Posts by Danielle
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I know I'm starting to sound like I'm reading from the Big Book of Sporting Cliches, but hindsight is 20:20, isn't it? Why would you play an entirely different game for the World Cup if you've beaten everyone up and down for several years running? You're not supposed to think 'hey, the cosmic joke is out to get us again, we should change play accordingly'. You're supposed to think 'hey, we can beat these guys. The way we usually do'. Otherwise it's all crazy, superstitious second-guessing, isn't it?
The point is that we didn't suck, and it's silly to say that we did, and that our strategy was completely wrong. It wasn't wrong. We just lost the game. It happens.
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You know, considering our record over the past few years, I am going to have to disagree with the idea that anyone on the All Black team displays 'arrogance' or 'hubris'. The media: yes, arrogance and hubris all over the show. But not the team. It's all very well to say 'play a different style or be proved arrogant' - but if you keep on winning, as we do, with the style we were using before (even against France!), why on earth would you change it?
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Jaysus. I'm disappointed, but... a little perspective wouldn't go amiss. The *Great War*? Seriously? This is why history should be compulsory at school...
This is also why I have declared a week-long moratorium on all NZ mass media (apart from you guys). I even turned off National Radio this morning. Couldn't bear it.
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Yes, but don't forget there's a lot of us - more than you might think, and quite a lot posting here - who still love the game while having grave reservations (to put it mildly) about the elements you list.
Wordy McWord. You can be a fan and be critical at the same time.
At the same time, though, "glee" at other people's disappointment is not an admirable thing.
Heh. I wrote several posts to this effect and deleted them all, because I thought I might have been too piqued. But yeah: there are a lot of things I find 'tedious', but I usually ignore the relevant interweb fora for them. Why rain on someone else's parade? (Or in this case, wake.)
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What a pissy, sour little squirt of sour grape juice from David Kirk
I disagree almost entirely with your assessment of that column, Craig. In fact, he says almost immediately after the quote you used that the ABs should have been expecting 'close refereeing' and played accordingly. Additionally, his argument is not that the ABs were 'victims of their own brilliance', but that the rotation scheme failed to take into account particularly good team match-ups.
I'm so bummed by the nasty tone of the Your Views in the Herald that I even sent a 'never mind, it'll all come out in the wash' kind of message to the team through the official All Blacks site. I *never* do that. I don't have a little black flag on my car, because it's not my style, and yet I sort of feel like putting one up now, after the fact! I just feel like they're a bunch of really young guys, and they tried really hard, and they must be feeling terrible. I suppose I don't have the 'Angry Sports Fan' gene...
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Huh. I don't feel that way at all...
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Well, my panicky nervousness was apparently justified. Goddammit. Pretty crushed.
I really, really hope they get a decent welcome home. I would be disappointed if the mood of the country turned against them, because I don't think they played badly, and I don't think they lost the match themselves, if you know what I mean. And you have to support your teams even when they lose, in our household. It's character-forming.
It'sonlyagameit'sonlyagameit'sonlyagame...
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I don't want this to be true, because that would make us collectively some of the worst losers in sport. Is it not possible to lose gracefully and calmly? Can we really excuse this petulant tastelessness, this lack of basic manners and class?
I'm not sure whether this makes it better or worse, but we are not alone. Have you ever read the relevant message boards when, say, the New York Yankees lose a big game?
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Oh, the optimistic predictions, they will jinx us! I know it!
If you optimists need us, Richard and David and I will be over here in the separate superstitious sporting-goth area, frying mushrooms and quietly panicking.
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Huh! Learning and growing with Google and word-detective.com:
>>One kind of contest popular in the African-American community in the 19th century was the "cakewalk," in which couples competed strolling arm in arm, with the prize, a cake, being awarded to the most graceful and stylish team.
Since "cakewalking" demanded both skill and grace, victory in the contest was rarely a "cakewalk" in our modern "easy" sense. That modern use of "cakewalk" in the came from the boxing ring, where a very easy victory over an outclassed opponent was likened to a refined "cakewalk" compared to the ordinarily prolonged and brutal nature of the matches. By 1877, "cakewalk" had graduated from the boxing ring and acquired its general meaning of "an effortless victory." <<