Have a heart ...
It has been a strange year for many reasons.
In terms of my professional life, this was my first season covering the Highlanders since 2008.
Let’s take a moment right now to appreciate how much can happen in 15 years. I was still married, I wasn’t even a father yet, Charles still had 14 years to wait before becoming King, the selfie stick had not been invented, Game of Thrones had not screened a single episode, and a pandemic was just something that made an entertaining movie.
Mike Delany, Paul Williams, Niva Ta’auso, Johnny Leota, Fetu’u Vainikolo, Daniel Bowden, Toby Morland, Craig Newby, Tim Boys, Adam Thomson, Hayden Triggs, Tom Donnelly, Chris King, David Hall, Clint Newland.
Wow.
So, yes, it has been a while.
Carisbrook is gone, the South African teams are gone, 427 law variations have come and gone, Donnelly is now a Highlanders assistant coach, and the Highlanders are now privately owned.
Some things, of course, have not changed.
Everybody still hates the Crusaders, and everybody is still extremely quick to write off the Highlanders.
... for the Highlanders
The truth is I probably went a little easy on the Highlanders this year.
They had a couple of good performances and they won one more game than last season, but they also played some poor rugby and too often showed a worrying lack of skill, and did not really claim any win that was unexpected.
In my defence, it was my first season back covering them, they had a rookie head coach, expectations for a team containing just three regular All Blacks can only be so high, and they had a quite ridiculous injury toll that would have tested any side’s depth, let alone one with the most meagre resources.
While I will not be their cheerleader, I will always point out the obstacles the Highlanders face.
Principally, they face a yearly struggle to build a roster thanks to the region’s playing numbers and the complete absence of talent equalisation structures in Super Rugby — witness poor Moana Pasifika losing its best player to the Evil Empire, which is just a nonsense.
Competitive parity, as I have written many times, is absolutely essential for the integrity of a competition and to keep fans engaged, and Super Rugby seems to treat it as a four-letter word.
There is no player draft, no transparency around salary caps or roster building, and no incentive for top stars to move.
The Highlanders, a bit like the Rebels and the Force across the Tasman, are stuck in a cycle of trying (usually without success) to attract fringe players from other clubs, and taking massive punts on NPC players.
They are making interesting moves now around trying to develop local youngsters, and for that they deserve some credit and patience, but until the Super Rugby fish-heads bring in any sort of mechanism to spread the talent, the Highlanders are on the back foot every season.
Quote of the year
One of the other big changes from 2008 is that the Highlanders, like seemingly all top rugby teams, have chosen to make relations with the media as structured and formal as possible.
There was a time when a reporter could bowl up to a coach or a player — even a genuine star like Anton Oliver — after training and have a yarn.
Now, there are set times for media sessions each week, and we get told who we will be interviewing, and we almost never get to have a one-on-one chat with players during the season.
It means, regrettably, a newspaper sportswriter never really gets to humanise these giant men for his readers. That bugs me, and I believe professional rugby clubs are mistaken in thinking controlling the message on their social media channels has the same impact.
All I can tell you is that Highlanders captain Billy Harmon is an impressive man — as well as a magnificent flanker — and that Mitch Hunt is a really engaging bloke and that Freddie Burns is a class act.
Burns raised a smile when I asked him if he, as a proud Englishman, would be watching the Coronation:
"Nah. To be honest, I couldn’t give a f... about it, to be fair. I love my country but all the stuff around royal families ... I’m not gonna lose sleep on it."
Utterly bizarre
I have a basic understanding of the Dunedin premier club rugby points system — some teams have two byes, some one, and points earned for the first-round bye are based on where teams ranked after that round.
Still utterly bonkers, though.
I reckon this might be the only sports competition in the world with a "pro-rata points for the bye" system, and I look forward to being corrected.
The golf takeover
My. Goodness.
Like pretty much everybody else with even a flicker of interest in golf, I was stunned when the PGA Tour and LIV Golf called a detente this week.
The devil will be in the detail but there seems to be plenty of self-interest and hypocrisy involved, and my sympathy is with Rory McIlroy, who basically went to war for the PGA Tour, sacrificed umpteen millions, and has been royally shafted.
