Important moments in Waikato / Chiefs fandom

Sport Review #283

Man does the fingers out a car window - my first real rugby memory occurred on Te Rapa Straight when some guy in a passing vehicle did the fingers at a pedestrian in a Wellington scarf during Waikato’s 1980 Ranfurly Shield run. At seven years old, I was very impressed.

We win the NPC - fast forward to 1992 and Waikato’s thumping (and eye gouging) win over Otago at Rugby Park in the very first NPC final. Me and a mate managed to break our bench seat celebrating the early opening try and spent the rest of the game in an awkward kind of crouch. Sub-optimal match day experience at the time, but a fantastic memory overall.

We win the Ranfurly Shield - you know the story, Auckland had the shield for 300 years thanks to Zinzan, Fitzy, Foxy and all the rest. Until half of Hamilton came up to Eden Park to watch us take the log in a very, very tense match decided by Ian Foster’s try. We were very excited and went on the pitch to watch John Mitchell lift the shield - here I am celebrating in a dodgy Williamson Ave flat:

Celebrating the BLACKCAPS beating Australia in Cardiff in 1999 in a Chiefs jersey - but of course.

Sioni Luaki’s last minute winner v the Blues - appropriately #1 in this list of top Chiefs. Watched this in some shady Takapuna bar with Brother of Sport Review with some miserable Blues fans, what a moment.

Stephen Donald wins the World Cup - an important part of being a fan is using individuals in national teams’ success to lord it over provincial rivals. So when Stephen Donald - I loved him - put on an XS All Blacks jersey and kicked the winning goal in that unbearable final, you’d better believe I leveraged that to remind everyone who’d bagged him that they’d bagged him and now he was the GOAT.

Chiefs do the haka in 2012 - I genuinely did not know the Chiefs had a haka, so seeing them perform it after finally winning a title was mind blowing.

The bells - My dad had a story about taking a cowbell to Sydney to help the All Blacks, where some Aussie fan offered to buy it off him to shut him up. OK, so they’re technically Waikato, that’s morphed into the Chiefs, but like Milwall, everyone hates them but we don’t care.

We’re going to smash the Blues on Saturday night just FYI.

Thanks for reading - Richard

This week's best NZ sport content

Dylan Cleaver had the scoop on Kane Williamson turning down his NZC central contract - and does a deeper dive with Paul Ford on the pod [The Bounce, BYC Podcast]

Calum Henderson takes an incredibly frustrating but time consuming hobby and turns it into an incredibly frustrating but stressful sport [Spinoff]

A tribute to the Highlanders’ Connor Garden-Bachop, a player with serious pedigree who passed away at just 25 this week [Sportsfreak]

Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic celebrate their 25 year anniversary - Suzanne McFadden tracks down some of the many great names and fans to tell their story [LockerRoom]

OK, this is from Australia, but this close analysis of mullets in the AFL is one of the most impressive pieces of data journalism I’ve seen [ABC]

It’s bloody tough being a New Zealand tennis player on the ATP tour, as KP Pannu tells Bonnie Janson [NZ Herald]

Video nasty

Goosebumps.

Long read

Insane story of Kanye West’s Malibu mansion, designed by Japanese concrete maser Ando, that he had some guy rip apart from the inside and now sits derelict and on the market [New Yorker]

Recommendation 

I can’t tell if Under Paris is genius pro or anti-Olympics propaganda or pro or anti-pollution propaganda, but you had me at sharks in the Seine.