Women’s rugby ...
Your columnist has a bit of skin in the game when it comes to women’s rugby.
He was just a slip of a thing (hah) when he was at the Oamaru Mail way back at the turn of the century and regularly covered the mighty Whitestone 45ers.
They were a fun bunch, a mix of delightful schoolgirls and hard cases like Fiona Watherston, Kathryn Sim and Vicky Neave, and they could not have been more welcoming to a young reporter.
I was reminded of the 45ers on Sunday when I watched that astonishing performance from the Otago Spirit.
The cynics had assumed the Spirit had little chance of beating Wellington in the Farah Palmer Cup semifinal after being pumped by the same opposition by 38 points just a week earlier.
We of little faith etc — but the game did make me think of a couple of things about women’s rugby.
... is real rugby
Firstly, and this is something you occasionally need to remind the Neanderthals who think "ladies" rugby is somehow inferior, the women’s game is different from the men’s game.
Note different does not mean worse.
There is still a lovely innocence and a sense of wild creativity about women’s rugby.
I am reluctant to generalise — and I run the risk of sounding patronising, which is not my intention — but so many female rugby players seem so willing to try things, to give the ball some air. Yes, that hurried pass might bounce loose and be turned over, but it might also create space and ignite the attack.
It is often a far cry from the relentlessly structured, defensively efficient and occasionally boring levels of men’s rugby, which puts such a premium on physicality and closing down space.
Rugby should be fun to watch, should it not?
The other thought I had was how the future really is bright for women’s rugby, on both a national scale and locally, as there are some terrific players coming through.
When you see youngsters like Charlotte Va’afusuaga and Hannah Lithgow tearing around the park, it makes your heart full.
The great escape
Well, the Commonwealth Games are alive ... but for how long?
The dear old sporting event will take place in 2026 after all as Glasgow will host a scaled-down Games using existing facilities and money from the abandoned Victorian bid.
The fact Australia chose to pull out after the proposed budget exploded to $A6.9 billion ($NZ7.5b) says everything, really. What an obscene amount of money for a sports event that simply does not carry as much relevance as it once did.
The Commonwealth Games can be a lot of fun, and are a big deal with some sports. But surely they will only survive if they continue to be significantly scaled back.
Guardian writer Sean Ingle summed it up nicely: "Perhaps Glasgow 2026 will indeed prove to be a daring new blueprint for the future. But the smart money remains on it being just a temporary stay of execution".
Sailing away
Could be the fact the regatta still has a way to go before it gets to the crunch end, or it could be that the live action takes place at a horrific time thanks to the decision to host it in Barcelona.
Are you following it closely?
Documentary season
Interesting to see the David (and Victoria) Beckham documentary win an Emmy Award recently.
I was not expecting the Netflix series to be so good but there was just something very watchable and even sweet about it, and both Becks and Posh came across surprisingly well.
This is, as we know, the golden age of television — though there is far too much good stuff to watch — and it is a similarly halcyon time for sports documentaries.
There was a time I doubted anything could surpass the majesty of basketball documentary Hoop Dreams or boxing documentary When We Were Kings, but we have had some real contenders of late.
Welcome To Wrexham made millions of football fans embrace an obscure Welsh club, Drive To Survive made Formula 1 so much more accessible, and Last Dance made lockdown bearable.
ESPN’s 30 For 30 series has been around a while now but is still worth checking out — especially the amazing Once Brothers basketball story — and the Untold series, particularly the one about the mobster who bought an ice hockey team for his punk son, is very good.
I am looking forward to the looming doco on my Boston Red Sox and their amazing 2004 season, and very excited about the release next week of Mr McMahon, the story of wrestling supremo Vince McMahon. Pro wrestling is entertainment, not sport, but the story of how he took WWE to global domination is fascinating.
Name of the week
Patton Kizzire.
Pronounced like "desire".
The American golfer just won on the PGA Tour for the first time in six years.
