Firing the imagination Sometimes it is good to step back and view a sporting event through the eyes of the old and the young. My excitement at the All Whites' opening World Cup game...
Thirty-six All Black tests have been played at Carisbrook since the first in 1908. Sports editor Hayden Meikle looks back on a century of All Black highs and lows at Dunedin's famous ground.
Jerry Sigmund knows a thing or two about fighting against the odds.
Optimistic All Whites fan: "Back at the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, my friend. Here come the men in white."
Football. Concise and accurate. Common usage and common sense.
Once every four years, the world comes to a standstill for a sporting event that doesn't need spurious viewing statistics or hyperbolic press releases to label itself the biggest on the planet.
Israel Dagg's agent says neither the new All Black fullback nor the Crusaders should be penalised for being ambitious.
The first major step in resuscitating rugby league in Otago has been taken with confirmation of a club competition later this year.
The second-tier United States tour that has co-sanctioned the New Zealand Open for the past two years will know more about its future involvement next week.
• The dark side of rugby Hadengate bears uncomfortable similarities to a famous case involving sport and racial stereotyping in the United States.
It is an unfashionable position, sort of the rugby equivalent of netball's wing attack or football's holding midfielder. But most good teams have a decent second five-eighth to complement a classy first five-eighth
Many an hour has been lost in my household thanks to cartoonish kart racing games.
• The coaching conundrum It never pays to have too much sympathy for a rugby coach at the professional level.
What is it with the sudden urge to make video games seem like something more than they actually are? The gaming industry, propelled by the confidence boost of generating more bucks than the movies, has been falling over itself in recent years to herald the arrival of a quantum shift in entertainment.
Ryan Nelsen is in an enviable position. He earns millions of dollars a year playing in the Premier League, he will soon become a father for the second time, and he's just about to lead the All Whites into the World Cup in South Africa.
At least one fan will be cheering for the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Magic when it seeks to extinguish the Southern Steel's semifinal hopes tonight.
The Liverpool fan in me says "Good riddance to bad rubbish". The football fan in me says "Nice, the league season is out of the way, now it's time for the World Cup".
• When everything... The world works in mysterious ways.
Debating whether to get a World Cup football game is a bit like debating whether to build a fancy new stadium in your city. You ask two basic questions: Do I need it? And can I afford it? Then, even though the answer to both questions is a sort of "hmmmmm", you go ahead and get the darned thing anyway.
Todd Marshall says Otago's young hoops stars have done themselves proud but it is too soon to ask them to save the Nuggets.
