Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I think peter dunne will say nice things to the worm again and become prime minister. It's not about you Kyle it's all about the worm.
I think the worm was killed off after the 2002 election. The TV station rightly decided that their stupid graphical response meter shouldn't decide the outcome of elections.
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In TEN weeks in the middle of the rugby season he (a professional rugby player) has started in the grand total of ZERO games. He has managed to get 162 minutes of football in that time. That's barely two games.
You don't get fit playing games. A rugby game, which is at most 80 minutes of exercise (and in reality, with stopages etc, only 30 - 40 minutes), takes up at least three days with no fitness work the day before, the game day, and then a recovery day. Most likely it takes a week out, as they wouldn't do fitness work in the week building up to a test.
If Lauaki had ten weeks of not much rugby, while on a contract requiring him to be a professional rugby player, required or not, it's not the ABs fault. Couple of hours exercise a day and he could do whatever he wanted every afternoon.
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It's still a 5% ballgame. Labour can and have won elections on 40% of the vote
Well barring disaster, I think the election is already over. It'll get closer, but not close.
But that doesn't change the mystery over the strategy.
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Labour so far seems to be about resisting that lack of substance (now has traction with media) and pushing the idea that there's a hidden agenda.
I just don't get what Labour is thinking. It looks like a fine strategy for now, but ten weeks from now, when Key is out and about and on TV every day and shaking hands and all the policy is released, it's going to be dead as a story.
All they're doing is building up anticipation for National's policy releases. Every thing National releases people are going to go "oh finally, some policy" and then they'll look at it even more. It's free publicity for everything National releases.
Come election it'll all be "see we told you we're going to release policy, there it is, no hidden agenda here, here's our Leader, you've all seen him, blah blah blah".
Unless Labour are thinking about 2011, I struggle to see how they're not just handing seats to National on a plate.
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Sione Lauaki is a very good player, he is ideally suited to breaking structured defences and providing defence close to the ruck. He was asked to sub for openside flanker in a game where we did not take line-outs, they did not take scrums and their loose forwards turned the ball over too quickly for the defence to set. He truly had a crap game, because our coach put him on as a game breaker for a play structure that Did Not Exist.
Lauaki didn't replace the openside, he replaced the #8. Rodney replaced Braid on the openside.
Your argument would make some sense if Lauaki had been asked to play openside. He wasn't, he was asked to play #8, a position he plays regularly. His job was to tackle, and to run the ball up from the base of the scrum and first-pass from the breakdown. He was awful at all three of those things.
Maybe if they had subbed on Stephen Donald as well, the bumbling might have been fixed.
Except Stephen Donald presumably would have replaced Carter, and he was a bright light amongst a dim All Black performance. Maybe Nonu I guess. Shame he can't play in the forwards.
But Kahui did well for his 2nd game. Outplayed Conrad Smith.
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Kyle, time to wake up. Lomu would have been a phenomena of any time, but today he would be less effective.
In his prime he'd absolutely make this team (or indeed last year's world cup team, which was much better), and be one of the best five players on it. If a player is so good at one dimensional, that they're still one of the top players in the world, that doesn't make them a bad player. Coaches know what they're getting when they pick these players, they choose the advantages and acknowledge the disadvantages. If you can swap 10 greats of offence, for one defensive lapse, that's probably a pretty good swap.
The idea that one dimensional players like Sivivatu or Nonu can still have a place at the very top of professional rugby - surely, where the All Blacks should be - is now rapidly becoming out of date.
Sivivatu made what... three clean line breaks the other night? One of which he just about tripped himself up trying to find an open player to pass to for the try line. And he was denied a likely looking try by being tackled early.
According to Tracey Nelson's stats, Sivivatu missed one tackle. A multi-talented player like Ali Williams (kicks as well as a lot of international level first-fives) missed four, as did Conrad Smith (on for less than one half of the game), who's supposed to be a defensive stalwart. Nonu missed one.
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Anyone can jump, anyone can kick. What I am saying is the system used by the NZRFU to identify elite players has a rational bias in favour of a particular style and type of player.
No it doesn't. The same system that produced Nonu, produced Dan Carter, who's about as multi-skilled as you get. Certain player types fit into certain positions is all.
Under your theory we never would have picked Jonah Lomu, because his kicking game was bad, and his defence in certain areas (eg, receiving kicks) was suspect, despite him being probably the most lethal attacking player of a generation.
Nonu can kick - like Umaga he developed a pretty decent through kick for his outside backs to run onto. He's also worked on his passing game for the Hurricanes and often puts his outside man into the gap.
Personally I don't think he's a 2nd five. He's a 13. His physical strength is more likely to be bust the line further out where he'll hit a 2nd five or centre rather than further in where there's more likely to be forwards tackling him.
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I can understand her taking that position, and if Key is really the decent guy he seems then why aren't National simply letting him be himself? Is he getting poor advice?
It's only poor advice if it doesn't work.
I'd guess that National knows that head to head with Helen Clark, John Key doesn't have it. He's not a idiot, but she's got a couple of decades of experience in this field, and she's been fending off the opposition with mostly good success for 9 years now. Same goes for Michael Cullen, he'd eat Key up.
The less of Key (the person, and the party leader) that comes out for public debate, the less opportunities it opens up for Labour to attack what is a National Party weakness - head to head battle between the leaders.
And given the state of the polls etc, National are going to walk in, the only question is how many smaller parties they need to help them (0 or 1 at this stage).
The media are building up this big crescendo of "who is John Key what does he really believe, man he's slippery", National will release a heap of policy and Key will be all around the country during the campaign, and it won't be a story come election day. Most voters will be able to happily say that they feel that they know John Key, and that they've heard a bunch of national party policy when they walk into the polls.
I suspect National have a plan to win the election and they're beating Labour at the game at present by not playing it.
I'd say that Labour is the one getting terrible advice. They're not thinking outside the square, or there's nothing outside the square for them.
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I was surprised after that complete cock-up at the back of the scrum, and evidence that Lauaki couldn't pick up the ball all night, someone (coach, captain) didn't make the decision to move him to number 6 and put Kaino back to 8. Or Rodney.
Though to be honest, my question was more about the post-match comments about taking Braid off. "Had only played a few games of rugby in the past few months and his fitness wasn't up to it." So why the hell was he selected in the first place? Didn't this become obvious at some stage during the week you had him in camp leading up to the game?
Playing the whole second half with no real open-side flanker, no wonder we got hammered at the breakdown.
For that reason, I would say ALL our big Islander origin players are now obsolete in professional rugby.
That's a silly statement Tom - about as accurate as "white men can't jump". Pacific Island players can kick, though not all of them are good at it, in much the same way that not every European player is good at it.
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Bob Jones - what a w*nker. He sets his old mate up and then backs away from any meaningful conversation with Winstons brother over the Spencer Trust on 9-noon this morning RNZ.
Isn't the Rex who was firstup on nine to noon this morning - former NZ First staffer, currently in Aussie - a PAS person? The name was familiar.