Field Theory: Like a punch in the face
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the only person at Sunday Lunch who could actually tell me what happened was my Grandma.
At oldskool wrestling on TV there was always a granny on the front row....
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Only during the day, in our coffins. We come out at night to suck the creative juices from the necks of starving artists.
rofflenui
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Rich, what are you doing?
You're not supposed to telll them!
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Only during the day, in our coffins. We come out at night to suck the creative juices from the necks of starving artists.
Vhat music they make...
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At oldskool wrestling on TV there was always a granny on the front row....
like the ones at the Roller Derby that yell things like "Smash Her!"
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The best thing the Spar of the Century has done for Boxing in NZ is the same thing that the Mahe Drysdale v Rod Waddell row-off last year did for rowing last year - it's peaked interest in the sport.
True enough, but I think there's a palpable difference between the two.
In the case of Drysdale vs Waddel, you really had a classic sports narrative: arguably the two best of their era, with one in the prime form of his life, the other mounting a comeback bid after nearly a decade away from the sport (which is what makes Waddel's effort so remarkable, really- the fact he could get back in the boat, so to speak, and still challenge the current world champion).
You also had a really satisfying contest, which went down to a deciding race- one that also ended in slight controversy, in that Waddel suffered heart problems in the final stretch.
It really was quite fantastic, and both played pretty much to the peak of their abilities. Why Rowing NZ were so precious about spectators coming to the event I'll never work out. It could have been a real coup for them. In a way it was, but I can't help but feel they deserved to do more.
As for Tua vs Cameron- I suppose it has its elements, but really, without wanting to sound too cruel, it was a "has-been" vs a "never-was".
I can sort of see the interest in terms of the return of Tua, who never really was quite up with the best, making a proper return to the ring after spending more time litigating rather than boxing, but the whole thing seemed horribly hollow to me. But oh well.
But that's enough about that- the real contest is on tonight. That is, as long as the Black Caps actually manage to string together a team...jeez, the oddest thing about this all is that they've had more than half a dozen player changes due to injury in the last fortnight- yet Bond is still there, bowling away (though not quite with the same venom or accuracy of two years ago).
I wonder what he thinks about that...
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We had a crowded house from 5pm onwards. The undercard bouts were excellent. The first fight was great: Light Middleweight: Steve Chur Heremaia (NZ) vs Frank Lo Porto (AUS). Heremaia just squeaked through having knocked his opponent down twice in the first round. Lo Porto has a huge heart - if it had gone another couple of rounds he probably would have won.
Watching the Heavyweight John "smell my finger" Hopoate get knocked out by Colin Coal Miner Wilson was also an unexpectedly fun experience because everyone expected Hopoate to win.
And Tua turned it on big-time. Over 4 hours it cost less than a buck per hour per head for some great entertainment. We couldn't hear the neighbours over our own noise but there were lots watching here too (Bayview, North Shore).
Apparently Tua said O for oarsman BTW according to his Mum - and I don't think I'd be arguing much about it with him if I saw him in the street. A friend just came over and said that after the bout Tua was hugging Cameron and said "I'm off to Burger King now - do you want some fries with those Classic Whoppers I just gave you..." -
Not sure if any raucous grannies feature, but Drew Barrymore's first effort as a director is all about te derby:
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the real contest is on tonight
Bahahahaha! You cricket people... Like Silas on crack.
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I love the Whip-it chant "we're number Two, we're Number Two".. And the coach saying "Yay, we came second out of two teams!" It could be adapted perfectly by the PC bunch ruining our school sport...
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It could be adapted perfectly by the PC bunch ruining our school sport...
And what do you base this erronious piece of bs on. If you came to my school you would see competitive sport with the result definitely being important, acknowledgement for those who have done well participation for those who want to take part for the fun of it and an emphasis on playing fair. So yes we do like to win but we try to show the kids that there are other aspects of sport that are just as important. So don't be coming down on teachers and schools for a suppossed lack of competitive edge in our sports people.
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I love the Whip-it chant "we're number Two, we're Number Two".. And the coach saying "Yay, we came second out of two teams!" It could be adapted perfectly by the PC bunch ruining our school sport...
Seriously, what an utter load. I've grown to expect it from many people though because it's what other people who know nothing say so it must be true because my kids primary school netball team didn't take the score and I was astounded so the whole country has gone to hell in an apple cart.
As someone who actually works in a school and coaches and manages teams and who actually takes trainings and gets out there watching school sports every week all year every year....
I can declare that the kids are as competitive now as they've ever been and my school provides ample opportunities for them to play rugby, league, cricket, netball, curling, bowls, badminton etc etc etc And yes we do keep the score, in every game I've ever been to and one team does lose and teams get points, and make playoffs and finals and cry when they lose and jump on each other in jubilation when they win and the NZ league team does win world cups and the cricket team does make Champions trphy finals and we do win gold medals at the olympics and we do produce professional soccer players...
FFS.
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Well Hadyn, it didn't go how you thought ...
No and colour me shocked! I bet the PPV customers were a little pissed off though.
I doubt it...this is what boxing fans live for.
Trying to work out how this fits in with the 'orgasm denial' theory....
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Trying to work out how this fits in with the 'orgasm denial' theory....
I didn't watch it, but it sounded more like a quick shag (Cameron got screwed maybe?).
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I can declare that the kids are as competitive now as they've ever been and my school provides ample opportunities for them to play rugby, league, cricket, netball, curling, bowls, badminton etc etc etc
When I coached a number of years ago, I was told in no uncertain terms, by the parents, that the most important thing was HAVING FUN.
To which I responded, "yeah, you know what's fun? Winning".
The problem was never the kids, or the teachers, administrators, etc, it was the parents who felt every kid should get equal time on the court, no matter their ability or fitness, or whether they wanted to be there at all.
But my father, who started coaching more than 40 years ago, says it has always been thus.
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I think it very much depends on the sport. Netball seems to have issues in this regard. I'm only going anecdotally because the last time I was near a netball court was about 1990 to watch my sisters play. But in the sports I am involved with (rugby, league and cricket) I have never heard peep from a parent who thinks its too competitive or that their kid should have more game time. Maybe more at primary school but by high school everybody is after blood!!!! There's certainly plenty of anecdotal evidence for parental input and involvement on the sidelines becoming more negative in nature. The sporting bodies and referees are certainly noticing it more and more.
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It was basketball, but yeah, 11 and 12 year olds.
I understood what they were saying, and tried as much as I could to give every player as much court time as I could. But if the choice came down to winning, or leaving my best players on the bench? Come on.
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I started playing rugby as a 6 year-old. Tackle rugby. No one was badly hurt and it was a lot of fun. Rippa rugby it wasn't...
http://www.nzrugby.co.nz/SmallBlacks/RippaRugby/tabid/1006/Default.aspx -
I coach an under 13 club team, and we give all our players equal time on the ice.
That being said, the team hasn't come close to losing a game in three seasons - 50 straight wins - so it's not a decision we've ever had to worry about too much.
At the rep level, we put some kids out more than others. At the age of 12 I think they're starting to take it seriously enough that they can be motivated each time by wanting to earn more time by how they play.
I wouldn't do it with under 10s though. At that age, I'd give every kid equal time no matter what. Different goals for different ages.
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I started playing rugby as a 6 year-old. Tackle rugby. No one was badly hurt and it was a lot of fun. Rippa rugby it wasn't...
http://www.nzrugby.co.nz/SmallBlacks/RippaRugby/tabid/1006/Default.aspxI don't know how many times I've had this argument. Fine, you don't understand why kids don't tackle in union anymore, but they do in league.
The NZRU has a specific development plan for children based on Balyi's theories of development, which is why this policy exists. Go watch a game of Rippa Rugby, as Hadyn and I did recently, and say that the tackling is missing. These kids struggle to even run in the right direction without guidance, so why complicate things?
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Andre:
I started playing rugby as a 6 year-old. Tackle rugby. No one was badly hurt and it was a lot of fun. Rippa rugby it wasn't...
Andre, that's primary school stuff. When I was at primary school in the 80s they had the same thing with touch rugby introduced to get ALL the kids playing it, girls included, and they also had kiwi cricket as well.
Funny thing is I played in sevens tournament for schools (which still exist) and there were roller mills trials and all that stuff... which still exists.
And then there's the hundreds of rugby clubs round the country that exist for parents and kids who want to get involved. They tackle, they keep score, they fall over and cry.
This BS idea that its the schools fault if they are trying to encourage kids to stay fit and healthy rather than belt the hell out of each other in some All Black production line is a modern nonsense.
We have rugby clubs.
In my experience anybody who gives a stuff about getting their child to play league, rugby, cricket etc joins one and that's where they learn the game. Leave the schools to get kids involved and the sports clubs to get into the finer points. I mean seriously, are we expecting a primary school teacher to teach the kids how to clean out a ruck in their afternoon PE class? I'm sure there's some who know how but exactly how many things is a school teacher expected to know and do? They don't work for the NZRU.
It's time some people stopped living in some fantasy land and went out, joined a club and saved the world.
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I finally saw the actual fight, which a friend had MySkyed. I bore out my comments upthread about the actual danger of boxing vs MMA. The Cameron KO was far nastier than most I've seen in MMA (although of course there are some exceptions, typically in striker vs striker fights, which are basically boxing matches), in the sense that he appeared to receive almost nothing but punches to the head from the mighty fists of Tua, who was in a fully planted position. I actually felt a little sickened by it, much more so than I would from seeing, for instance, someone getting a cut in MMA from an elbow which bleeds profusely. Those kinds of injuries heal in a week or two. Cameron's high level of fitness enabled him to take far more damage than he should have and it's damage primarily to his brain .
MMA looks worse, but seldom actually is. That might be down to the training metaphor - a sport where you have to tap-out for safety reasons encourages a far more highly tuned awareness of when you are beaten and should give up. It also signals directly to the other fighter that it's time to stop, rather than throw in a few extra blows to make sure. These are usually the most devastating of all, when the opponent is completely undefended and possibly unable to protect themselves even from the fall to the mat. Or in Cameron's case, unable to fall to the mat, to protect themselves from more undefended blows.
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We never had a chance to really play much sport other than rugby when I was a kid - that would be one of the most positive changes made in the last 3 decades to primary school sport. As a parent of a 5 and 7 year old, I find that I have to pay to let my sons be involved in sport at school though. They have to wear boots and shin pads for soccer and rugby instead of bare feet. Wearing bare feet playing in Taranaki during winter at 9am on a Saturday made more of the kids cry than the actual playing of the game but at least the parents weren't footing an extra and unnecessary bill. With no boots, no-one got hurt. My older brother gave it away when they made us wear boots - even though he was the best player in our province.
I ended up playing soccer and raised all of the money to outfit the entire club and helped ref junior games etc though didn't have kids myself at the time. We had Wynton Rufer's academy nearby and if the kids were good players they had a path forward.
My point was that compared to 1976 sport has been taken over by the PC brigade. You need money to involve your kids in sport whereas this wasn't such a pre-requisite before. Our dad was a sports-mad primary school teacher who spent hours playing and coaching sport without pay and had a brief spell playing pro rugby league. Today it feels like he'd be charging $100 an hour for his time and he'd be calling it freelancing. I do know that there are great teachers out there working extremely hard for no thanks. The work load for teachers has increased to the point that they probably just don't have the time that they used to. In a couple of years I will be a lot more expert in this topic but at the moment it seems that if you want your kids to play sport you will be charged through the nose and the kids will be wrapped in cotton wool in case someone gets hurt. There are a lot more options as far as the number of sports you can play goes. I used to play 6 sports at secondary school without it costing me more than $60 a year in subs. Today I'd be up for about $1000. One of my favourite memories is as a 6-year-old playing bullrush with the entire complement of students at Maketu Primary School. Everyone was respectful. No-one got hurt. It was great fun. You'd never see it happen today and that was partly my original point - which was a bit tongue-in-cheek and delivered without thinking it through in great depth I might add. Off the cuff even. Someone should institute a law banning those sort of comments doncha think? -
the PC brigade
Do they have uniforms? Because Hadyn could write a column about them.
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Do they have uniforms?
Definitely proper boots, by the sound of it, handcrafted from the hides of brothel-sprouted and cauliflower-eared spawt-mad dads. Bastards.
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