COMMENT:
Twenty random and not necessarily consistent thoughts as sport goes into a shutdown.
1. There are obviously bigger factors at play here than whether a game of footy gets played or not but you cannot ignore the profound effect Covid-19 is having on the sporting world both here and abroad.
With every cancelled or postponed event, the fissures in New Zealand's creaking sports infrastructure grow a little wider.
READ MORE:
• Dylan Cleaver: Why rugby sabbaticals have to die
• Dylan Cleaver: The creeping belief that could cost Black Caps coach Gary Stead the dressing room
• Dylan Cleaver: The one change we can be sure of in sport's next decade
• Dylan Cleaver: From Gary Stead to dwindling Super Rugby numbers - New Zealand sport's latest obsession is not a great look
It could be national sporting organisations who rely on events as their only source of revenue, to already in-debt stadium operators trying to stay afloat, or just athletes trying to stay at the peak of their powers, the effects of the lockdown will reverberate around the local sports scene for years, not months.
2. The fact that Sport NZ has delayed its public funding announcement is as good an indication as any that some NSOs – who typically operate on a hand-to-mouth basis at the best of times – are on the brink of becoming non-operational.
3. There is no need to feel any embarrassment if you admit that the first time you recognised the scale of the crisis was when Super Rugby was suspended. We're all motivated by different things in life and for many, the first time this pandemic was more than an abstract concept would have been when they realised the Blues were being shut down just as they'd climbed out of a nine-year form slump.
4. The transtasman travel issues highlights what an amazing job the big New Zealand sports have done of destroying the domestic sports scene.
Will coronavirus see a revival of the moribund NPC?
Will the Fox Memorial climb out of the shadows of the NRL for a year?
Who plays in the NZ Football Championship?
These are all questions we might be able to answer soon.
5. Alternatively, grassroots sport will also be under threat if the virus takes hold in New Zealand as it has in Europe.
6. These eyes will shed no tears if that's the last they see of the Warriors in 2020.
Give me the Northcote Tigers any day.
The warning signs were flashing long before the team arrived in Newcastle, from a roster where 93 per cent of the talent resides at fullback; to assistant coach Tony Iro talking up the need to "complete sets".
Completing sets is a Clayton's game plan for talent-deficient teams – it is also Stephen Kearney's coaching default setting.
7. "Lucky to get nil" is one of the classic sporting clichés but in the Warriors' case it rang true.
They weren't just bad; they were boring and thoroughly deserved to finish in the negatives on style points alone.
8. The only thing worth worrying about if the Warriors are cancelled is this: Will we ever see the bush-shirt in action?
9. With a competition spanning four continents and both hemispheres, why did it take Sanzaar so long to recognise that Super Rugby was untenable?
It should have been one of the first tournaments to suspend operations, not a reluctant latecomer.
10. So is that the last we'll see of the unloved Sunwolves?
Sanzaar have never fully explained the decision-making that went behind the Sunwolves, who purportedly represent a country that has its own robust fully professional league thank you very much, but we can safely say the concept has been an unmitigated failure at every level.
11. If Beauden Barrett cashes in on his sabbatical next season, it could be 2022 before he suits up for the Blues.
That would make it the longest, most heavily pregnant pause between signing and appearance since Simon Barnett left More FM for Newstalk ZB. (The wider expectation is that Barrett will play for the Blues in 2021 and exercise his sabbatical clause the following year.)
12. Has there ever been a spectacle as bizarre as watching fielders retrieving balls hit into the stands at an international cricket match?
The first and, as it happens, only Chappell-Hadlee ODI at Sydney was one of the worst games of cricket in history and not just because New Zealanders have seemingly lost all ability to bat properly when visiting Australia.
We might mock cricket here for its inability to draw crowds capable of filling the rugby stadia the Black Caps play in, but the "action" at the SCG shows that even a small crowd makes it bearable.
13. The following day this writer found himself watching two school games played simultaneously side-by-side at an unattractive ground on the northern fringes of Auckland.
Some of the cricket was borderline atrocious yet the mere fact that there were parents there watching made it a far more satisfying experience than watching the Black Caps on the telly the night before.
14. Sometimes it takes an athlete with a massive platform to cut through the crap.
As the F1 show hit Melbourne for the season opener, organisers and key stakeholders all toed a party line that was out of step with reality and deeply confusing for fans, many who turned up at closed gates for the first day of racing.
When asked why the race was still going ahead, six-time Hamilton was blunt: "Cash is king I guess," he said. "I am really very, very surprised that we are here. I think in motorsport it's great that we have racing, but I think it's really shocking that we are all sitting in this room. There are so many fans here today… you are seeing the NBA being suspended, yet Formula One continues to go on."
It was duly cancelled.
15. Wayne Rooney asks some pointed questions of football authorities in England, few of which will be able to be answered satisfactorily, you suspect.
"Thankfully football made the right call in the end," he wrote in his column for the Sunday Times.
"We had to put the season on hold. But why did we wait until Friday? Why did it take [Arsenal manager] Mikel Arteta to get ill for the game in England to do the right thing? For players, staff and their families it has been a worrying week – one in which you felt a lack of leadership from the government and from the FA and Premier League. It felt typical of the way things are done in football. That Leicester [who had reported symptomatic players] aren't a big enough team to cause any chaos, it's fine, we carry on. Then as soon as one of the bigger clubs – Arsenal – are affected, we finally make a decision."
Rooney said it felt like footballers were being used as guinea pigs, finishing with a similar lament to Hamilton: "I think a lot of footballers were wondering, 'Is it something to do with money being involved in this?'"
16. The netball started like it had never been away and while this is a time for massive change, it was reassuring to see some things remain the same: the Tactix will not win the league.
17. It has to be tough being a Phoenix fan right now, knowing the chances of seeing your team play at home again this season must be hovering around the 0-0.5 percentile.
18. Sport doesn't have to stop for you.
For every hour of sport you would normally watch on telly, over the coming weekends, grab a bat and ball, or just a ball, grab your kids, put some plimsoles on your plates of meat (feet) and get active.
19. It's also a good time to catch up with some classic sports books.
I'll assume you've read Open, the revealing but ever-so-slightly overwrought autobiography of Andre Agassi.
Here are a couple of others to get you through the next few months:
Ball Four, Jim Bouton (1970)
Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 years with Brian Clough, Duncan Hamilton (2007)
Touching the Void, Jim Simpson (1988)
Anything by Michael Lewis.
20. My yard is looking as good as it has in months – silver linings.
Stay safe everybody.
Sport will be back and some of us will never again take its wonderfully distracting qualities for granted.
'Our heart goes out to Kath’s husband, their children, friends and whānau.'