Good Beaudy. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Just two columns left before the end of the year so I'm going to take the fat man's route to the finish line.
This week I'm going to give my 16 sporting conclusions for 2016, before foisting an outrageously premature 17 conclusions for the 2017 sporting year upon you next week.
Here we go.
1. Beauden Barrett is a deadset genius BUT his goalkicking is going to cost the All Blacks a tight test one day. (You just have to hope it won't be one of the final three tests of 2019.)
2. The Eddie Jones elixir still runs strong through the veins of Englishmen. It's more than smoke and mirrors - Jones is an excellent coach with a crop of fine players - but you do wonder when intelligent men will start to get tired of the BS.
3. Super Rugby is broken. Not just creaking, but seriously damaged. The fact that New Zealand teams tend to win it and the Highlanders and Hurricanes have provided cool stories over the past two years obscures the high percentage of dross that is served up on the way to the playoffs. Sanzaar are blind if they don't understand that to expand into new territories, they first have to contract in established ones.
4. Rieko Ioane is the answer to the following question: Who will be the long-term replacement for Conrad Smith as All Blacks centre?
5. With the best will in the world, BJ Watling is never going to be the sort of white-ball wicketkeeper-batsman the Black Caps need. Picking him is essentially saying we're the sort of team who will often be 75-5 and need a rescue act. It's a negative selection. If the next crop of keepers - Tom Blundell, Dane Cleaver and Tim Seifert- are not ready yet (and at least two of them to these eyes are not), and they're committed to moving on from Luke Ronchi, then Tom Latham is a possible stop-gap. Latham is not a great one-day batsman yet but he is an opener (NZ aren't rich with openers, as you might have heard) and using him as a keeper means you are not wasting a spot that can go to another batsman or batting allrounder.
6. Somebody has to take some pressure off Kane Williamson or else New Zealand Cricket is in danger of burning out their most valuable resource before he turns 30. Williamson is never going to be the sort of bloke to complain, so it requires somebody with initiative to step up. To this end, the next three years of Ross Taylor are critical to New Zealand's success, not just with the bat but also as a leader and strong voice in the changing room.
7. Someone needs to fix Adam Milne. Lockie Ferguson's raw pace was interesting to watch but watching him smeared around the S and MCG proved that pace without a bit of finesse is not much use at all.
8. That whole family club thing at the Breakers is just a myth now. The constant pandering to Corey Webster and his selfish behaviour put paid to that. Unless the Breakers are taking the family thing to extremes and are playing the role of enabling parents to a spoilt child.
9. The New Zealand Olympic Committee flat out embarrassed themselves with their simpering lap-dog routine with the International Olympic Committee (and with Sky TV, but that's a different, altogether more boring, matter). It was so predictable that the truth about Russia's large-scale cheating would be further exposed, making the IOC's decision not to ban them in Rio de Janeiro all the more feckless. Slice it up any way you want, but the NZOC chose to back that gutless decision, throwing metaphorical crap in the faces of those who have competed under their flag and have been cheated by dopers before: athletes like Val Adams, Nick Willis, Bruce Biddle and any number of others.
10. Holy hell we're bad at swimming.
11. The only conclusion you can reach on the All Whites is that it is impossible to make any conclusive statements on their ability or that of their coach Anthony Hudson. They were really quite good against a weak USA team and Mexico, but really quite underwhelming against mighty New Caledonia. Hudson still has the nebulous 'football community' divided.
12. Joseph Parker has got something about him, that much I know. What he doesn't have yet is the career-defining fight that trainer Kevin Barry so wishes for him. The WBO title fight with Mexico's Andy Ruiz Jr gave him that opportunity but it was a passed test rather than defining.
13. Heavyweight boxing is in a relatively good place. Yes, you read that right. Boxing governance is a mess and the alphabet soup of titles is unsatisfactory but do fight fans really pine for the days when the heavyweight championship was essentially an American championship? Now we have a resurgence in British boxing, we have the continued emergence of Eastern European champions, we have Cubans making their mark and we have a New Zealander of Samoan heritage in the mix. With all the idiosyncrasies fighters from different regions bring, it should be a tremendously exciting time for the sport... if only those sad old men who dream only of another Ali-Frazier rematch would shut the hell up.
14. America's Cup organisers are serving nobody well. The ACWS has featured some spectacular in-shore racing but with so little resting on the result the series has fallen into a vacuum. There is also a glaring lack of frisson that normally characterises America's Cup relations. The Cup without controversy is like the Melbourne Cup without horses - a bit of a waste of time and money.
15. NNZ finally grew some net-balls. Trust me, divorcing themselves from the lecherous Australians will be the best thing that has happened to the local game since the Southern Sting beat the Northern Force 50-49 in an epic 2007 National Bank Cup final.
16. The global sportsman of the year wasn't even a sportsman. Theo Epstein was the architect of the Boston Red Sox when, as general manager, he put together the team that broke the Curse of the Bambino and ended 86 years of pain in 2004. That alone would have been enough to seal his legacy. To then go to Chicago and take on the Cubs, whose fanbase was only slightly less rabid than Boston's and wholly more long-suffering (108 years) and create another World series winner is simply astonishing.
THE WEEK IN MEDIA ...
The fascinating life story of a professional female cards player.
The depraved life of former Green Bay packers draftee, Randall Woodfield aka the I-5 Killer.
New schedule details will follow after assessing the situation.