Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to Jolisa,
But a sample of one (my mum!) suggests there is a category of older lady golfer who craves a decent 9-hole urban course they could get to straight after or before work (or even at lunchtime!) for a quick round; saving the 18 holes for weekends when it’s worth making a longer trip for a longer game.
This is exactly the trend internationally.
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Access: Phillip Hughes: a personal reflection, in reply to Don Christie,
Thanks Russell. I did see that video at the time. My concern was not so much with the immediate reaction but a total silence from the more general NZ cricket community about another near death incident.
I think that's a very fair point. It really wasn't mentioned.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to BenWilson,
The solution is just like housing…. density. Improve existing facilitites and optimise their use.
But making it a facility used by a lot more people IS improving it and optimizing its use.
Yeah. How many people in total play the 51,000 rounds a year at Chamberlain Park? 20,000, tops? It's bigger than Western Springs and the Zoo put together and they're used by hundreds of thousands of people a year. The zoo alone sees half a million. Making the huge publicly-owned space across the road available to more people doing more things -- while adding facilities to the golf course -- still seems like a good idea to me.
Also, if you completely intensify Fowlds Park and Seddon Fields, you destroy their amenity value for people who have other uses for them.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to BenWilson,
I’d be amazed if it was anywhere near as low as 9%. It’s a really busy course, as courses go.
I checked and apparently the only reliable figure is for the first year Chamberlain was under council management: 51,000 rounds of golf played between 30 June 2013 and 1 July 2014.
That's a long way short of the claim aired in the story that it's the most popular course in Australasia.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to ChrisB,
I am with Ben – I grew up near Chamberlain and played my earliest rounds of golf there (I won’t say I learnt to play golf there, given the numbers I shoot) and it is comforting to know there is a public course that you can access without having to be a member. In that respect, I would be sad to see it go.
To be fair, the concept plan keeps nine holes and adds a learners' facility and a driving range, so it's not like there'll be nowhere for youngsters to go and learn to play.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to BenWilson,
nor ever played rugby
You were a loss to the game!
but many, many more people have so it’s way up the food chain for usage of public space.
Much further up the list of means of exercise and recreation are walking and cycling, which have quite a bit to gain from the concept plan.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to BenWilson,
Is rugby ever played on artificial turf? Soccer and hockey, yes, but is any rugby played there, other than touch? (I don’t know the answer).
Not in New Zealand. There's some use of artificial pitches in Scotland.
But using them for training might be a different matter.
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Hard News: Park Life, in reply to BenWilson,
Ah. I could see that Chamberlain hadn't bothered to reply, but I figured they'd found some other way of assessing it.
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Saw this quoted on Facebook:
On behalf of New Zealand Golf, O’Connor Sinclair prepared National and Auckland Regional Golf Facility Studies (2013). The studies identified the following golf course trends and issues. This summary is derived from: “O’Connor Sinclair (2014). Chamberlain Park – Needs and Future Development Assessment”. Increasing operational costs. Lack of income diversity: Golf courses have traditionally relied upon membership revenue as their main source of income. Lack of diversity in golf experiences and player pathways: Golf facilities are becoming less relevant to their surrounding community and not evolving alongside societal and technological trends or diversifying the golf experience enough to attract new participants. Oversupply of rounds in Auckland and low utilisation: Utilisation of golf courses across Auckland is very low at 23%. There is an oversupply of relatively homogenous golf services and facilities and therefore an oversupply of rounds at these facilities Untapped target markets: Golf is currently meeting the needs of a relatively narrow part of the potential market and there is considerable opportunity for participation growth in new market segments.
The full report is here. It's quite interesting. It notes a global trend for shorter 'executive" courses in inner-city areas, and also says this:
Of the total rounds of golf played across Auckland, approximately
1% of rounds are played in Albert-Eden. The average utilisation in
Albert-Eden is 9%, well below the Auckland average of 23%. -
Access: Phillip Hughes: a personal reflection, in reply to Don Christie,
Why not? It’s a cowardly act whose intent is to maim or worse.
That’s just nonsense, Don. You’re seriously claiming that a bowler who delivers a short ball is intending to kill the batsman?
The ability to vary the length of a delivery is integral to the game.
Hughes wasn’t intimidated by the ball that killed him. He was trying to hook it to the boundary, got through the shot too soon and was hit on the back of the neck. He was an aggressive batsman, playing the game.
Maybe we should re-introduce spear tackles to rugby.
That’s a terrible analogy. Spear tackles have never been a legitimate part of rugby, for obvious reasons. Bouncers are bowled many times in every test match. They’re an element of the contest.
(On the other hand, it is illegal to bowl a full toss above the waist – a beamer – because the batsman doesn’t have enough time to avoid it. Bowlers also aren’t allowed to consistently bowl bouncers.)
Note that the Blackcaps nearly killed a Pakistani cricketer a couple of weeks ago, any reaction in NZ?
I presume you read this in Mark Reason’s clickbait column, rather than actually saw it. Reason’s characterisation of the incident is highly (and apparently deliberately) misleading, as if the New Zealand cricketers whooped and cheered over Shehzad’s prone body.
Here’s the clip. They cheer at taking the wicket then see Shehzad is injured and gather around him. He, too, was looking to hook the ball, rather than avoid it – he was on 176 and flaying the bowling. It was a nasty injury, but the real concern is that the ball got through the grill of his helmet.
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