Posts by Mike Graham
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Various comparisons about the All Whites result have made with rugby - e.g. it's like Japan drawing with the All Blacks. It's one of those hypothetical questions that there is no right answer to, and in many ways we should just celebrate the great result and forget about the oval ball game for a few days.
However, I enjoy numbers so I've applied some maths to the problem. I took the most recent FIFA rankings and normalised the top 100 countries points - that gave Italy .67 and NZ .08, so a difference of .59. The problem now is, how to compare that to rugby. As there are significantly less rugby playing nations than football, I took the top 20 countries from the IRB rankings (you may think that this number is too low, but...) and did the same maths.
So, by my reckoning it was equivalent to a draw between Ireland and Romania, or a draw between NZ and Italy or Fiji. I prefer the Ireland comparison as Italy are not ranked no. 1 in the football world and from my maths Ireland has equivalent points in the rugby rankings to Italy in the football rankings.
-
Julian - I agree. You could say that it was careless, but definitely not dangerous or malicious.
-
Totally agree with your What do we now know 10 points.
re point 1 goalie gaffes - they're replayed endlessly (and re-recorded in Lego), but when a striker misses an open goal it doesn't get the same emphasis. I've been waiting for someone to bring up the old Scottish goalkeeper joke...
-
It's a pity they don't have a Speedball radar at the World Cup - that first German goal v. Australia was one of the fastest shots I've seen.
-
apparently sprigs up Tim Cahill got his just rewards...
In my completely non-expert opinion I didn't think that the tackle this morning deserved anything more than a yellow card, but imho, he got just reward for his work against NZ.
-
I was glad to see the headline on BBC Sport South Africa ponders vuvuzela ban - that noise is getting really irritating, and you miss out on the 'normal' football chanting/singing atmosphere.
-
Hide sounded odd at the press conference
Thanks for the link Sacha.
Hide - "That's what the people of Auckland wanted", or in other words, "if I don't make some changes, my electorate seat will be changing parties at the next election".
-
some good reading on Red Alert regarding the Budget
Thanks Sofie - I'd seen that. Let's hope that some journalists pick up some of the issues raised and they get wider exposure. I suspect that a lot of those that will be worse off as a result of the Budget are not political blog readers, or even regular internet users.
-
The whole focus on the budget TV news tonight was about the net tax amount various types of earners would get. No analysis on the other implications of the budget i.e. the various re-distributions of funding, which in some cases will have a wider impact than an increase in the GST rate.
-
I wanted to ask something actually, to everyone and nobody in particular: Around the start of the last decade did it actually seem like there was a lot of hope that NZ would become a fair and just, environmentally friendly, culturally assured place?
I think that you are right, and I had a similar feeling, after all it is not often that a Govt is elected on the promise to raise taxes. There were of cause various business people moaning simply because their tribe didn't get elected.