Let the games begin
After more than two months off work, professional sport is set to return today, emptyhanded, struggling financially and begging our acceptance of its new crowdless form.
So let’s all embrace it, and welcome it back into our lives in a sensitive, ‘Be Kind’ post coronavirus kind of way. Let’s hold it, watch it, and trust that it will never leave again.
It will be early steps on the road to normalcy, a final whistle blown on Covid-19. We can stop watching Netflix. We can replace The Tiger King with the Wests Tigers.
We can flick off the Chicago Bulls in The Last Dance, and turn to Sky Sports for NRL, Super Rugby and netball dances where the ending is unknown.
We can become Normal People.
Today the NRL restarts with the Brisbane Broncos against the Parramatta Eels. Big hits, line breaks, get back the 10. And racing is on at Addington, if pacers are your thing.
In the NRL, Brisbane versus Eels is a quality match, with the Eels atop the table after the two rounds that were played before coronavirus tackled it and held it down for much too long. It’s a 9.50pm game with edge to it.
The Eels last played on March 22, a 46-6 drubbing of the Titans, in the last match before we were all tagged and told to ‘go home, stay home’.
On Saturday, the Warriors are getting a second crack at the season, after losing back-to-back when the NRL began, then being crippled by all manner of injury during their quarantine across the Tasman.
Will they restart with a roar, or will there be more spluttering and misfiring? Whatever transpires, the Warriors offer massive entertainment levels.
And a mid-winter Christmas is not far off either, in the form of Super Rugby Aotearoa. In case your memory needs a nudge, the teams are called the Blues, Chiefs, Hurricanes, Crusaders and Highlanders.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions no overseas sides can afford to get in or out of the country, so it’s all good Kiwi-made, high quality, shop-local derby material.
And don’t be confused, Beauden Barrett will be wearing a different coloured jersey this season – he’s a Blue now, even if he hasn’t played for them yet.
Then it will be netball time with the champions Central Pulse playing 2019 losing finalists the Northern Stars in opening week, with all games in Auckland and outside teams chartering jets in. Oh, what a world we live in. For now, for fans, all sport will happen on TV. Even Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern still can’t say when crowds will be permitted.
‘‘It’s obviously not too far for us to wait before the fans can see their favourite teams back on the field or back on the court,’’ she told The Breakdown on Sky