Posts by Tom Semmens
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I tell you has got the hang of this blogging thing - Trevor Mallard. Like a duck to water, as they said at the Standard.
He even engages Whaleoil. I want to buy tickets for the Slater evisceration.
-
Geoff, as a good Auckland I should just to point out that I wouldn't pay those prices for ill fitting mass produced garments. - I go bespoke.
-
The Australians certainly don't have any sort of domestic comp. I don't care. Why should we sacrifice our competition to stop them snivelling?
Screw them, with a 500ml Heineken even.
-
RoO - what I had in mind was those "South Auckland booths" - the mobilising of which swung the election for Labour in 2005, whilst their staying home cost Labour in 2008.
-
I suppose you are always going to get the "Home Counties" effect given the dominance of Auckland population and culturally wise.
But it pays to remember that general elections are won and lost in Auckland's dormitory suburbs. Whether you like it or not, the local is the national in Auckland in a way it isn't on the West Coast.
-
I would humbly submit that the hijacking of a plan to unify the entire local governance of the South Island by Rodney Hide and the rest of his four percenters would be of more than passing interest in Auckland to. And remember, there is only a million peeps down south - there is around 1.4 million affected up here.
-
Geoff L - the average crowds across the competition are well down. One (or even two) swallows a summer doth not make.
Simon P is right. Governance of the game here is the problem. The NZRU is a monolithic bureaucracy that is currently full of apparachiks who are simply not performing. The game is controlled in a top down manner by people who are out of touch and bereft of ideas.
Upon reflection, I think the only way to fix things is get more ideas into running the game. How about selling 25 year franchise leases for the provincial unions, with the top four teams from the Air NZ Cup playing in the Super competition. That way provinces will have to find someone (or find it themselves) with the money to sign up or they are not in. The cost the NZRU could charge would be set by the market and discounted by whatever rules they wish to put in place around All Black availability and that sort of thing.
-
Who is going to be the Super 14 semi-finalists? Does anyone actually care? I can't believe the "solution" is now the Super 15. Oh goodie -it’s going to be the Super 15!! *YAWN*
Can't the NZRU tell that this competition has reached its use by date and they seriously need to think up something else - or at very, very least, refresh and re-launch the competition? Personally, I don't even bother with the Virtual Super comp on the internet anymore let alone watch most of the games.
Declining crowds. Declining TV audience. Declining column inches. Declining interest.
How many more clues do they want?
Their season is a mess, their premier comp is stale, the rules stink, and nowhere is the dead hand of monopoly more evident than in Sky's lacklustre coverage. So the solution is to continue to ignore the Air New Zealand Cup (a mistake the Saffa's haven't made in regard to their Currie Cup) and add an extra team so we get another round of boring goodness.
If I have to watch boring rugby, I would prefer to be in the Air NZ Cup - at least then having a province I care about (that way the result is the most important thing, not the spectacle) playing on a sunny winter afternoon. Then I can go out and do something more entertaining in the evening.
The answer is three things: 1/ Drop two NZ teams and re-distribute the T.V. Money to the Provincial Competition. Surely if the NRL teaches us one thing, it is that a ferociously parochial, national competition is always going to generate more interest - and more forgiveness of local rule "interpretations" to allow the game to flow - than a meandering competition that even the players and commentators appear bored with half the time.
2/ Try and do something about the terrible coverage from Sky. I've said it before - their commentary teams are terrible entertainers compared to the NRL and AFL commentary packages, and it is absolutely killing interest in the game on TV here.
3/ DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE RULES!!!!
Rant over. :)
-
And another small observation about Melissa Lee. I was godsmacked at her lack of preparation for her interview this morning. I wonder if there isn't a huge difference between the instinctive ferral cunning honed from years political kneecapping of the electorate MP and the sort of lazy careerism of some fastracked list MP's?
-
OMFG! I listened to Melissa lee's train wreck of an interview with Geoff Robinson - Stephen Fry couldn't have made it up. Gentle Geoff was clearly nonplussed.
That she is brittle and shrill became clear on Q&A last weekend - that she is just plain dumb wasn't made clear until this week.
"A senior policeman told me" sounded suspiciously like a fib made up on the spot, someone needs to ask her the next obvious question - what was the policeman's name? Her evasiveness over the possible blurring of the use of public funds was unforgivable from a political viewpoint - she has had plenty of time to sort her story.