Homerun: Kiwi qualities at their finest
Amixture of pre-season fixtures and possibly a club game will count towards the four-match ban Sonny Bill Williams must serve for his dangerous tackle in the second All Blacks test against the British and Irish Lions.
Williams has already missed two matches owing to the ban, the deciding Lions test and the Blues’ Super Rugby loss to the Sunwolves in Tokyo last weekend.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen told Radio Sport yesterday that Williams will miss a Counties Manukau pre-season game and potentially a club match to serve out the ban handed down for the red card offence.
Hansen said the club game was a bit contentious over whether it qualified for the ban.
‘‘If that’s not the case then we’ll get him back just for the test match,’’ Hansen said of Williams with an eye to the first Bledisloe Cup test against Australia in Sydney on August 19.
‘‘If it is considered then we’ll get him back for the game of three halves that we play every year before the [national provincial championship] and Bledisloe starts.’’
The game of three halves is a pre-season fixture against Taranaki and Counties Manukau one week before the Australia test and if the club rugby game doesn’t count for the ban, then the pre-season game will.
Regardless of what game he comes back for, Williams will be in the mix for the Wallabies. ‘‘He’ll be considered,’’ Hansen said. Meanwhiule, Malakai Fekitoa has reportedly signed to play for French rugby club Toulon.
French news outlet L’equipe has reported Toulon owner Mourad Boudjellal announced the signing at a fan event this week, declaring the ‘‘imminent arrival of a world champion All Black centre’’.
But Toulon released a statement yesterday hosing down speculation, saying until moves had been officially confirmed by the club they were only rumours.
Fekitoa, who has played 24 tests since his 2014 debut, was originally left out of the All Blacks squad for the British and Irish Lions series, but was an injury replacement during the series,
He is off contract at the end of the season, but he told Stuff in April he was in no rush to make a decision on his future.
Enter here at your peril. All objectivity is out the window. These are the rantings of a diamond geezer who’s been playing, coaching or writing about softball for 45 years.
So, of course I’m going to plead that the Black Sox should get the recognition such sustained success deserves.
The Black Sox are New Zealand sport’s blue-collar champions – throwbacks to the hazy days of amateur sport. They best reflect the quintessential Kiwi character – battlers from the bottom of the world who don’t need buckets of government cash to beat the best the Japanese, Canadians, Americans and Australians can hurl at them.
The floating sports fan loves the fact the Black Sox can win a world title and go straight back to day jobs, driving diggers and painting houses. That’s why they won the People’s Choice at the Halberg Awards for 2013.
Yet they get only token recognition from Halberg Award judges, funding agencies, civic authorities, corporate sponsors and television moguls. While cricket enjoys inner-city venues, softball is shoved out to the suburban outlands. Two of its leading venues are smack, bang next to sewage treatment plants.
A lot of softball myths persist. Let’s kick the hoariest into touch first. ‘‘Few countries in the world care about softball.’’
Few countries in the world care about rugby union, cricket, rugby league, netball or America’s Cup yachting either, but that doesn’t stop us celebrating when the All Blacks, Kiwis or Silver Ferns win World Cups. Nor should it.
Softball doesn’t have the same numbers in New Zealand as rugby, football or netball – and here’s why: It’s a devilishly difficult game to master.
The hand-eye co-ordination of the Black Sox’s best batters is something to behold. Numerous scientific surveys have proven that hitting a softball or baseball hurled at over 120kmh is one of the most difficult feats in the sporting world. Try standing in a batter’s box 14 metres from an elite pitcher and hit a ball rising, dropping or curving across the plate.
The Black Sox do it in a breeze. They are elite athletes. How much better would they be if they, and their main rivals, were full-time pros? But would that detract from the legend of a team that bunked down in a cockroachinfested hostel to win a world championships in South Africa?
The Black Sox aren’t running bottle drives and chook raffles. They get around $250,000 a year from High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPNZ) and a rumoured six-figure sum from principal sponsor Golden Homes. That’s enough for a major North American tour or world series each year, a few domestic training camps and some coaching and sports science support. But the New Zealand Rugby sevens men’s team – which failed to make a final in 2017 – got almost four times as much from HPSNZ ($900,000) despite being part of a multimillion dollar professional sport. Is that fair?
The Black Sox’s home run hero Joel Evans said it best when he returned home this week with the world series trophy. ‘‘It’s not about the money, this is a family sport.’’ Every family strives for external recognition, but it’s what happens within the four walls that counts. Softball, having made a headlong dive into home plate, will dust off its black jersey, cock a snook at the critics and get on with doing what it does best – winning world titles.