The Silver Fern

Would be great if Southee can finish with some big numbers to achieve some milestones - 400 test wickets , 6s and a batting century are the obvious ones. Great servant of NZ cricket.

Should be good. Southee retiring from test cricket after this series. I wonder if he got the nod, or if he just decided for himself. Looks covered in the other thread.

I'd say the only negative is that Stead is probably safe, but then, if he wins series like that, probably deserve to be.

Holy smokes, that was almost unbelievable! Looking close and then 3 wickets in 4 balls and that's it.

Riveting finish this!

@canefan Ajaz Patel seems a good candidate...

@Virgil would take a miracle like rain to not win, realistically.

For some reason, I had it in my head that we were 3 days in and batting on day 4 with a lead of 300, so was thinking it would be good to declare around lunch...

Given it's only day 3 today, may as well bat to tea or so.

@Machpants not just provincial unions - seems that many committees (by whatever names) and members (whether individuals or clubs) don't want their organisation to run at a loss (fair enough) but also don't particularly want pay higher fees. That makes it the path of least resistance to just continue with status quo, which then frustrates movers and shakers a lot.

@Machpants said in Olympic Sevens 2024:

One of the things I have enjoyed most about the BF7s is Waaka, and she is almost always grinning ear to ear - and still owning the plays.

Love seeing smart NZ halves/playmakers get her 1 on 1 in a major final and then watching her turn on the jets and blast by whoever on the outside.

Agree that it's probably time for Stead to move on but that article also raises the good point that it's not as if NZ is stacked with available coaching talent either (much like player stocks).

This feels like the slide after 1990 as the NZ greats from the 1980s started retiring - the newcomers held up for a bit while some of those 1980s greats kept going, but as each great retired, it got a bit harder and a bit worse, and the replacements just weren't of that level (especially early on in their careers).

Then one day everyone was gone and Blair Hartland was opening and we were selecting Adam Parore as a batsman. Hopefully we can avoid slipping that far...

@KiwiMurph said in T20 WC - Black Caps v West Indies:

@Chris-B said in T20 WC - Black Caps v West Indies:

Actually, I doubt that it's Stead's job to line up warm up games, so he's probably been dudded more than anyone.

Surely Stead would have heavy influence of whether or not warm up games would be played.

He doesn't just rock up and get an itinerary and go 'yeah sweet'.

If he wanted warm up games we would have warm up games.

Sounds like he asked for late warm up games to be played after the IPL players arrived and the organisers refused.

About the performance in general, I'd say time to take it as a wake-up call and send through the broom. We've had quite a bit of turnover anyway and it's not a guarantee the other cattle available is automatically going to succeed better, but this performance was bad enough that we couldn't really do worse. Also probably time for Stead to move on.

The point of sport is to play it. All of these structures are created to give sport meaning beyond playing with family and/or mates in someone's back yard. Given that, my general view is that the most important metrics are numbers of players and numbers of games, basically. Other metrics still have importance for other good reasons like sustainability, but those are the top 2.

For organised competition of some sort, the main reason to create clubs is to organise that competition. If there are enough clubs within travelling distance, those clubs start to want inter-club competition (especially in team sports), so bodies are created to organise those. Then people think bigger and start organising rep sports nationally as a national championship, and now you need a national body.

For tax purposes, the point of most pro sport in NZ is to fund amateur sport. The main reason to charge bigger fees is to pay staff/contractors when your club/PU etc is too big for volunteers to be willing to do the work, or they aren't up to it.

@African-Monkey said in T20 Cricket World Cup 2024:

Obviously the match fixing calls were always gonna get mentioned haha, but man, the USA play some good cricket. They're a legit competitive side.

Makes sense, cricket and baseball obviously aren't identical but do have some transferable skills, and it's not like USA is short of immigration from cricketing nations.

I can't say I'm surprised - it's not common for legacy structures to cede their own power. In the good ol' days, people would set up new competing structures if they were sufficiently ticked off - will be interesting to see if the RPA actually end up doing that.

@Windows97 said in Rugby Finances:

The said the quiet part out loud in that the woman's game is expensive.

The woman's game is great for player numbers and getting new people into the game, but terrible from a revenue perspective.

So you have existing teams with bloated salaries already loosing money and invest heavily in another area of the game that will lose you even more money. The first one itself will get you into enough trouble as it is.

I think in sports, participation at all levels is the primary goal and value in and of itself, so if this leads to increased female player numbers at club level (say), it's a useful item to spend money on.

Harder to tell whether professional female teams and competitions will generate advertising and sponsorship revenue that make them self-sustaining in the long term, but as part of the 'shop window' so to speak, there is value separate from that.

@Winger The review also received comments/feedback that regionalism is an issue, that PU board members can't always agree with a good proposal because they may be removed from the board or not be re-elected, and that the threat of replacing the board via SGM is used to avoid addressing more controversial issues.

Seems to be some difficulty working out which entities are the high performance pathways. Everyone probably agrees that the international teams are the pinnacles, starting with the ABs and working down from there.

Everyone probably also agrees that clubs and schools are the engine rooms of amateur rugby.

Deciding whether to have one or two layers of pro rugby and one or two layers of high performance pathways between the two seems to be much harder since even agreement that there should be one of each doesn't automatically lead to agreement on which one of each to retain.

My hunch is that if the provincial unions didn't have the votes, this would be a lot easier to decide, and there would be one pro layer below the All Blacks.

@Godder said in Quay Park stadium for Auckland?:

If stadiums made money, private investors would build them.
...
I don't personally have a problem with councils building stadiums, even big ones - it's an amenity that adds to the vibe of a city. I just wish everyone would stop pretending there's an economic argument in New Zealand and admit that they are being built because we want the ability to watch live shows and sport at big stadiums.

As tyres keeping getting kicked, this still seems relevant.

@nzzp said in NZR review:

@Godder thanks for that.

If the PU still 'own' the pro game, but appoint a board to run as an independent business, do they still pay tax? Surely the transfer of a surplus to the parent body doesn't attract the liability as the parent body is tax-exempt.

I'm not an accountant, so terminology may be totally wrong.

If it's a separate for-profit entity, the surplus would be taxable. Imputation credits on the dividends would be refunded after filing a tax return, but to avoid all tax, the entity would not be able to retain any amount from the surplus. Possibly there are other options around licensing and/or management fees but that's a good way to attract IRD's attention for an avoidance arrangement.

Appointing a separate arms-length board to run the professional game within the NZRU is fine.