The Chopping Block re-birth!

Long time between chats to all our fan/fans, and the news is rather good now we have decided to branch out into other sports we enjoy aside from the greatest game of all, totem tennis.

‘The Chopping Block’ remains in the title of our fortnightly ramblings so our fan can continue to search for any articles of note. Raymond Johannes Barnacle and myself have been off the scene for quite some time on tour with our great mate Nollsy. We realise our fan would have questioned our whereabouts, big shout out to Hosko.

So with great pleasure, I announce we escaped our hiatus and will be stirring the emotions of the regular armchair critic throughout summer. Our great mate is in rehab recovering from being pipped at the post by Casey Donovan as a contestant on that alleged ‘celebrity’ show. I mean this lot have nothing on Warnie, The Chief, Fev and that apparently famous old pommy duck from last year’s crew. Their loss leaving out the great man from Condobolin.

With our new column, all topics and subjects will be more off the cuff than a Charlie Sheen stand up gig. Don’t take the reference to the great man of Young Guns fame that our content will be all about addictions, though like Chucky Sheen, Ray and I have had our own addiction problems in the past. Ray is a recovering crossword addict and I dabbled in mixing ‘magic mushrooms’ with energy drinks and wandering around Circular Quay for days on end asking people if they had seen Sigmund the Sea Monster, Harold Holt, Steve Mavin, Scotty Muller or Fat Cat (Greg Ritchie) and friends (the Goondappa brothers)!

2016 has been a year of long droughts being broken. Ray finally threw a… apologies wrong column, the Cinderella story of both the NRL Sharks and AFL Western Bulldogs triumphing as premiers were definite highlights along with Leicester City winning the EPL. Only the Super Rugby went to script, though it too was a first Kiwi franchise, the Hurricanes, meaning all five Kiwi Super Rugby sides have now won the title.

I can’t see the Force or Rebels getting the Australian franchises to match their Kiwi counterparts or the mediocre South African franchises doing likewise. In fact, some of those franchises are that mediocre their names escape me. Kings, Cheetahs, Lions maybe or was it the Queens, Meerkats and Quokkas?

Who cares, point is they won’t be able to match the Kiwis’ record anytime soon. Add to the mix the Japanese mob and the Jaguares and it will be another season dominated by the Kiwis in 2017.

Let’s hope a similar miracle that the other three codes experienced in 2016 occurs and the final is between the Lions and Western Force or the Rebels up against the Cheetahs. I know that statement is rather outlandish and there’s a better chance of a Grant Denyer/Stevie Jacobs duet of “Island in the Streams” going to Number one on iTunes!

If the Wallabies can’t win the Bledisloe Cup next year, I propose they retire it and hand the Kiwis the trophy for good. With two home games and the All Blacks distracted by their mouth-watering series with the British and Irish Lions, it’s make or break for the hot-headed Cheika and his band of misfits.

A bit like State of Origin, the contest has lost its appeal with the same result year in year out. At least Laurie Daley’s men stopped the procession for a season and have a fair chance with plenty of up and comers.

In youngsters such as Ivan Cleary and John Cartwright, apologies I meant Nathan Cleary and Bryce Cartwright, Jack Bird, Tim Moses, Shannon Boyd, BJ Leilua, James Tedesco, the Trbojevic brothers, Matt Moylan and co and the future looks alright. The same plodders and terrible left field selections from the last few years should be a thing of the past.

As for Channel Seven’s summer of Tennis and Channel Ten’s BBL finally coming to a close, was it just me or did songs such as ‘Once I was seven years old…’ and so on, drive you to almost smash the television set? Add to that the theme song for 24 minus Jack Bauer (what’s the point of watching that, it’s like watching the Paul Hogan Show minus Hoges), I realise I could have changed the dial or muted said ads, but sometimes they snuck up on you like a fart in an elevator.

There was no escape from them if, like me, you headed to the fridge to crack a tinny or re-heat your leftover 24 pack of nuggets from Maccas, or if you were flushed with funds, KFC.

It’s great these sports have drawn to a close and we can now focus on the Nines this weekend in Auckland, though I hope they pull a better crowd than the 3,456 punters at Wellington yesterday to watch the rugby sevens. After that we have the Indigenous versus All Stars clash, for the rah-rah fans it’s the rugby tens in Bris Vegas and finally for the aerial ping pongers, the always stellar NAB Cup (or whatever it’s called now) with its nine-point goals, games at the underrated Blacktown Stadium and other awesome initiatives, what more could the oval ball fans ask for?!?!

So over to the reader or maybe readers of this column – what was your summer highlight and what are your expecting or looking forward to in 2017? My personal highlight was the Nick Kyrgios press conference after he was bested by some little-known opponent whose name escapes me right now. I know it wasn’t Miloslav Mecir who Ray swears it was.

Happy New Year punters – feel free to drop us a line.