The Orange

I’ve resisted posting on the success of the Wellington bid for the A-league license – largely due to the fact that the over-riding emotion was pure and simple relief.

However, we now have our own Roman even if he is Greek (which I’ve got to say is some of my best work – a pity no-one else ever reads this!).

We – note that I have a sense of belonging already – do not have a team name yet. I like the Zephyrs altho the Tornadoes may have more going for it.

Anyway, the team may not exist but it has its own supporters club already – Yellow Fever.

Apparently they have a domain name but no web site … perhaps they should consider Drupal or even Wordpress

Which sort of reminds me in a digressional way of one of my favourite songs – Gang Of Four’s Anthrax:

Love will get you like a case of anthrax

And that’s something I don’t want to catch

Let’s hope the Wellington A-league team is a bigger hit than the Gang of Four

By Jingo, those Aussies are smarter than you think!

They’ve finally cottoned on to what a crap spectacle rugby yawnion is compared to league.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph had all the facts and figures but the guts of it is that the Waratahs last two games had their lowest ever Super attendance which isn’t super at all.

More punters – but not the Punter who’s somewhere in the West Indies – attended the Souths – Roosters game on a Monday night that the Waratahs game the previous weekend.

And with those Aussie commentators, you can guarantee they weren’t watching the game at home either.

By comparison, the NRL had its best weekend ever, aided and abetted no doubt by the addition of a 16th team.

Still, it just shows you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, even Aussies.

Loved this quote from Vic aka Skid Marks in the Sunday Guardian after Gibbs hit 6 sixes against the Dutch:

Luuk van Troost, the Dutch captain admitted: ‘Before the game we said “let’s make history today”. Well, we made history.’

Let’s just hope the Black Caps don’t make the wrong type of history against Canada or Kenya!

I’ve been a little bit quiet on the Warriors front but it was great to see them kick the season off with a win.

The Warriors do seem to have recruited wisely – I’ve previously blogged about Witt, McKinnon and Crockett.

Albeit after one game, McKinnon could well be the buy of the season and there’s plenty of comments along the lines of how could the Eels let him go?

It’s still early days yet but a win against the Broncos would really set the season up.  The Broncs have a few injuries – particularly Darin Lockyer – and the Warriors always seem to get up for the Broncos.

Four points from 2 games would be a great start to a long season.

If the players think Argentina joining the Tri Nations is complete madness, then you can almost guarantee that’s what the administrators will do.

It’s a pity because the Argies would certainly benefit from some consistent top level footy.

The new improved Tri Nations – with NZ, SA and Oz playing each other a zillion times – is stupefyingly boring.

However, bringing the Argies in without sorting out their domestic comp first is like adding a fourth Aussie team to the Super rugby before they have the depth.

So the Diggers have to dig deeper in yet another alarming indication of the lack of depth in Australian rugby.

According to the NZ Herald, Matt Burke could be making a comeback at the World Cup from his retirement base in England.

What next – Campo making a comeback with Phil Kearns on the bench, microphone in hand??

While the admin people go round in circles, the Knights (as they were) lose players.

Sportal had two headlines today that tell the story:

Salley joins Adelaide

Two in A-League race

Sadly the first may not have haven’t if the second was no longer a story.

OK, so Lote has gots lotsa a loot and the ARU has obviously got too much money to start with.

But it wasn’t a fair fight.

The ARU has got unlimited cash to use plus a huge moral high ground to defend – they don’t want any league recruit to go back to league.

Except Wendell. But he ain’t going anywhere at present.

As for Lote, anyone who thinks the Waratahs are going in the right direction must be blessed that they can make that amount of money from playing a game because they don’t have lot of hope working in the real world.

The Pakistanis won’t be speaking English at their press conferences.

Bid deal.

Braces has been doing it for years.

Australia has enough depth for four Super 12 teams … yeah right.