Then what's the point of inclusion

Olympic bronze medal cyclist Simon van Velthooven got into the head of his young opponent Dylan Kennett.

WANGANUI cricket's Council of Clubs were on a hiding to nothing with the decision last week to include Collegiate First XI in the Premier League competition but not award any points for those games because the school can't play here every Saturday.

In addition, when Collegiate are off visiting their fellows in other regions the club team they were supposed to face will take on the side that would have had the bye, again for no competition points.

It means every weekend there will be two League matches and one of them will be meaningless - hardly motivating for the club players if they want to turn up.

The Council organising a five-team Premier 1 grade can still give off the illusion of a quality competition with depth in player numbers but at this point it is exactly that an illusion more like "so long as everybody gets a game" stuff.

While I'd much rather have Collegiate there than not, there's also got to be a power of a lot of work done to get Wanganui High School cricket back on its feet with decent player numbers, while every adult club player better be exhausting their roller deck and calling mates to drag them out to the parks on Saturday afternoons.

And you mean to tell me no-one can, or is willing, to pull together eleven 16-to-17-year-old City College boys who don't mind willow and leather?

That way if a few City, WHS and Collegiate teenagers stick around for jobs in Wanganui when school's done then they may still want to keep playing because of the feeling of self worth from doing so - a shot at calling themselves a Premier League champion from at least a fulltime five-team conference.

Otherwise, this whole thing turns into cricket's version of Whose Line is it Anyway? - "The show where everything's made up and the points don't matter".

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IT seems it's not just in cricket where administrators are making things up on the fly.

The New Zealand Jetsprint Association informing drivers last Sunday morning that there were plans to introduce a "drop round" system, where they could discount their worst score during the six-round competition, is grossly unfair on all concerned.

Those drivers were about to go out on the Meremere course for the third round of their campaign, clearly knowing where they stood in the standings and where their opposition were placed.

All their tactics and plans to either prepare their engines with similar setups from previous rounds, or take the chance to experiment, were predicated on that understanding.

If you are going to introduce a "drop round", you do it before the start of the campaign so everyone has time to get used to it and factor it into their plans accordingly.

Word is, the announcement came about because while ASB Baypark Stadium in January was a tremendous draw card with a crowd of 16,000, the temporary track was such a difficult beast to tame that the placings became lopsided and not a fair reflection of the points certain teams would have otherwise accumulated.

Tough luck. You do not change the rules for competition tally's halfway through a season.

Imagine if Sanzar decided this May they were going to do away with four-try bonus points in Super 15 because muddy conditions during South African matches meant the home teams were having to rely more on penalty kicks and drop goals?

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IN my time I've seen some interesting gamesmanship for trying to get inside an opponent's head, but Olympic bronze medal cyclist Simon van Velthooven took the matrimonial cake during the re-scheduled International 'Night' of the Stars at the velodrome on Sunday afternoon.

Taking a warm-up lap, van Velthooven ambled over to the track announcer and whispered in his ear.

Moments later, all in sundry heard through the PA system that junior world championship medallist Dylan Kennett had apparently asked van Velthooven for his sister Laura's hand in marriage.

Her frantic shaking of the head from the grandstand thus rejecting a theoretical proposal he hadn't even given and six sleeps before Valentine's Day no less was hardly what the teenaged Kennett wanted only moments before a big race.

Well played, Simon, well played.