Time to break away
Central Districts Cricket keeps ignoring the centre of Central to such an extent that only something extreme such as a threat to hook up with Wellington might wake them up.
Not for the first time has the uncaring CD refused to allocate even one Stags men’s match to Fitzherbert Park next summer.
And yet last year CD was appeasing Levin, allocating a women’s and a CD A men’s game to Donnelly Park, only for that match to be abandoned on day one because the pitch wasn’t up to scratch.
Maybe Manawatu¯ should secede and rejoin Wellington from whence it sprang in 1950, which would at least create a political stink. Negotiating with the Napier bloc will get them nowhere.
You can bet Wellington would flick a game Palmerston North’s way because Wellington doesn’t have a backup first-class ground.
This nonsense has gone on for years with CD, these days a puppet of its funder NZ Cricket, always finding something amiss – there has been the outfield, the pitch, the dunnies, the practice pitches.
Even when fixed at great cost it’s still not enough. Manawatu¯ Cricket and the Palmerston North City Council have spent thousands on Fitzherbert Park – for what?
Prima donnas rock in with major association teams for an infrequent game in Palmerston North and horror, they report one changing room is a wee bit small.
The pampered players also object to having to stroll over to the adjoining Manawaroa Park to train, so now they want Manawatu¯ to spend thousands more rates dollars building new pitches down near the Esplanade end of Fitzherbert.
For years, Manawatu¯ have had more players graduate to CD and New Zealand cricket than any of the other seven constituents. Maybe CD chief Piet de Wet and his board need a history lesson.
Manawatu¯ continues to foster its successful academy and has the indoor turf facility at Palmerston North Boys’ High, which the CD squad will be using before the start of the season.
Then they turn around and snub Fitzherbert. Maybe Manawatu¯ should tell them to get lost.
Imagine the outcry had the Fitzherbert turf disintegrated as Mclean Park’s did last year.
Games are now so few at Fitzherbert that CD has virtually lost its support base in Manawatu¯ .
CD has one of those meaningless strategic plans which organisations dream up. CD’S mission statement is ‘‘to lead, grow, perform and sustain cricket in the heartland of NZ.’’
Bulldogs bluffed over Murdoch
After author Ron Palenski put countless hours of research into Murdoch – The All Black Who Never Returned, the mystery of the saga has pretty much been put to rest.
Keith Murdoch died at Easter this year, 46 years after being sent home from the 1972-73 All Blacks tour of Britain for bopping a security guard in their Cardiff hotel.
Palenski has virtually traced the blame to the British officials who pressured manager Ernie Todd and the New Zealand Rugby Union hierarchy.
Manawatu¯ All Blacks who knew Murdoch felt far worse was done by many others on tour than what Murdoch did and yet he suffered rugby’s ultimate punishment.
Kent Lambert was there that night, but he had gone to bed and didn’t know anything about it until the next morning. Meanwhile, he and Murdoch were picked to play the next game, in Birmingham.
When Murdoch popped his head in the bus to say goodbye, Lambert and the players shot up to Murdoch’s room to shake his hand.
Afterwards the ABS didn’t train well and Lambert feels it affected the players who lost the game.
Murdoch’s exit did give Lambert his big break. As a 20-year-old kid, he was the backup tighthead prop behind Murdoch. In the following Scotland test, Jeff Matheson broke down after five minutes and Lambert was on for his test debut at a packed Murrayfield, his first of 11 tests.
He said Murdoch never said much, but everyone felt very safe when he was on the field. Lambert felt sorry for captain Ian Kirkpatrick, who didn’t have time to think over Murdoch’s banishment.
Manawatu¯ lock Sam Strahan toured South Africa with Murdoch in 1970 and remembered him as a quiet but good team man, who often manned the team door to repel interlopers. Technically as a prop he wasn’t perfect, but he was so powerful it didn’t matter.
Very sensitive, he disliked the limelight and Strahan felt his banishment was a huge injustice and an apology wouldn’t have hurt.
However, Murdoch had done stupid stuff, as Palenski outlines, like assaulting journalists, something he wouldn’t have got away with today.
In the book, Todd’s assertion that the British would have had him replaced and or called off the tour had Murdoch stayed had to be a bluff. The NZRU should have called the bullying bulldogs on it.
This nonsense has gone on for years with CD, these days a puppet of its funder NZ Cricket, always finding something amiss . . . Even when fixed at great cost it’s still not enough.
The NZRU (surely) would not have allowed one of their old cronies to be sacked and the British would never have risked the financial loss of the tour being abandoned.