The Orange

I’m reminded of that great T-shirt mantra – I support two teams, NZ and whoever is playing Australia.

Frankly, I don’t go out of my way to support the Jarpies.  Not sure if it is the bad blood of the years with the rugby, the intense competitive nature or something deeper.  Whatever it is, I find it hard to support South Africa.

But when it comes to cricket, any team that dick the Bushwhackers gets my support.

Nothing beats listening to the Aussies commentators fall over themselves as they watch with disbelieving eyes their unbeatable baggie greens get shafted.

In fairness, any team that loses players the calibre of McGrath, Warne and Gichrist at roughly the same time will struggle.

It was evident that the Aussies were in decline against India but the reality of their decay is only becoming evident at home.  With neutral umpires, not even the umpires can save them.

The Aussies will always be a major strength in international cricket.  But their recent bulldozer efforts over the past 10 years or so won’t be easily repeated.  The competition is definitely there from India and South Africa and once they lose their invincibility, it will give other teams the belief to attack.

Even so, nothing will beat the last 20 runs listening to Bill Lawrie choke on his own words.  Priceless.

We’ve had some crap NZ franchises since professional sport became part of the sporting fabric of NZ.

The Knights and the Kingz before them were definitely crap.  The Warriors have had some famously crap seasons altho remarkably they never ever managed to come last.

Supporting the Black Crap is a challenge but at least in cricket there’s teams from Bangladesh and Zimbabwe which guarantees us the odd win here or there.

So pity the good citizens from Detroit who’ve just been throught the perfect season – perfect crap with a record of 0-16.

No other team in the NFL has managed that although the Tampa Bay expansion team in the 1970’s managed a 0-14 season.

To make it even more impressive (in terms of train crashes), the Lions managed a 1-15 season last year.  If you can’t do the sums, that’s a combined season record over the past 2 years of 1-33.

Even the Knights managed to win a game.

If you want to put it into context, it’s poetic that the Lions come from Detroit, the home of the US motor industry.

The motor industry is being bailed out by the US govt … but the Lions look like being a bigger challenge.

The next time you hear some plonker go on about the Warriors , Nix or any other team, just think of Detroit.

Auckland made a big deal of snaring the Bechkam show from Wellington.

A pity that the ratepayers of Auckland didn’t think it was such a big deal.

Frankly, the ARC deserved what they got.

Aucklanders struggle to support sport at the best of time especially compared to Wellington and Christchurch.

From a soccer (sorry, football perspective) the two attempts to float professional soccer in Jafaland were spectacular flops on and off the pitch.

Even so, as I blogged recently, the Auckland media mafia still can’t get it into their head that Aucklanders don’t support their teams and that apart from major one-off events, other centres back teams better.

It’s no surprise that Radio Sport gets behind the Jafa perspective – that’s where they live and where I would expect the bulk of the advertising dollars come from.

I laughed when Willie Lose got all excited about the Phoenix’s fall in support – a 6,000 strong crowd for the the Phoenix is scrapping the bottom in Wellington yet the Auckland franchises really got anywhere near that figure.

At least when Beckham played in Wellington, the supporters (albeit still in the honeymoon phase) had some emotional ownership of the team.  Playing an invitational team as the home team was nothing short of arrogance on the organisers’ behalf and most likely cost them bums on seats.

Hopefully, this will be the last Beckham show for a while although I suspect not the last attempt by the Auckland mafia to snare successful events from other cities.  Sevens anyone?