Tyro wonder winger Ioane was the player of the year
It’s time to hand out my annual rugby awards to recognise the best and worst of 2017.
THE PLAYER OF THE YEAR.
Rieko Ioane. So good this year he sometimes embarrassed himself. His scorching second try in the first Lions test in Auckland? ‘‘I got a lucky bounce, and I don’t know what happened after that.’’ Beating Israel Folau on the outside in the Bledisloe test in Sydney in August? ‘‘There was a bit of a divot in the ground over there. So he [Folau] tripped over that. It wasn’t anything special.’’ Believe it or not this is the 20-yearold in whom some see signs of arrogance. But then old guys propping up bars have always bagged shooting star wingers. Call it lean us envy. From the moment Jonah Lomu exploded on the world scene in 1995 some were looking for faults. A decade earlier the same thing happened to John Kirwan. Lomu and Kirwan, it was claimed, weren’t that flash on defence. Personally, I think criticising a wing for his defence is like bagging a prop for his lousy drop kicking. Without Ioane we might have dropped a test, maybe even two, on the end of year tour. Already he’s the best wing in world rugby.
REFEREE OF THE YEAR.
Lion Ken Owens. He realised, at a make or break time in the third test at Eden Park, that he’d just gifted the All Blacks the winning of the game when, patently offside, the poor sod couldn’t stop himself grabbing the ball. In case the French referee and French TMO missed awarding the kickable penalty for the All Blacks, Owens mimed his horror at his mistake. We then discovered that even if the world’s greatest mime artist, Marcel Marceau, had risen from the grave and acted out the offence in white make-up, the Gallic bozos posing as match officials would probably have still got the call wrong.
KATE SHEPPARD FAIR PLAY AWARD.
Goes to the officials who decided the Black Ferns, after a thrilling victory in the women’s World Cup, should be flown back business class from Europe. WHAT? Have we opened the wrong envelope? Even the Blues, after they were humiliated by the Sunwolves in Super Rugby in Tokyo, didn’t have to fly home at the back of the bus. Some mistake surely? Small consolation award. To the 2017 Black Ferns, who while they may not have enjoyed the comfort they deserved, have made sure no New Zealand women’s team will ever be so badly off in the future.
THE NO NERVES BEAVER DONALD CITATION.
The Crusaders are about to draw their June game with the Highlanders 22-22. It’s the last minute, and the phases go on and on till the count hits 20. At that point a sweaty, gasping Wyatt Crockett, a man to whom replacement first-five Mitch Hunt spots a lazy 26kg, snarls at Hunt, words like: ‘‘Do something with it.’’ The exact phrase may not have been so politically correct. So with a massive, grumpy prop in front of him, a screaming Christchurch crowd of 21,000 people all round him, and a horde of Highlanders charging at him, the rookie, as calm as New Zealand’s favourite whitebaiter Steven Donald was in 2011, booted a 43-metre dropped goal to win the game. ‘‘It was one of those goals,’’ said Hunt, ‘‘that you kick at the end of training down at the park when you’re 10 years old.’’
GWYNETH PALTROW ORGANIC IS BEST AWARD.
The meek didn’t inherit the Earth. The spin doctors did. Apparently nobody at Auckland City finds it weird that $45 million of the city’s annual rates are used to pay public relations people. As in politics, many stories in rugby are carefully arranged for maximum media exposure. So how wonderful that no PR person was within iPad throwing distance of the lovely true tale of a Lions rugby fan, Englishman Alex Edwards. He was taken in by the Ioane family, and slept in the front room of Rieko and Akira’s family home in Mangere Bridge before the Lions played the Blues. ‘‘I guess Alex does have a good story to tell his mates now,’’ was how the players’ mother Sandra Ioane, herself a former Black Fern, summed things up.
GWYNETH AWARD RUNNER-UP.
Beauden Barrett pulling up on his way home to the family farm in Taranaki to have some fun with the kids at the local Rahotu primary school. Like the Alex Edwards story not a PR person or photographer in sight. ‘‘So we had all 120 kids and him playing a huge all-in game,’’ said PHOTOSPORT principal Bridget Luke. ‘‘You know that cross kick he does? He was doing that and some of them were able to catch the ball.’’
THEMUHAMMADALI PHANTOM PUNCH AWARD.
Waisake Naholo went into a maul in the Lions test in Wellington. He came out concussed. When Muhammad Ali knocked out Sonny Liston in one round he swore he’d thrown a punch so fast cameras couldn’t capture it. Ali’s gone now, so let’s hand the phantom award to the judicial panel who, after the Wellington test, apparently blinked so fast they didn’t see Sean O’Brien’s forearm smacking into Naholo’s head.
BILLY SMART CIRCUS CUP FOR CLOWNING EXCELLENCE.
Warren Gatland might have worn a red nose to the last Lions press conference, but he was no clown, and the drawn series was no joke. On the other hand . . . there’s Michael Cheika. He even had a Little Sir Echo offsider (apparently the team manager) in the box with him when he was doing his angry Krusty the Clown impersonations. I suppose we should just be grateful Cheika doesn’t channel the homicidal Sideshow Bob.