Being from Auckland also seems to be a factor as Armstrong joins Molly Penfold and Izzy Gaze as the leading White Ferns youngsters. These three haven’t led winning mahi like numerous others around Aotearoa and they share similar ho-hum stats as Armstrong…
List-A: 20.1avg/77sr (batting) | 21.8avg/4.1rpo (bowling)
T20: 15.3avg/94sr | 28.7avg/6.7rpo
Armstrong has earned a White Ferns call up with batting averages below 21 in both formats. She does offer nifty seam bowling, but that probably won't matter with the following bowlers selected: Sophie Devine, Eden Carson, Fran Jonas, Amelia Kerr, Jess Kerr, Molly Penfold, Hannah Rowe and Lea Tahuhu.
The best players in domestic cricket are still not selected for White Ferns, so it's hard to expect wins.
However South African cricket remains in turmoil. Thankfully they love their SA20 competition more than Test cricket so the Blackcaps will benefit in the World Test Championship (and they might still get big crowds). The SA women's team wanted a new coach but after 10 years in charge, Hilton Moreeng was re-appointed. Along with retirements (due to age and team culture), Sune Luus recently stepped aside as captain and Laura Wolvaardt will now 'see if she is able to handle the pressure of captaincy'.
White Ferns lost 1-2 in the ODIs against Sri Lanka recently and won the T20I series 2-1. None of that was convincing and this tour of South Africa will offer more insights as the hosts will be weaker. Last time they played, White Ferns were rolled for 67 and given how weird the Bob Carter era was, ol' mate Sawyer isn't doing much better.
Amelia Pasikala slipped through my NRLWahine radar with the 19-year-old from Wairoa playing the last four games for Roosters. Pasikala started three games at edge forward and came off the bench in last round's win over Tigers. This flows nicely into recent Bulldogs antics and as I highlighted early in the week, I find the Kiwi-NRL perspective rather interesting given all the headlines around Bulldogs this week.
Pasikala is another young wahine who was recruited by Bulldogs to play Under 19 Tarsha Gale Cup and/or NSW Women's Premiership. Pasikala and last round's debutant Noaria Kapua (Taupo) are joined by Alexis Tauaneai (Wainuiomata) and Cortez Te Pou (Hastings) in playing U19/Premiership for Bulldogs this year, now playing NRLW for other teams.
Respect to Bulldogs from their NRLWahine recruitment, but they aren't helping Bulldogs right now. Nor are the ample Kiwi-NRL lads who Bulldogs have recruited, some of whom seem to be at the centre of recent Bulldogs shenanigans. Bulldogs recruited Fa'amanu Brown (Hornby) from Tigers and he made a mid-season switch to Knights, where he is named as starting hooker for this week's game vs Dragons.
Phil Gould and Cameron Ciraldo recruited Brown and barely selected him for NRL footy in theory because he isn’t good enough. Except now Brown is playing NRL footy for Knights.
Gould and Ciraldo recruited Hayze Perham (Pikiao) after a brief stint with Eels, in theory because they knew Perham from their time at Panthers. This helped Perham earn fullback selection for round one yet by mid-season Perham was dropped. With few other options, Perham is back at fullback this round against Titans.
Gould and Ciraldo recruited Karl Oloapu (Randwick) ... they paid a $500k transfer fee to Broncos to get Oloapu for this season. Oloapu mostly played off the bench and in both his two starts the halves combo was changed mid-game. Oloapu is now starting in the halves for Bulldogs U21s - Bulldogs paid $500k to put a player in U21s.
Much of the Bulldogs fluff is about changing the culture, yet all three lads listed above were recruited by Gould and Ciraldo. Meanwhile, Raymond Faitala-Mariner and Jackson Topine have been hearty Bulldogs for the last few years and things aren't going well there.
As noted last time, many of the Kiwi-NRL juniors who Bulldogs recruited aren't playing either. Bulldogs didn't make NSW Cup finals and their U21s team only has Fahmy Toilalo (Otahuhu) from a group of at least five Kiwi-NRL youngsters available.
Because of the Sydney context and Gould vs Buzz Rothfield stuff, this drama is being spun in all sorts of ways. I have observed Bulldogs going hard in Kiwi-NRL recruitment and yet they are near the bottom of my 'where would I advise a youngster to go' Kiwi-NRL list. None of the Bulldogs Kiwi-NRL players have improved or been given consistent opportunities, while their NRLWahine don't play for Bulldogs.
Compare Bulldogs to NZ Warriors. I'm feeling delightful about my Andrew Webster vs Cameron Ciraldo vibe from earlier in the season and while Bulldogs stink in NRL with no finals footy in NSW Cup, Warriors have a NSW Cup finals game against Rabbitohs in Sydney tomorrow. Who knows how either Warriors team will line up for kick off and I'm curious for the NRL encounter against Dolphins, with even more depth given a crack.
There are the selections of Eddie Ieremia and Makaia Tafua in the NSW Cup Warriors. Ieremia has played a few games and Tafua is a Linwood junior from Christchurch who played hooker alongside Etuate Fukofuka in SG Ball. Warriors could have these two, plus Patrick Moimoi, Jacob Laban and Tanner Stowers-Smith as U19 SG Ball lads playing NSW Cup finals.
Remember that Bulldogs/Canterbury rugby league partnership? Stowers-Smith (Halswell) and Tafua are both from Christchurch.
Musical jam…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Fair play to you if you had Erin Nayler signing with a Champions League contender on your transfer window bingo sheet. Nayler’s made the switch to Bayern Munich for the upcoming German season, targeted as a veteran leader to help a young goalkeeping group and also as injury cover with one of their usuals out long-term. It’s a backup gig... but it’s a backup gig at Bayern Munich. Fantastic opportunity for Nayler at this stage of her career.
And yet another impressive transfer for a kiwi player during this current window. The men’s one closes tomorrow in most countries but the women may linger open a bit longer with most of the big leagues having delayed their starts for the World Cup. So we may not be done quite yet. The blokes have been going wild since literally day one (when Chris Wood and Matt Garbett’s permanent moves were officially triggered) but the ladies had to wait a while longer. World Cup and all that. But now we’re really rolling.
Check out the notable female footballers who’ve been on the move in this span...
Jana Radosavljevic to Fenerbahce (previously at Arminia Bielefeld)
Olivia Page to Sheffield United (previously at Eastern Suburbs)
Paige Satchell to London City Lionesses (previously at Wellington Phoenix)
Indiah-Paige Riley to PSV Eindhoven (previously at Brisbane Roar)
Claudia Bunge to HB Køge (previously at Melbourne Victory)
Malia Steinmetz to FC Nordsjælland (previously at Western Sydney Wanderers)
Erin Nayler to Bayern Munich (previously at IFK Norrköping)
That’s with a few more dominoes still to fall. Olivia Chance has left Celtic, although it increasingly seems like that’ll be a move back to the A-League and probably for a Melbourne club. Speaking of which, Melbourne City did cough up a transfer fee to bring Rebekah Stott back but Hannah Wilkinson and Katie Bowen are currently off contract... at a guess it feels like Wilkie will be back but Bowen is less certain. Emma Rolston heads the remaining Welly Nix free agents. Plus there are always a few college graduates and domestic players ready to rock if only the opportunity arises.
A couple of those moves mean Champions League qualifiers for those players. It’s this upcoming week that the UCLW goes through its first round of preliminaries, though Erin Nayler doesn’t have to worry about that because she’s straight on into the group stages with Bayern. Meanwhile the Men’s UCL draw has been conducted for the group stage while the other two lesser UEFA comps have finished their qualifiers with group draws to follow imminently.
UCLW Qualifiers of Note:
Glasgow City (Meikayla Moore) vs Shelbourne, Wednesday at 9pm
Levante vs Stjarnan (Betsy Hassett), Wednesday at 11pm
HB Koge (Claudia Bunge & Daisy Cleverley) vs KuPS, Thursday at 5am
Those are semi-finals so those teams will then need to beat another team to progress to round two. Looking at these draws, Stjarnan will have the toughest task for sure. The other two teams should back themselves to at least win these first matches. The second round of qualifying is then straight playoffs.
Good news for Marko Stamenic and Crvenza zvezda because they’ve been drawn against defendign Champions League victors Manchester City... the second year in a row that Stamenic will get to face that lot in the groups. He was excellent in a 0-0 draw against them in a game for Copenhagen last year so they’ll be sick of the sight of him after a couple more efforts. Stamenic is very much a first eleven player for Red Star so it’s a different vibe this time around having been an unknown bolter a year ago.
They’ve also got RB Leipzig (Germany) and Young Boys (Switzerland) in their group. Young Boys are definitely beatable for the Serbian champs... they’d better hope so anyway because Serbia and Switzerland are very close on the UEFA coefficients so their chances of getting back to this stage do in some part depend on how they go in those matches. Third place and a Europa League knockout run is the most realistic best case scenario.
James McGarry started for Aberdeen in their second leg Europa League qualifier against Hacken of Sweden this morning. It was his first start for the club. McGarry played quite well but they lost 3-1 so there’ll be no Europa League games for the Dons... instead they drop into the Conference League group stage. All goods.
Stoked to see the Breakers chuck another kiwi prospect into the mix by signing Carlin Davison as a development player for the upcoming season. Davison has been one of a few uncontracted players training with the team in preseason while their Tall Blacks were away and it seems the Taranaki Airs forward has done enough to get amongst it. Beautiful development given that a few weeks ago there was a genuine possibility that the Perth Wildcats would end up with more kiwis on their roster than the New Zealand Breakers.
The return of Finn Delany and now the addition of Davison means that the Breakers are back up by a 6-5 scoreline there. Granted, the Wildcats may still edge the Breakers for kiwi minutes with the Webster Bros likely to do big things there, while Hyrum Harris is hopefully in for a bigger role now that he’s switched teams. Jack Andrew won’t feature too much in his second year there (he got 2 minutes last time) but there’s real potential that Dontae Russo-Nance gets some genuine opportunities as a DP.
As for the Breakers, they will definitely lean hard on Finn Delany. Tom Abercrombie and Izayah Le’afa will be backups. Dan Fotu and Alex McNaught hardly played last year. Fingers crossed that Davison gets a decent crack because even when the Breakers do bother to sign DPs they don’t tend to use them.
Davison is a human highlight reel with his length and athleticism. He’s super bouncy and he loves attacking the rim at both ends. With those tools in his kit, the 20 year old has every chance of developing into a fantastic NBL defender. His jump shot is pretty wonky but you can work around that. There’s no doubt that other Aussie clubs would have had him on their shortlists so here’s a rare case of the Breakers actually getting in at the ground level with one of the top kiwi college grads. Missed out on Flynn Cameron and Sam Mennenga this year but Carlin Davison’s services make for a fine consolation prize.
It doesn’t stop there either. The WNBL’s Bendigo Spirit have announced that they’ve signed Esra McGoldrick for the upcoming season. EM is currently doing very nice things with the Mainland Pouakai in the Tauihi League and the 23yo forward was also a valuable squad member for the Tall Ferns at the recent Asia Cup. The Spirit are helmed by kiwi coach Kennedy Kereama. It’s also the team that Mary Goulding spent two seasons at so it would’ve been a bummer if they didn’t sign at least one New Zealander to the roster.
The task is simple for the Tall Ferns: get as many of our best players in the highest leagues possible. Same thing as with most global sports, that’s where the growth needs to happen. This is another excellent development because there really haven’t been as many NZers in the Aussie women’s league as you’d think. Certainly not like we’re seeing in the men’s competition where we’re due for record numbers again this year. Usually it’s just a couple of recognisable names per year and perhaps a young development player or two. Maybe an Aussie dual-national too.
Last season there were three: Penina Davidson, Krystal Leger-Walker, and Lauryn Hippolite. That’s a little deceptive because Goulding and Tahlia Tupaea were both contracted but suffered injuries. As it stands, Davidson will definitely be back while Tupaea will hopefully be good to go again, fitness permitting (she’s still struggling with a shoulder injury during the Tauihi). KLW and Hippolite are free agents at this moment in time so we’ll see how that goes.
Ah but frustration with those Tall Blacks though. They were solid in defeat to the USA, nothing the matter with that. Then came a weird one against Jordan where they nearly coughed it up despite leading handily in the fourth quarter... then strolled to victory in an emphatic overtime period. That had them where they wanted to be and then things began so brilliantly against Greece with a top-16 place on the line. But they couldn’t sustain a 15-point first half lead and eventually went down 83-74 despite a legendary performance from Shea Ili.
They were good enough to challenge Greece but they just didn’t have the depth. Such a fantastic first half was hard to sustain with the starters doing most of the high-intensity lifting, hence when Greece finally began to match the effort in the second half there wasn’t anything for the TBs to fall back upon. Except for turnovers. Pesky bloody turnovers spoiling them once again as they have throughout this tour. Turnovers from a variety of sources too, we’ve got errant passes, lost dribbles, travels, offensive fouls... you name it. 14 turnovers in the second half, with Greece going nuts in the fourth quarter to the tune of 33 points to take it out of range.
Never doubt the heart though. The lads kept going right up until the end, but it’s pretty hard to win when you give up 21 turnovers compared to 6 and when your bench is outscored by 50-5. It’s also true that while their rebounding has been really good, their lack of size has hampered the Tall Blacks against all of these opponents.
The most annoying thing about this FIBA World Cup is how many games they cram into each single day. They wanna fit the entire tournament into such a small window and it makes it hard to follow when there’s more action happening than it’s possible to watch. It’s overwhelming, you can’t get on top of it as a fan. Plus that schedule serves up brutal turnarounds like the Tall Blacks having to play Mexico in a classification game a mere 20 hours after the Greece game.
Not even a day’s rest. No wonder they coughed up 57 points in the first quarter as Mexico absolutely sizzled with their jump shots despite having not shown that capability throughout the tournament until then. They had a good day. The Tall Blacks were fatigued. Despite another valiant effort that clawed things back to within four points inside the final minute (having been down as many as 19pts) it wasn’t to be. Mexico shot 56% from deep and the NZ role players weren’t able to do the required mahi. No shame on them, this is a TBs team missing heaps of regulars. That’s how that story goes.
One bloke who has been utterly immense though is Shea Ili:
vs USA: 12 PTS (4/10 FG) | 4 REB | 5 AST
vs JOR: 15 PTS (5/12 FG) | 10 AST | 2 STL
vs GRE: 27 PTS (8/16 FG) | 5 REB | 8 AST
vs MEX: 18 PTS (4/7 FG) | 5 REB | 10 AST
He’s shot 46% from the field, 46% from three-point range, and 92% from the free throw line. He has not had a negative plus/minus in any of these games not even the USA one where we lost by 27 points.
The Tall Blacks have one more game and it’s against Egypt on Saturday night at 8.45pm. Anything other than a victory and their Olympic dream will be cooked – in order to get to the qualifying tournaments the kiwis need to be the third-highest finisher from Asia/Oceania. Australia have already gotten the Oceania automatic spot. Thankfully no Asian teams made it to the next round but Japan already has two wins and should beat Cape Verde so they’ll get the automatic Asia spot.
Here’s how those standings are stacking up:
New Zealand | 1-3 with -36 PD | Last game vs Egypt
China | 1-3 with -73 PD | Last game vs Philippines
Lebanon | 1-3 with -90 PD | Last game vs Iran
Philippines | 0-4 with -42 PD | Last game vs China
Iran | 0-4 with -90 PD | Last game vs Lebanon
Jordan | 0-4 with -93 PD | Last game vs Mexico
So yeah an absolute must-win against Egypt or else the Olympics are a no-go already. Egypt beat Mexico 100-72 earlier in the tournament... although that was before it turned out that Mexico was actually the prime Golden State Warriors and Pako Cruz was Steph Curry in disguise.
Gotta tell ya, I’m a big fan of this new Hemi Hemingway record…