Samuel Flynn Scott watches the Black Caps, and his newfound high hopes, implode in a nostalgia-soaked first innings at the Basin Reserve. The lead up to this test series against Australia has been intense. For one thing, it’s Australia. Secondly, we have expectations now. This is new for the Black Caps fan, to go into … Read more
Joseph Moore travels to the north of England for a first-hand glimpse of the team that has tortured his family for two generations and counting. I’m sitting alone on an empty, overpriced train plummeting deep into the heart of North West England. It’s mainly overpriced because I paid extra to get a ticket which included … Read more
A horrible goal celebration in Manchester, a horrible knee injury in London, and horrible weather in Stoke – all-in-all another great weekend of Premier League action. Yet another milestone in the unbelievable story of Leicester City – for the first time all season they are favourites to win the Premiership at the TAB. The Foxes … Read more
Greg Bruce wrestles with his double standards over the weekend’s golfing double disaster. After the first three rounds at two tournaments on the world’s most prestigious golf tours over the weekend, New Zealand’s two best golfers were both leading. That is a story of joy and of hope. Lydia Ko, world number one and Danny … Read more
Is it a tale of a trusted institution gone rogue? There’s fan revolt. Official denial. Who do you believe? It was meant to be a happy night at Eden Park. The Black Caps were harvesting Australia’s souls. Their heatstruck fans were braying for Australian blood. And in most parts of the ground, beer was flowing freely … Read more
Rugby seemed way too boring for Kate Robertson. She found, in the NFL, a sport with appropriate level of pop cultural chaos. Here she explains how to enjoy Monday’s Superbowl like a real fan. The NFL, or “rugby for wussies”, as it’s more commonly known here in New Zealand, is reaching a fever pitch. Super … Read more
The Black Caps are historically great, so why does it feel wrong to believe in them? Sonia Gray writes on the hurt haunting the team’s winning run. New Zealand cricket is on an unbelievable, once-in-a-generation, too-good-to-be-true, pinch-me-if-I’m-dreaming kind of high. Yet still, as Black Cap supporters, we struggle to truly believe, deep in our war-weary … Read more
Leicester are the new Barcelona (at least until Pep Guardiola arrives in Manchester), Spurs are inching ever closer to the top of the table, and a rare start for Peter Crouch can’t help Stoke as Manchester United finally rediscover the joy of scoring goals. The January transfer window slammed shut with a hint of passive-aggression … Read more
Greg Bruce charts the agony of the five-time major winner, who has met the bane of his golfing life in the form of a young man mere weeks out of high school. What must it be like to be Phil Mickelson? For a long time, he lived in the shadow of Tiger; he may have … Read more
The Wellington Sevens has gone from madcap, boozy sell-out spectacle to one hell of a tough sell, and it’s a bloody tragedy, writes Scotty Stevenson. It is a Friday in late January in the nation’s capital, the day before the Wellington leg of the Sevens World Series begins. The harbour is green and glassy, the … Read more
While we enjoy the magic of the FA Cup’s fourth round and await confirmation of Chelsea’s transfer deadline-busting signing of Neymar this weekend, let’s have a long hard think about the reality that Tottenham might win the Premiership. This weekend’s round of Premier League games has been pushed back to midweek to accommodate the fourth … Read more
A 22-year-old ‘golf scientist’ with a pretentious hat and excruciatingly poor technique may have sparked a mini-revolution in the game, Greg Bruce writes. Some of golf’s great characters and their foibles: John Daly was always perched on the edge of disaster; Payne Stewart wore funny clothes; Chi Chi Rodriguez sometimes pretended to be Zorro; Shooter … Read more
Could the NRL’s latest off-field scandal have been predicted with the help of a mathematical formula similar to cricket’s WASP? Probably the weirdest thing about the NRL’s latest boozy scandal, in which Mitchell Pearce was filmed simulating a sex act on a dog after an Australia Day booze cruise, is that it’s not even the … Read more
In 2013 Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith moved to the small Waikato town of Reporoa to shoot a documentary about the local club rugby team. One year later they emerged with a stunning meditation on what it is to be a farmer, a teammate and a man in rural New Zealand. Don Rowe talks to … Read more
Arguing With My Dad is an occasional column which features Greg Bruce in conversation with his father about sports. In this instalment, a disagreement over tennis becomes a discourse on the nature of debate itself. Dad and I have never argued about tennis in our lives, and in fact we’ve hardly ever talked about it, … Read more
Is Jonjo Shelvey the most important signing of the January transfer window? Has anybody seen Peter Crouch this week? And what happened to muscular rapping Dutchman Royston Drenthe? The January transfer window is wide open, and Premier League clubs are rushing in from every corner of England (and Wales) to partake in a bit of … Read more
Jenga, bumper boats, waka ama, go-karting, archery, ______? It would take some kind of pattern recognition genius to figure out what activity will herald the beginning of the next Super Rugby season in New Zealand. Calum Henderson looks back at the evolution of the season launch in pictures. It started with a game of off-brand … Read more
First there was tennis pro Caroline Wozniacki, then there was PGA staffer Erica Stoll. As Rory McIlroy announces his second engagement, Greg Bruce wonders whether the former world number one’s flair for romance is getting in the way of his golf. Over the course of his relatively brief career, a lot of attention has been … Read more
In the wake of the Buzzfeed/BBC investigation into match-fixing in tennis, we spoke to two members of the international sports betting industry to understand how the matches get rigged. The identities of both the journalist and the employees have been withheld in return for their speaking candidly on this issue. Chris Kermode, head of the Association … Read more
Everybody else is dabbin’ it so why can’t we? Calum Henderson surveys the field and offers a tempting range of odds on the first Kiwi to dab during a live TV sports event. Cam Newton wasn’t the first professional athlete to dab during a game, but he dabbed with such panache that it helped ignite … Read more
To support his controversial claims that women are not “hardwired” to play chess, chess grandmaster Nigel Short played 20 women at once in Auckland’s Aotea Square. Alex Casey watched the games play out, and spoke to some young women looking to keep this king in check. A middle-aged man wearing a pink shirt eyeballs a ten … Read more
The Premier League schedule returns to some semblance of normality this weekend, after a typically hectic holiday period. Here’s how each side fared over the break, in the order they sit on the table. 1. Arsenal (43 points) Won v Man City 2-1 Lost v Southampton 0-4 Won v Bournemouth 2-0 Won v Newcastle 1-0 … Read more
Tennis is alone amongst professional sports in having its referee frequently yell at the crowd. Duncan Greive thinks that sucks. It had not stopped raining. Big great drops beating straight down on a windless, humid Auckland day. Not great conditions for tennis. But the rain ceased and cloud started to clear as the afternoon wore on, … Read more
Will Phil Mickelson win the US Open? Will Lydia Ko stay focused? Will Danny Lee finally gain a sense of humour? Greg Bruce offers some thoughts on 2016 and some half-assed predictions. With a new financial crisis and nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula both imminent, we turn our attention now to golf. As 2016 … Read more
Joseph Harper was so inspired by the agony of Blair Walsh’s choke against the Seahawks on Monday that he spent two days creating an extraordinary game in tribute. My Dad loves the NFL. When I visit him in Christchurch he’s almost always glued to the family computer, watching emo New England Patriots retrospectives or cracking … Read more
Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor, Barney and Adrian ‘Jackpot’ Lewis are household names thanks to their heroics at the much-loved PDC World Darts Championship. But the sport has another world champs, with a whole different cast of unlikely characters. Calum Henderson peers into the parallel universe of the BDO. One of the best summer holiday traditions … Read more
In September Lydia Ko won her first major. Duncan Greive spoke to Guy Wilson, her Auckland-based coach from the age of five until she went pro at 16, about the significance of her achievements. Guy Wilson first met Lydia Ko when she was just five years old. She walked into the pro shop of the … Read more
In 2013, the New Zealand’s woman’s rafting team won their fifth world title on the rivers of the Bay of Plenty. Two years later, Don Rowe joins them for an early-morning training session ahead of the 2015 World Champs in Indonesia. The dark jade waters of the Kaituna River flow 50km from inland Bay of … Read more
Actress, presenter and cricket tragic Sonia Gray on the stealthy way the Blackcaps have adopted reverse sledging and “respect-shaming” as tactics. Today the cricketing world will look to the Adelaide Oval, waiting to see how the pink kookaburra holds up in the world’s first day/night test match – a task that it appears to have failed … Read more