Good Week, Bad Week

It happens all the time. For every winner in sport there is generally a loser. This week there have been quite a few prominent examples of each. My highlights/lowlights of the week are as follows...

Good Week - Liverpool Football Club

Nine goals in two consecutive wins against, admittedly, average opposition. Second in the table at time of writing. Champions League, here we come!

Bad Week – Manchester United

Two consecutive losses at home for the first time since 2002 and five losses in total this season already. David Moyes will be feeling some heat if he doesn’t turn the ship around very shortly.

Good Week – Perth Glory

The Australian football club on the other side of the world defeated the hapless Wellington Phoenix despite a catastrophic series of injuries to key players.

Bad Week – Wellington Phoenix

Something just ain’t clicking. The defence looks uncertain, the midfield looks pedestrian and the attack just doesn’t quite flow. While Stein Huysegems and Paul Ifill show undoubted glimpses of skill and beautiful touches, on a scale of 1-10 their combined pace is about a 2. New Blood is needed in January.

Good Week – Aussie Cricketers

Admittedly they’re on home soil, but the turnaround in the Australian cricket team’s fortunes has been quite stunning in this current Ashes series. It’s looking increasingly like the world’s smallest sporting trophy will be heading down under once again.

Bad Week – English Cricketers

No doubt the Aussies have got under Poms’ skin with their aggression, sledging and mind games. Hopefully Jonathan Trott will recover sufficiently to resume his excellent international career in the future. But the rest of the England team look mentally shot already.

Good Week - Ross Taylor

Rosco finally broke into the select club of Kiwi cricketers to score a double ton in a test match. He demonstrated, to himself and to the public, that not every innings needs to be played like the last three overs of an IPL slugfest. Patience + proper cricket shots – slog sweeps = long and impressive innings.

Bad Week – Chris Cairns, Lou Vincent, Darryl Tuffey

Who knows what happens in the murky world of international cricket? And who knows whether these guys have done anything wrong? If nothing else, it’s been a humiliating week for these three chaps. Hopefully the shambolic ICC can actually sort this out because they’ve done a terrible job thus far.

Good Week – John Afoa

He’s always been a good solid prop. But the equivalent of $1 million annually for four years at Gloucester, making him the third highest paid player in Europe? Wow. To return to the Blues, he’d have had to take something like an $800,000 salary cut. Why would you?

Bad Week – Russell Packer

The supposed bad boy of the Warriors really is now, allegedly, a bad boy. A serious assault charge pending and his NRL contract with the Newcastle Knights torn up. That may well be the end of the prop’s career.

Good Week – Lydia Ko

The 16-year-old won the $US1 million Swinging Skirts World Ladies Masters tournament in Taiwan, beating former US Open champion and world No 5 So Yeon Ryu of South Korea and pocketing a cool $US150,000. All in just her second tournament as a professional. She is amazing.

Bad Week – The NZ Breakers

The baskets run around the rim but, unlike last season, they don’t fall through the net. Key players aren’t firing. Andrej Lemanis and Cedric Jackson are long gone. It’s hard to imagine the Breakers making this year’s NBL playoffs, let alone winning a fourth championship

Good Week – Tom Walsh

Rising Shot put Star is a title that has been unanimously reserved for Jacko Gill for the past four or five years. Now there’s a new kid on the block. He’s quite a large kid, and actually not really a kid at all, but in Melbourne this weekend Walsh broke Gill’s national shot put record and in the process qualified for the World Championships and Commonwealth Games. 

Bad Week – Jacko Gill

Not really a bad week, despite losing his national record. Competition is fantastic for any sportsperson and will undoubtedly bring out the best in Gill.

Good Week – Luis Suarez

The Liverpool marksman has scored six goals in his last two games and at times looks unstoppable. It will be difficult for Liverpool to resist the amorous advances of Real Madrid in January.

Bad Week – The Black Caps

I know we were 4-40. And I know we really didn’t want lose a match we should have already wrapped up. But Jesus, we only needed 113 runs to win against a decidedly average West Indies team. But, as a good mate of mine said, have Black Caps Management ever heard of ‘metservice.co.nz’? Surely a ‘hey guys, there’s rain in them thar hills -get a move on’ would’ve been a good idea. I think they only scored one run in the last three overs before rain struck. We haven’t beaten a proper cricket nation in in a test in NZ since 2009.

Good Week – The imperious Kieran Read

He won every rugby award going, and rightly so.

Bad Week – NZ Domestic Cricket

No crowds, little coverage, almost no interest.

RIP Nelson Mandela

In a sporting context, Mandela will always be remembered for his effect on the 1995 Rugby World Cup. His presence at the tournament visibly lifted the crowds and the Springboks themselves.  When he walked onto the field before the World Cup Final wearing a Springbok jersey, several Bok players including the skipper Francois Pienaar said at that moment they’d have run through brick walls for the man. But the real masterstroke was the intended effect on the, till that point, indomitable All Black side. Several AB’s, including Jonah Lomu, said that Mandela simply shook each player’s hand, smiled and said ‘good luck’. That in itself was a mind-blowing experience for many of the team. But the real mental impact came when he turned and walked away from the team thereby showing the Captain’s number 6 on the back of his jersey. Players’ reactions were mixed, but overall the All Blacks simply thought ‘uh-oh’. It was a brilliant masterstroke in terms of mind-games. 

Of course ‘Madiba’ achieved things for his country that are far more important than, and transcend, sport. Although South Africa is still a work in progress and not exactly without its fair share of problems, Mandela was instrumental in ending the appalling practice of racial apartheid. Rest in peace.

Till Next Time,

SG