Black Ferns celebrate with the trophy after winning the Rugby World Cup final. Photo / Photosport
NZME’s sports writers answer the big questions and discuss the big stories that took place in 2022.
Chris Rattue: Chris Wood doesn’t get enough general recognition for making it, or surviving, as a striker in the world’s highest-profile football league, the English Premier League.
Footballers struggle for adulation in this country. We aren’t all that big on following Kiwis abroad anymore.
We used to track people like John Walker, Susan Devoy and even English-based league stars with great enthusiasm. But the likes of brief world squash No 1 Paul Coll and world triathlon title contender Hayden Wilde operate in a sort of obscurity now. It’s just the way it is.
Kris Shannon: It did attract enough attention, but we underrated the significance of Lisa Carrington’s three-race showdown with Aimee Fisher on Lake Karapiro in April. National trials in small sports don’t often demand live coverage, nor come laden with compelling storylines while offering a tantalising glimpse of the future. But Carrington barely edging Fisher to earn the sole K1 500m spot for the world champs - where she naturally claimed gold - ticked the above boxes. The rematch in Paris will be properly rated.
Liam Napier: Squash isn’t a glamour sport and, therefore, tends to fly well under the radar. This is the case for Greymouth’s Paul Coll who deserves widespread recognition for his standout year. Coll’s stellar 2022 includes achieving history as the first New Zealand man to reach world No 1. Coll also became the only Kiwi male to win the prestigious British Open. He topped that off with gold at the Commonwealth Games alongside three World Tour titles.
An honourable mention for sprinter Zoe Hobbs - a semifinalist at the world athletics championships in Oregon in July, and a finalist at the Commonwealth Games a month later. Hobbs improved from 11.27s to 11.08s this year. At 25, her best is yet to come.
Michael Burgess: Paul Coll and Israel Adesanya are contenders, as is 20-year-old footballer Marko Stamenic, completing three full games in the Uefa Champions League, including two against Manchester City, barely two years after he was playing Central League football. But this nod goes to swimmer Lewis Clareburt, beating the best of the Commonwealth in grand style, despite having to train in a council pool, sharing lanes with the public.
Christopher Reive: The Breakers are good again. After four seasons of mediocrity, they are back playing at home and thriving under the coaching of Mody Maor. Since he was appointed as Dan Shamir’s successor, Maor has said he wanted to get the club back to their glory days and rebuild the team into something Kiwis could be proud of. He’s doing that, with a Kiwi-heavy squad and some savvy import signings. This is the first season since the club was sold by the Blackwells in 2018 that they have looked like title contenders.
Alice Soper: Tokomanawa Queens winning the inaugural Tauihi basketball league. They timed their run to perfection and established a fierce rivalry with the Northern Kāhu. The Kāhu were strong performers throughout the season, winning their first nine matches, but the Queens became stronger as the tournament went on, eventually breaking the Kāhu winning streak and giving them their only two losses of the season. The two met once again in the final and it was the Queens who came out on top.
Rattue: The world didn’t take the plight of migrant workers in Qatar seriously enough.
The football World Cup was built on the deaths and appalling mistreatment of vulnerable people. There was some lip service protest, but that’s about all.
What happened in Qatar should be a mark of shame on football, and in particular Fifa, forever.
Shannon: Steven Alker’s achievements, while admirable, are incomparable to our other top athletes and totally unworthy of a Halberg nomination. Just because golf has a senior-citizen circuit doesn’t mean we have to pretend it’s top-level sport. If we want to debate Halbergs there are plenty of Kiwis in plenty of codes all over the world thriving against opponents who aren’t collecting social security. Alker seems nice, though.
Napier: Sport New Zealand announced in early December transgender athletes can participate in sport in the gender they identify with, and will not need to prove or justify their identity.
The principles only apply to community level sport – not professional – and sports bodies will ultimately define where and how the trans athletes will participate.
There’s an element of passing the buck here. While inclusion is undoubtedly important so, too, is safety and fairness. Allowing genetically developed males to compete – particularly in contact sports such as rugby, league, netball, basketball – against young female athletes places the latter at major risk.
Burgess: Rather than the end of the world, the All Blacks’ Ireland series loss was a blessing. It was the most talked about All Blacks mid-year contest in years and the deserved Irish triumph was great for the health of the global game.
But most importantly, it forced change – and probably ongoing alterations - within the All Blacks camp. Without those, and the necessary friction and self-examination that adversity creates, their chances at the 2023 World Cup would have been minimal. Now they are contenders.
Reive: England winning the football World Cup would have been the worst-case scenario. As a neutral observer, I enjoy watching the story unfold; the belief turning to grief, and the ongoing wait to return to glory. It’s now been 14 World Cups since England clinched their lone title, making that story even more compelling for 2026 when it will be a nice round 60 years since that 1966 triumph.
Soper: New Zealand Cricket got off cheap in their new player agreement with the women that play the game. The big headline of match day equity stole focus from all the work that is required to get to game day and is still largely underpaid, particularly when it comes to the contract offering for domestic players. It’s a trend in women’s sports across codes where sporting bodies pump resources into the current crop of players without strengthening pathways to the top. This strategy builds individual talent tall but doesn’t grow the talent pool any wider.
Rattue: The way Nathan Brown walked out as coach of the Warriors mid-season was incredibly disappointing, even though he wasn’t the right man for the job.
The fans, the game and the club deserved a coach who acted with more commitment than that.
Last year, the captain and star Roger Tuivasa-Sheck did the same thing. This is not a good trend.
Shannon: A moment that brought a realisation - the theatre of the final round of World Cup group games will never be repeated, thanks to Fifa’s greed in expanding the tournament. Coming instead in 2026: more mutually beneficial draws and less of the drama induced by simultaneous high-stakes matches. Those five or so minutes when Spain and Germany were both crashing out was the highest I’ve ever felt, and I went to uni in Palmerston North.
Napier: Judging in boxing and mixed martial arts remains atrocious at times to expose both sports to continued allegations of corruption and favouritism. Scoring systems by nature are subjective but the regularity at which scorecards smell off taints a sport that requires athletes to put their health on the line.
Rugby’s inability to differentiate between accidental collisions and intent also continues to blight the product, along with judicial inconsistencies.
Burgess: The All Whites failure to secure World Cup qualification, after the loss to Costa Rica in Doha. A close defeat is always hard to take – with so much on the line – but the combination of errant finishing and incompetent officiating made it so much difficult. Success could have catapulted the game into a new stratosphere here and the sense of what might have been with that squad – anchored by Chris Wood with plenty of young guns – will take time to subside.
Reive: For so long in the MLB season, it looked like my 2021 roundtable prediction of a New York Mets World Series win had a chance of coming true. But it’s the hope that kills you, right? After leading their division almost all season, the Mets staggered into the wildcard round of the playoffs and got knocked out immediately.
As for a New Zealand angle, the irritation and disappointment that came with the All Whites loss to Costa Rica in their World Cup qualification match is an easy winner.
Soper: All of the reviews released that point yet again to the harm that high performance environments are causing our athletes. We have seen multiple reports pointing to the same thing but are so slow to move and slower still to offer any type of genuine apology. Those that whistle blow end up as collateral damage, despite their action almost always resulting in much needed change. I long for the day where athletes can raise these issues without fear or without having to retire first. I hope that we can build a mechanism so people can be heard without paying a price.
Rattue: I didn’t think the Black Ferns had a chance of winning the World Cup, so that changed.
And I was looking forward to the Fifa World Cup, until thinking properly about the Qatar migrant worker scandal. The tournament went from being a thing of joy to a sick exercise then.
Shannon: In a moment of true weakness, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a column outlining why we should root for England to win the World Cup, arguing that while their various calamities throughout the years had provided plenty of reasons to laugh, now the team should be cheered. Turns out that was very wrong, at least according to my gleeful cackle as Harry Kane’s penalty sailed over the bar and England made another calamitous exit.
Napier: I’ve realised cricket desperately needs to establish clear club and international windows, particularly for the proliferation of global Twenty20 leagues. Trent Boult, Colin de Grandhomme, Jimmy Neesham and Martin Guptill opted out of New Zealand cricket contracts this year. Others may follow suit unless separate windows are created that allow franchise and international formats to coexist within an increasingly congested calendar.
Burgess: I still have doubts about Ian Foster, I still think the NRL season is way too long, I still hate everything about LIV golf and I’m still wary of video referees, especially in the oval ball codes. Perhaps one change; I never thought that Lionel Messi could be regarded in the same football sphere as Diego Maradona, but now they can share the throne.
Reive: I now believe Jordie Barrett is better utilised in the midfield, than at fullback. Barrett proved he was more than capable at second-five for the Hurricanes, and then again for the All Blacks. He should be unleashed there more often.
Soper: Knowing that the Black Ferns’ success at Rugby World Cups has been used in the past as justification to not invest in the women’s game, I believed a loss would be necessary to get New Zealand Rugby to wake up. I felt they needed to lose the battle to win the war for progress for the women’s game. What I hadn’t banked on was just how beloved the Black Ferns would become over the course of this tournament. The energy around this team became plain for even the most stubborn of traditionalists to see.
Rattue: Golf provided a trio of candidates - Lydia Ko, Ryan Fox and Steven Alker.
Scott McLaughlin’s amazing rise in IndyCar deserves a lot of recognition.
Cyclist Aaron Gate had an incredible Commonwealth Games, even if it is a bit of a second-rate event.
Buying time here … a tough choice.
I’ll give it to Lydia Ko. She is, once again, the best women’s golfer in the world.
Shannon: Aaron Gate - and it would have been especially sweet after his 2021 ended with a crash that potentially cost him and his pursuit teammates an Olympic medal in Tokyo. Gate more than atoned for that miscue at the Commonwealth Games, winning a trio of track golds before somehow massaging enough lactic acid from his legs to claim a fourth with one of the best road-race performances produced by a Kiwi.
Napier: Zoi Sadowski-Synnott. Claiming New Zealand’s first Winter Olympics gold medal in Beijing, with a back-to-back double cork 1080 trick in her last run in the slopestyle, smashed a ceiling in more ways than one.
Sadowski-Synnott also secured silver in the big air competition to anoint her the first Kiwi to win two medals at one Games.
In doing so, the 21-year-old from Wanaka altered New Zealand’s perception of the Winter Olympics from a fun snow sports event to one that showcases Kiwis leading the way on the global stage.
Burgess: Lydia Ko. It doesn’t seem that long ago the golfing genius was written off by most experts, so her 2022 comeback was staggering, even if close rival Nelly Korda was affected by serious health issues. After being such a young prodigy and having so much early success, for Ko to get back to the top, in such a global sport, is remarkable.
Reive: Ruahei Demant had a dream season. She led her nation to a World Cup title that many outside of the Black Ferns believed would be out of reach given their nightmare run in 2021, and she won every individual award she was could have. You don’t get any better than that.
Soper: While it was her captain, Ruahei Demant, who cleaned up at the award ceremonies, it was Ruby Tui who won the hearts of the nation. Tui’s winning streak has been red hot this year, first with the Chiefs Manawa then the Black Ferns. Between the fingernail clawed try in the France semifinal, giving her medal to a young fan and her post-match karaoke, Tui has established herself as a cult hero. The line down the street at her book signing shows that folk just can’t get enough of her.
Rattue: Sam Cane. It was always going to be tough for the Chiefs loose forward, following in the footsteps of iconic All Blacks who became captains.
The injury-hit Cane is maybe the most nondescript captain the All Blacks have had, at a time when the game needs a charismatic saviour.
Shannon: This may be niche, and it may be harsh, but it was certainly bad. Lauren Bruce arrived in Birmingham holding the national record in the hammer throw. She boasted a personal-best distance surpassed by only one athlete in the field. And she bowed out in qualifying, registering a foul with her first throw, sending the second into the net and flinging her third wide. Talk about (sorry) a hammer blow.
Napier: Grant Dalton. A lesson in how to alienate your fan base – take a beloved event from yachting’s Waitematā backyard to the other side of the world without a shred of regret.
Burgess: Sam Cane. I’m reluctant to jump on this bandwagon as everyone who has dealt with Cane – from current All Blacks to former teammates at Tauranga Boys High – speak highly of him as a player and a person.
But it was an awful 2022; dragged off in some big tests, part of some historic losses, pilloried by media and public, then missing most of the northern tour through injury, while others shone in his place.
Reive: Sam Cane is low-hanging fruit given the side had so many struggles this year and his leadership came into question several times – particularly when he was being substituted at the business end of big games. That said, I’m a believer in Cane and think he will step up when it really matters in 2023.
Soper: Kaipo Olsen-Baker was set to be the breakout star of the Rugby World Cup but a broken bone late in the Farah Palmer Cup season ruled her out of contention. Olsen-Baker is only 20 and should bounce back strongly but it was an unlucky run for her this season.
Rattue: There’s always something good on telly, from a series like Welcome to Wrexham, to American pro sport, the English Premier League, and when someone like Tyson Fury steps into the ring.
New Zealand sport has collapsed in a way – I struggle to retain much interest in it.
The only potential saviours are the NRL’s Warriors, who can still give Kiwi fans a true, high-profile professional sports experience. I’m strangely hopeful that Andrew Webster is the coach who can lead them to the long-promised land, or at least get close.
Shannon: A time when sportswashing became an inescapable part following these silly little games, whether for a beguiled athlete, conflicted fan or humble emir. From the LIV golf series pinching a number of top players off the PGA Tour, to Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland - football’s greatest young stars - signing massive deals with state-owned clubs, to *waves hand in general direction of Qatar*, using sport to exercise a little soft power has never been more prominent.
Napier: The year sport returned in full after its Covid enforced and significantly disrupted hiatus. The year Wayne Smith inspired a miracle transformation from the Black Ferns – and the hand of Joanah Ngan-Woo in the final lineout that clinched a sixth world title at a heaving Eden Park. And the year we lost Inga Tuigamala too soon.
Burgess: Never ending, in a good way. It started with Novak Djokovic being kicked out of the Australian Open, which was an outrageously captivating sporting saga. There were a remarkable amount of World Cups, a wildly eventful All Blacks season, the All Whites’ qualifying saga, the Commonwealth Games and the Warriors’ emotional homecoming. And that’s not forgetting the Winter Olympics, which saw greater New Zealand heights than ever before. And it ended with Lionel Messi playing his coronation game in the World Cup final, six days before Christmas.
Reive: ‘The year all the things happened’. There has been a wild number of World Cups contested this year; rugby, football, rugby league x2, softball and cricket all crammed into a year – not to mention the fact we had the Winter Olympics and the Commonwealth Games as well. 2022 has just been a haze of major events.
Soper: One small step for sports administrators and one giant leap for women’s sport. For so long we have stood on the edge of greatness, knowing that a confident step forward would take women in sports a long way. Between wage increases and visibility boosts through smarter marketing and the hosting of international competitions, the wave that has been building for some time has finally come crashing down on the collective consciousness of sports fans. Women’s sport has arrived.
Liam Lawson’s debut at Formula 1's Las Vegas Grand Prix has already been eventful.