The best call i have ever heard on the Money vs Country debate comes perhaps from the last person i would have expected to make such a comment. Sonny-bill Williams.
Up untill i heard these words come from his mouth i had very little respect for SBW.
Á reporter was questioning Sbw on the huge drop in salary he was facing by turning down the millions on offer to stay in france and about which club he was going to play for in NZ, his response was so refreshing i couldn’t help but be impressed. he said ” I ‘ll be getting payed pretty well wherever i play” it was so good to hear a player thinking in those terms. he might only be getting a fraction of what he could in france or england but a few hundred thousand a year is still a hell of a lot of money, The media and the public was making a huge deal about the monatary sacrifice he was making just to chase his childhood dream of being an All Black, of how noble that sacrifice was and how great he was for doing so, i was impressed no end that he was the one to give everyone a reality check and remind people that a few hundred grand is still lot of money to play a game.

The Irony here is that the ”system ” in NZ, the elite academy, early talent identification and development systems we have in place were an idea we copied from Australia in the first place.
We saw Australia institute of sport getting fantastic results from aussie elite sportsmen and woman and said ”we need something like that.
Now we try to spot talent at schoolboy level and develop and send them to our own sports and rugby institute, it seems to have worked with a lot of our top players having gone through that system.
Not all our top players went through that and the ones that do dont always turn out to be that good.
they generally still have to play and prove them selves at club level before they get picked for provincial sides, prove themselves at provincial level to get picked for super sides. a few exceptional players have managed to impress enough at age grade level to get noticed by the provincial selectors but not many.
Aaron Cruden was essentially picked up by manawatu on the basis of his U21 performance, but he did Captain the U21 NZ team to world cup Victory and he won the MVP for that tournament and was clearly a freakish talent.
Victor VIdo was so impressive at schoolboy level and also captained the NZ u21 side to world cup victory which caught the eye of Gordan tiechens he played a season of 7’s for Nz in which he was the Star of the entire series, that earnt him a spot in the wellington squad, ZAk guildford [ventriloquist dummy looking guy] also got picked direct from Crudens U21 team but the vast majority of players even those who go through the academy still have to make their way up thru the club ranks, then provincial then super rugby,
Dan Carter was playing for CHCH oldboys B side with my flatmate when i was at Uni, from the B side he made his way into the A side then to Cantabury then to the Crusaders and then to the All Blacks, he is the greatest player in the world and yet even he had to prove himself at each level before reaching the top

Except that Australia cant sort out a provincail comp even with its Wallabies, fact is Australians just dont like rugby. they much prefer its low-brow cousins league and the even lower-brow ‘footy’.
we used to play footy” at school except it was called Scrag.
Australia desperately needs a decent provincial comp, but without the crowds it cant be financially viable.
And the standard of play just wouldn’t be that flash, Australia struggles to scrape together enough decent players to form the Super franchises they already have, why they want another is beyond me and the prospect of a domestic competition is unfortunatly unrealistic unless you somehow manage to dig up a couple of hundred more decent players from somewhere, the talent definately exists unfortunately league and footy atrracts the vast majority of it.

I dont know about Sa or AUS super franchises but in NZ super rugby franchises dont make money, last year the Crusaders made a loss as do most of our franchises most seasons, i dont know when the highlanders last broke even.
Last season in NZ the smaller provincial unions were the best finacial performers with some posting considerable profits. fact is the cost associated with running a super franchise are enormus and the crowds just were not present at the stadiums.
The NZRFU made i dare say its biggest profits in years from the bledisloe cup match held in tokyo,
Besides from the costs of playing in south africa the hardship of that travel takes an enormus toll on the players, same goes for SA teams travelling to NZ and AUS, due to the fact SA teams do this trip more often than our franchises it puts them at an obvious disadvantage, furthermore SA could make a lot more money playing in a northern hemishpere competition, Not only that but they would be playing in their own time zone so TV ratings are sure to be higher than the status quo which has SA fans up at all hours to watch their teams play.
The only disadvantage i see for SA in making the split from SANZAR is that Northern hemisphere Rugby is of a rubbish standard,
SA fans will tell you that the currie cup is the best comp in the world and they would be better off to concentrate their efforts on that alone, does anyone else remember Aparteid when SA only played amongst themselves for years? when they returned to internationals after years of just Currie cup they were below par and it took years of playing tri-Nations and super rugby to become a top class international side, dont even think of bringing up the 95 world cup when the All Blacks were poisoned before the match.
The only two players not vomiting were osbourne and rush who snuck away from the dinner the night before the match and got takeaways. deny it if you want but we saw it with our own eyes. never seen spew buckets on the sideline in any other match.

Good call sixo-clock, the reason refs are penalising SA more than the All Blacks is simple.
when the ref says roll away or hands off, he means just that.
McCaw pushes the rules to the limit, but when the ref says hands off he lets go.
In the early stages of the game McCaw is very cheeky, this is no accident he is testing how far he can go before he gets penalised, once he figures out the particular refs tolerance he plays to that.
You can argue about the definition and rules untill your blue in the face but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.
The ref has the whistle and his interpretation is all that matters.
The ability to adjust his play to fit with what he can get away with on any given day is part of the reason McCaw is so brilliant.

think SA has stadium troubles, man you should see NZ the world cup is a year away and the main stadium that will host the FInal is a joke, instead of building a decent stadium or even a proper upgrade eden park is getting a bunch of tempory seats brought in to increase the capacity, what a joke. and the auckland city council are to busy fighting over the mayoral race to sort out the Fan zone which the IRB requires, honestly its pathetic they haven’t even decided on where it should be, in fact im pretty sure they dont even have any reasonable possible sites worked out yet. The central goverment looks ready to step in but that would be a bad look so they are holding off. but if htey dont sort it soon the final could well be moved.
Kinda reminds me of the world cup Nz co-hosted with Australiaa few years back, you know, the one where NZ couldn’t get organised and Australia ended up having to run the whole thing themselves.

i mean NZ was awarded joint hosting rights to one of the biggest events in the world and lost it because we couldn’t sort out a few signs, pathetic.
And by some miricle we get a second chance and it looks like we will balls that up too!

Shaun Pollock was picked more as a personal favourite of mine, its my team and i can have my favourites.
better in the one day format but i think his abiltiy to get Key wickets is among the best of anyone
he did get smashed by Hayden and co, but why do you remember that?
simple, because it was unexpected.
I remember pollock as the spearhead and a right pain in the backside for us [NZ]. I always remember him as the dangerman in a very good SA team, and you cant fault his figures 421 wickets at average just over 23.
And how many great top orders did he embarrass?
He certainly embarrassed NZ’s on many occasion not that i am sugesting our top order was great or even that good.
oh yeah and he can bat a bit too! test average of over 32

Yep i couldn’t play a defensive stroke if my life depended on it ,i was/am a bowler first and a batsmen never im the first to admit that, although i can smash the ball a long way and on my day i made a few decent scores but batting is NOT my forte

I never really understand the role of specialist openers, sure they take the hardness and shine off the ball but i have always been of the opinion that your best batsmen should spend most time in the middle, if your batsmen are Bradman and grac then no one else is likley to get a turn anyway,

On the Gilchrist debate, if figure that their is enough technical batting in the top order so some big hitters would be better down the order to balance things a bit, Same goes for Sir VIvian or the perhaps for technical Lara.

And as for Lara i dont think we will ever agree, Like Ponting some beleive he is god and some think he’s a bit flakey.

OK concensus seems to have been reached on Garfeild being the best all rounder. does anyone else want to bring him up?
this was absolutely the point of this article, so far it seems the only two everyone agrees on are Bradman and Sobers.

and i really havent thought much about who my openers would be, Grace and Bradman listed at 1 and 2 only because they were my two staightforward and hence first picks, as a bowler myself opening the batting is something i will never understand,

had some quality batsmen though, my point was they were not chumps

What about Headly? the Black Bradman”
In the Windies Bradman is known as the White Headly

didn’t want to start a fight by mentioning the chucking side of the Muralitharan vs Warne debate but it was in my mind.
If you trust the biometric testing where he was asked to bowl in a lab knowing that his arm was being measured then his delivery action is brilliant, I recentrly saw an interview with the guy who first invented the Doosra, sorry cant think of his name right now, But he was convinced that it was impossible to bowl the doosra with a straight arm unless the wrist is locked, the way he invented it not the way Muralitharan bowls it. essentially he said Muralitharan definitly chucks.

i said ViV richards had a superior average than Lara not a higher one, in actual fact Lara has slightly higher average but take out Lara’s huge totals and his average drops dramatically, 400no is all very well but was selfish as he could have declared and given his team a chance of winning, Viv richards on the other hand was well known for getting to 1000 and then slogging out in order to progress the match, although fortunate for Richards he had a dream pace attack so big totals were not often needed. and yes Garfeild sobers should probably be in my team, the point of this article was not to declare my picks as the absolute best team, only to provide a starting point for debate.

Fine by me if SA want to take their ball and run home like children, it seems this comes up every time SA have a bad season.
When they are winning the tri-nations and super 14 is the best thing since sliced bread but always after a few defeats in a row talk of leaving SANZAR resurfaces, well thats fine if SA leave SANZAR the standard of their game will drop and we can go back to the old days when the battle for rugby supremacy was fought between NZ and AUS.
SA can play with themselves and continue to prostitute their players to the wealthy northern hemi-sphere clubs.
Sure We will miss the competition but not nearly as much as they will.

Hadlee is in because of his bowling, one performance in particular sealed it for me. 15 wickets for 123 runs against a rampant Australian side which included the likes of Boon, Border, Matthews and more.
In the secound Innings Hadlee took 9 wickets and caught the other, He then scored a 45-ball 54 to set up NZ’s first test win.
Not only are his figures great but Hadlee almost single handedly won countless games for NZ

Thats true with the improved technology modern players have he edge over old timers, like you say bats are better pitchs are better, How many peolple these days even know hat a sticky wicket is, not many because now we cover the pitch when it rains. also modern players have the advantage of Nutritionists, Phyisio therapy, personal trainers and so on
But i am pretty certain if Bradman or Jack Hobbs had all this they would be even better than they were. sadly we will never see Bradman facing Warne on the WACA or Viv Richards facing McGrath on a belter but we can imagine.
I can only assume if the greats from days gone by were to enjoy the advancments of the modern game then they would be better than they were when they played.

Players on my short list who didn’t quite make it

Glen McGrath, 563 wickets the most wickets of any pace bowler,very Consistent and accurate, not great with the bat or particularly menacing with the ball, Hadlee gets in ahead due to his batting and ability to create wickets rather than force mistakes

Courtney Walsh, tireless and very fast, 519 wickets second most for a pace man only Glen Mcgrath has more,left out largely due to his awful batting

Shaun Pollock. great all rounder. batting average of 32.31
and 421 wickets at average of 23.11
Very Close to being in the XI, very nearly had pollock at 5, in for ponting with VIV Richards moving up to 4

Sir Ian Botham. batting average 33.54
took 383 wickets at average of 28.40
excellent all rounder but figures not quite as good as Imran Khans or Hadlee

Curtly Ambrose. considered the most lethal pace bowler of his generation
Among Ambrose’s 405 Test wickets at average of 20.99, two spells stand out: the 6 for 24 that hustled England out for 46 in Trinidad in 1993-94, and his series-clinching burst of 7 for 1 against Australia at the WACA the previous season

Brian Lara. Averaged 52.88 and holds the record for the highest test score of 400no
In the space of two months in 1994, Lara’s 375 and 501 not out broke world records for the highest Test and first-class scores,he went on to get world test record of 400no
The reason I left Lara out is for the fact that if you dont count his enormous scores his average drops considerably, making scores of 375 and 400no is impressive but he batted for so long to get those records the team had no chance of winning the game, His captaincy was erratic, he led by example with the bat but theWest Indies struggled both on and off the field
Many other great players have had the opportunity to post enormus totals but have declared in order to try and win the game.

I have included WG Grace largly as its hard to ignore some of the Experts on the espn Documentary, guys like richie beneut have so much cricket knowledge and they say WG was twice as good as anyone else. who am i to argue

I would have gone for Garfeild too but reading the West Indian All time Xi article it seems he didn’t make that team, i had to defer to the west indian cricket experts and leave him out to, although if Bradman says so then i will beleive it.
I could have gone the easy way and just copied Bradmans all time XI.

the first match of the current tri-series saw India bowled out for 88, and lose the match by 200 runs to NZ
A huge defeat but in India’s second match they came back to beat Sri-lanka by 6 wickets in the 34th over.
this goes to show that a quality side can have their bad days and bounce back quickly.
I dont think Australia has too much to worry about especially as pakistan cricket is almost the definition of inconsistancy.
Pakistan can be brilliant one day and awful the next. Australia may have a shocker every now and again but so long as they dont make a habit of it they should be ok.

On the left hander right hander debate, my logic is that a left hander is the better option for the simple fact that most of the population is right handed, therefore bowlers tend to be less expeianced at bowling to the left hander, similarly batsmen get more practice facing right handers so in theory a lefties have a small advantage. if i had to choose based purely on which hand a player uses the the lefties would be my pick.

im no expert on west indian cricket but i just cant fathom how lara doesn’t make the team, as a New zealander i can only dream of having an all time team which has no room for lara,
for that matter if i was to pick an all time Nz team and pick up your unwanted players i’d have Gayle too, and garfeild sobers and courtney walsh, actually it might be quicker to just say i’ll have your 2nd XI plus sir richard hadlee and dan vettorri, martin crowe is NZ’s best batsmen but not sure he measures up compared to your 2nd string openers,
Burt sutcliffe is in the mix but he is way before my time so only have his figures to go from and they dont mean much as he never had teammates who could support him, he may have been great with someone to bat with.he carried the team his whole career.

What about Jerry Collins urinating on the feild during a test match while playing for the All Blacks, He knelt down during a stoppage in play slipped the old fella out the bottom of his shorts and releived himself in the middle of the paddock, in a full stadium with all the tv camera’s i dont know how he thought no one would notice, in the end i think it was the steaming frothy puddle that gave it away, or could have been the big black schlong on the stadiums bigscreen,

Dirk Nannes of the netherlands is a world class player, fastest delivery at the T20 world cup was his, great thing about cricket is although its a team sport one guy can really make a huge difference to the team performance on the whole,if they find a few more like him we’ll have a game on our hands

I have often thought to myself that yanks would love cricket if only they could understand it, its a very complicated game and it can seem very dull and boring if you dont understand the stratagies and tactics, for cricket fans dot balls can be exciting but if you dont understand why a dot ball can be so important then it seems like nothing at all happened, just as if you dont understand that a batsmen has been forced to block because the delivery was good it seems like nothing happens.
But american sports have many similarities with cricket. baseball and grid iron both take a long time to play and yanks seem to love disecting their sports with endless statistics, they love their statistics and cricket is jam packed with meaingful statistics. Baseball to me is a version of cricket for idiots. you stand and swing, miss 3 times and your out. hit the ball and you run regardless of where the ball goes. Cricket has many different strokes and endless variations of shots to choose from. you must think about where you hit the ball and must to treat each delivery on its merits. baseball has the bunt and the swing as hard as you can. how can a game so simple take so long to play. its got a huge following and huge money is involved, they analyse the living crap out of everything with stats but you either hit or you miss whats to analyse?
I am sure that if they took the time to get into it most yanks would find cricket an infinetly more intersesting game to watch and play. probably lucky they dont as with their population and the ability of some of their batters to hit they would likely be a very good cricketing nation