Crusaders coach Scott Robertson. Photo / Photosport
Crusaders coach Scott Robertson. Photo / Photosport
Chris Rattue runs through the best and worst from the sporting world in the last few days.
Winner - Jamie Joseph
Jamie Joseph. Photo / Photosport
He’d be my pick for the new All Blacks coach alongside his mate Tony Brown, ahead of the widely popular Scott Robertson.
Joseph and Brown are a proven pairthrough thick and thin including at international level. This choice would also give the All Blacks their first coach of Maori heritage. And that is important.
New Zealand Rugby moves in mysterious ways but the recent story by NZME’s Liam Napier suggests that the national body will finally act in a decisive way before a World Cup.
And this is the perfect time to quit smoothing the path for assistant coaches to take over, almost by default, because Ian Foster has clearly fallen short.
For Foster, leading the All Blacks to this year’s World Cup knowing he is - in effect - not considered good enough by his bosses would be tough.
But the All Blacks’ performances have veered between okay and rubbish under him and his record would look even worse but for French referee Mathieu Raynal’s ridiculous late ruling which led to Australia’s defeat in Melbourne last year.
Bottom line: NZR has two excellent candidates in Joseph and Robertson. I can’t wait for the new era to begin, so we can finally cut ties with that whole Steve Tew-Graham Henry-Steve Hansen-Ian Foster business. They had their successes, but it had become too in-house for anyone’s good.
Yes, he got a heartwarming reception in Australia this time. But he also copped more abuse, including as he tossed the ball to serve.
Some champions are loved and revered... think Muhammad Ali. Some are despised, as in the man he beat, poor Sonny Liston.
Somewhere in between lies Novak Djokovic, who is so machine-like that he has taken the game to new levels without people noticing, although Tsitsipas made a point of thanking him for that.
Maybe a lack of obvious vulnerability in Djokovic is the problem. Yet public persona and actual personality can be very different.
Who knows what truly lies within, including with the people we are closest to?
The Djokovic we see has been designed to play incredible tennis, which he does under almost any circumstance.
Djokovic is often so good, on every level of this elite sport, that you forget how good he is because you don’t see the brush strokes.
Despite a hamstring niggle - people even doubted how genuine it was - he was a few classes above the opposition in Melbourne.
What a performance.
And his lack of image manipulation is kind of attractive in the sports PR morass.
It’s even getting easier for me to concede that Roger Federer is the second-best player of all time.
Winner - Mody Maor
Breakers head coach Mody Maor. Photo / Photosport
The first-year New Zealand Breakers head coach has led the club back to the NBL playoffs - after a five-year hiatus - with their place confirmed after the latest basketball victory over Melbourne.
And the crowd is responding, with a big turnout for the Melbourne game despite Auckland’s crazy/scary weather.
After tough times, including a nomadic existence during the pandemic, the Breakers are a hot-ticket item again. Congratulations Mody Maor and everyone else involved on a fine re-build. Hopefully, they can go all the way.
Loser - Sevens rugby
Sevens used to have a lot of charm. There were even fans who made annual excursions to the premier tournament in Hong Kong. It was electric, and fun.
Women’s football has enormous growth potential in this country, as it still struggles to emerge from a period when the national body treated it like dirt.
