Great kiwi coaching sackings of our time
Janine Southby is only the latest New Zealand coach who'll face a nervous wait after a major tournament failure. The template's pretty standard - woe across the nation, ex-players unhelpfully chipping in, a 'review', followed by press conference and more time with the family.
To bring readers some background, here's a coach ousting run down from our different codes:
Rugby
Grizz Wylie, Laurie Mains, John Hart (twice), John Mitchell. All toast. Generally, if you fail to bring home a world cup and you're not Graham Henry, you're dead meat.
NZRFU used to lead the nation in sacking coaches fast, clean and mean, old-school style until they surprised even themselves and gave Ted another turn after Barnes-gate. And look what happened. There's a lesson in this that we don't learn very often.
Cricket
Glenn 'firework' Turner laid down a magnificent template for getting yourself sacked by simultaneously falling out with his team and management, followed up with an explosive book that settled more scores than a Quentin Tarantino script.
Rugby League
David Kidwell recently paid the price after an extremely ropey world cup and eviscerating independent review, but the real action is over at the Warriors, where if you go a couple of seasons without a decent coach-sacking, you begin to miss it.
Football
New Zealand Football tend to favour the jump-before-pushed model in recent times, but mad respect must go to former All Whites coach Kevin Fallon, who got himself sacked from a high school team spot for basically being too intense.
Thoughts are with Janine Southby. Let's hope the Ferns go down the All Blacks 2007 route rather than the '91.
Also - this must happen:
Chiefs v Waratahs 26 May in Hamilton. Go on; put those bells away & wave rainbow flags.
— Sports Freak (@Sportsfreakconz) April 17, 2018
Thanks for reading - Richard
Godzone
White flight in Auckland rugby - how the pacific island community is dominating rugby in our biggest city [NZ Herald]
LockerRoom in the White Ferns' locker room - wrapping up a watershed home season for the team in terms of interest and support [Newsroom]
Paul Cully on Brad Weber speaking out against Israel Folau - when Brian Tamaki is defending your words, you might want to have a re-think [stuff.co.nz]
Eric Rush on life after rugby - this man is a national treasure [NZ Herald]
Video nasty
Media relations in simpler times.
Offshore
The Boston Marathon had two incredible winners - a government employee from Japan with a full time job who runs a marathon a month, and the first American woman winner in 33 years, who waited for her rivals mid way through the race and still won by four minutes [Deadspin]
What you're up to this weekend
It's a quiet weekend. Recommend catching The Defiant Ones on Netflix, really.
Blues v Highlanders tonight at 7.35pm and Reds v Chiefs in the late one at 9.45pm Saturday are the only glimmers of excitement TBH
Trent Boult's Dehli Daredevils take on the BLACKCAPS-stacked RCB at 2.30am Sunday morning
Cycling's spring classic Liege-Bastogne-Liege is on Sunday at 2.05am
Bring back the gif
When you walk a the room but forget why you went in there.
