Field Theory by Hadyn Green

I was in the pub a few weeks back with my friend Dom. We were talking sports and so naturally the Super 14 came up.

"What's wrong with it?" he asked. "Why isn't it interesting?"

He's right too. There have been a number of articles recently about the subject arguing every side of every argument about the "current state of rugby". There are too many games. We need more teams. The season starts too early. The post-season should be longer. We should drop South Africa. We should add Argentina. The ELVs are terrible. The ELVs are fantastic. And then today… rugby is fucked.

The nine provinces that aren't a Super 14 franchise base, wrote a letter to the NZRU saying how they think the Super 14 is destroying the sport for everyone else and how it should all be run. The G9 (seriously that's what they're calling themselves) said that the future of the top flight provincial rugby (currently in the form of the Air New Zealand Cup) needed:

• To be a meaningful competition (competitive)
• Super rugby players to participate in fully
• To televised (100 per cent)
• To operate in clear window
• To have a relevant salary cap that all participating provincial unions can afford to pay up to a minimum of 80 per cent
• A review of the future NPC participation principles including the merits of maintaining the competition at the current 14 or adopting a three-tier structure with the possibility of promotion/relegation.

Jock Hobbs, naturally says that the G9 can go suck a lemon or at least that their "fears are misplaced". Does that mean they should actually be afraid of something else?

Personally I've given up trying to actively figure out what's wrong with the sport at the moment, but I do know that there is something wrong. How do I know? Because, like Dom, I'm just not interested in the game. I suspect that the same is true of you, Dear Reader (if indeed you were a fan of rugby to start with).

So far this Super 14 season I have attended three cricket matches and haven't watched a full Super 14 game on television. And really I should be involved because my Chiefs are doing really well and the Crusaders are doing poorly. And yet no one has complained in the comments about my lack of rugby coverage. So either you're all being very polite or the Super 14 just isn't on your radar.

I keep hearing the usual excited reporters that the Super 14 is as close as it's ever been. Is that true? I suppose the South African teams are doing well, and they need to with the British and Irish Lions on their way. How close are the teams really?

A while back I wrote about a report showing relative competitiveness of various sports tournaments around the world. The same guys who did that report recently sent me some more information but this time solely on the Super 14. They sent me through two graphs of their team lodeings, Long Term and Short Term.

Team Lodeings are an indication of how different team compare with one another. The ratings are between 0 and 1 – 0 being lowest, 1 being highest. Long Term ratings use the results from the last 14 rounds, whereas the short term ratings only use the last 7. That's why there is a lot more movement in the short term ratings.

LONG TERM (click to get full size image)

SHORT TERM (click to get full size image)

Both graphs: Bracewell, Paul J.; Forbes, Don G. R.; Jowett, Clint A.; and Kitson, Heath I. J. (2009) "Determining the Evenness of Domestic Sporting Competition Using a Generic Rating Engine," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1, Article 5. Available at: http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol5/iss1/5

The distance between teams is the relative strengths between them. So you can see that there is only a difference of 0.3 to 0.25 between to top team and the bottom team. From both graphs you can see that from Round Three to about Round Eight there is a lot of movement. You can also see that the Chiefs and the Highlanders are improving.

But all this data still isn't getting me all hot and bothered about the game. Even the bonus points screwing up the standings table can't get me interested.

Recently a rugby game I would not only get excited about but would love to see live – the New Zealand Maori versus the Springboks – has been sunk by a lack of sponsorship. Fucking recession. Instead we get the All Blacks playing Australia again. But this time it's in Tokyo! Maybe they'll play in crazy anime uniforms? [Note to possible sponsors: I promise to write only nice things about this game if you fly me to Tokyo].

As a quick aside, there is a suggestion to retroactively award test caps to Maori players who were denied the opportunity to tour South Africa during the apartheid era. Surprisingly I find myself against this idea.

Firstly you have to pick the players who would've made the team, then you have to assume they would've played all the games, would any records then have little asterisks and stuff. Basically it'd be a mess.

Moreover, and more importantly, there is more of a statement in the current record of those games. The fact that players like Waka Nathan and George Nepia aren't on the teams says more about the tour than any retrospective cap. Luckily Nathan agrees:

"To be quite honest I don't believe in that. You're either an All Black or you aren't. You're either a Maori All Black or not."

He remembers a tour of South Africa in 1967 falling over, and he was happy that it did. South African Prime Minister John Vorster set three conditions for Maori touring: There shouldn't be too many, they shouldn't be too black and no controversy should surround their "selection and dispatch".

Back to the Super 14.

Really the basics of the whole thing are that they need more fans and they need those fans to actually engage. The attendance at the Caketin for this year's Waratahs/Hurricanes match was 12,835, two years ago it was 25,290.

How do you do that? Please send all answers to the NZRU.

I shit you not the headline read: Jamie's Win Cup Runneth Over. I know that puns are the bread and butter of sportswriters and to have a sportsperson called Whincup must make the usual Sunday paper journo respond with Pavlovian salivation, but, come on!

So yes the Hamilton V8s were on again. A time when part of New Zealand cringes with revulsion and the other part get drunk on cheap piss, ogle girls in skimpy outfits and pray for major vehicular accidents. And of course those are both gross stereotypes.

There must have been some modicum of restraint shown by the crowd though. Police say arrests were down for a start. And even that scourge of public events, who has made a career (I suppose you can call it a career) out of removing clothes in public, was removed after, well, removing her clothes in public. We all know her name don't make me write it.

As for the actual racing, the Sunday papers were correct that Jamie Whincup did do rather well. He negotiated the infamous chicane and came through with the wins. By the way I think every race course should have a particular section that has a high degree of difficulty that can be a focal point for both drivers and fans.

This reminds me that there is a new show on The Box (formerly Sky 1) called Grid Girls where a group of long-legged short-pantsed women are put into various race cars and compete to be the best "girl racer". Sigh

Wouldn't it be more interesting to watch actual female motor racers who have real driving skills attempt to master other forms of racing rather than giggling amateurs? For example, driver Gemma Farrel says that she hopes that the show will help her in the future:

I've been in Australia for four years now so my profile is there…..I would love to start to build a profile in New Zealand with TV and modelling.

Somewhere there are motor racers, dying for sponsorship money, crying. Other reality shows of this ilk don't have people without skills. Project Runway, Hell's Kitchen, even America's Next Top Model, all have contestants with the skills for the show. Again, sigh.

Back to Hamilton, TVNZ reporter Marty Tasker started his live report (why is it always live) with: "Despite the recession, many turned out to the race…" It seems that "despite the recession" might become the new suffix for news intros these days. "Despite the recession people having fun" etc.

On to less grumbly matters now.

At the Basin Reserve test match recently, Dan Slevin, like a modern day Aesop, told me the story of how West Ham got it's uniform. Note, he refers to West Ham as "we", a nice touch I think.

My memory of the story was that around the turn of the century we went up to Villa (who are a much older club than us or anyone) and they donated us a kit when we didn't have one.

Wikipedia has the full version:

[Thames Ironworks, West Ham's predecessor] permanently adopted claret and blue for home colours in the summer of 1899. Thames Ironworks right-half Charlie Dove received the Aston Villa kit from his father William Dove, who was a professional sprinter of national repute, as well as being involved with the coaching at Thames Ironworks. Bill Dove had been at a fair in Birmingham, close to Villa Park, the home ground of Aston Villa and was challenged to a race against four Villa players, who wagered money that one of them would win.

Bill Dove defeated them and, when they were unable to pay the bet, one of the Villa players who was responsible for washing the team's kit offered a complete side's 'uniforms' to Dove in payment. The Aston Villa player subsequently reported to his club that the kit was 'missing'.

Well this weekend The Hammers travelled to Villa and took their away strip – sky blue with two claret horizontal bands – only to have the referee decide that the uniforms' sleeves were too similar and asked the home team to find a new strip.

And what a strip! It was just casual warm up gear but jeez it looked cool. Especially in the first half when it had no advertising.

Villa could've worn their away strip, but really, the white was too fucking cool.

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Last week was a big one for news about the people who bring us sport. Obviously Tony Veitch was mentioned a few times. I've tried to keep away from Ve-itch-nam War news as much as possible because, quit frankly, I never thought he was much of a presenter. In fact I would go so far as to say I prefer Andrew "Saveloy" Saville (even if he does look like a bobble head at times).

The two biggest sports presenter stories have come out the US. First, veteran broadcaster Harry Kallas (famous Philadelphia broadcaster and voice of NFL Films) died. Then John Madden retired.

John Madden may be one of the most famous sports presenters of all time. With co-hosts Pat Summerall and then Al Michaels, Madden became the voice of American Football for a generation. He is enshrined in the Football Hall of Fame for coaching, broadcasting and for eponymous video game, which was the first video game to enter any sports hall of fame.

His quirks made Madden all the more likable: he never flew (so he never commentated the ProBowl in Hawaii); he ate Turducken at Thankgiving (turkey, stuffed with duck, stuffed with chicken. Ooooo yeah); he said "BOOM!" a lot; he was king of the telestrator (the magic pen used to draw on the screen, here's him drawing a penis, sort of); and he really liked quarterback Brett Favre.

And don't think he was just an in-joke:

• Madden lead the Raiders to a stunning 103-32-7 record as a coach, including seven AFC Western Division titles and a victory in Super Bowl XI. His .750 winning percentage is the best in NFL history.
• A broadcasting career that spanned 30 years and all four major networks, earning him an absurd 18 Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Sports Analyst/Personality and 16 wins.
• The #1 sports video game title ever in EA Sports' Madden NFL Football line.

He was folksy without being dumb. He was jokey but only at the right times. He was friendly without losing professionalism. But age (he's 73) caught up with him and now he's going to spend more time with his grandchildren. Fair enough.

How to ensure controversy before what would otherwise be a boring match:

1. Call the other team boring
2. Call the other team's country "cheats"

Queensland Firebirds coach Vicki Wilson knows this and so before her team comes to Wellington to play the Pulse she said that some of the New Zealand teams in the ANZ Championship were not under the $300,000 salary cap.

Then she called the Pulse boring.

With all due respect Coach Wilson, the Pulse are a very young team in a franchise that was in serious trouble before the season even started and yet they have a similar points differential (-13) to your team (-15). In fact your team might just be Australia's version of the Pulse.

Could the bravado be hiding some sort of fear? Worried that losing to the Pulse would make the likelihood of the Firebirds going 0-14 all the more possible? Because trying to shake the Pulse out of their "boring" style of play might just do that.

Wilson, you cunning old cow.

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It's the fun time again when the United Kingdom's rugby fans get together and pick fantasy teams of the best players. Is O'Driscoll worthy of the team this time? Should they bother inviting the Scots? Will it matter or will South Africa rip them to pieces?

Personally I love this exchange:

Stephen Jones: It looks a ferociously difficult trip . . . and there has never been a great Lions tour without a great captain. So who's the captain?

Jeremy Guscott: I don't think it will be ferociously difficult. I don't think we go there as underdogs.

SJ: Who's captain for the ferociously easy tour of South Africa, then?

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20 years ago 96 people died attending a football match. A ceremony was held at Anfield yesterday and 30,000 people showed up. Ten thousand more than was expected, which I imagine, scared the hell out of the organisers.

At 3.06pm, the crowd stood for two minutes of silence. The only sounds in the ground were the strangely comforting gurgles and yelps of toddlers.

Meanwhile, across the country, Nottingham - home to Liverpool's opponents that day - and Sheffield, centre of the disaster, came to a stop to honour the dead.

I was only 10 at the time and I remember seeing the footage on the news. What I didn't recall was that the game had actually started, meaning the problem took a while to be noticed.

Then afterwards, the blame, fingers pointed at police and hooligans, the sickening display by The Sun. But like any disaster blame can't be pinned so easily.

I'm sure lessons have been learned since then, but perhaps not. The crowds only seem to act decently when remembering that people have died. Police and security attitudes seem to be the same.

I remember when I was in London a couple of years ago seeing an official police sign in a tube station saying: "Caution there is a football match this weekend at Emirates Stadium. Do not use this station as it will be filled with Arsenal supporters".

I have a very active imagination. It tends to buzz and whir and give me all kinds of interesting imagery that I can use when writing, and it tends to do it at night. I do all my best writing and creating from about 10pm through to 3am (flexi-time anyone?).

The downside of this is that 10pm to 3am, while annoyingly being the time of day I have usually reserved for sleeping, is also the time of day known as "night". A time when there is no light and fewer noises and when drowsiness mixes with an ancient evolution-honed caution, and places its finger on the instant adrenaline button.

This is not to imply that I am some flighty gazelle, terrified to close my eyes and bolting out of bed into an instant ninja-type stance at everything that goes bump in the night (be it ghoulie, ghostie, or long-legged beastie). Most nights I sleep like a log. But some nights all I need is a trigger and my imagination runs riot and I can kiss restful sleep goodbye. Years ago I figured out that one of those triggers was horror films.

The last horror film I saw was 28 Days Later. That was six years ago.

I should clarify that: 28 Days Later was the last scary horror film I saw. I am a fan of the old 1950s and 60s pulp horror and sci-fi films (The Creature from the Black Lagoon is my favourite). I also love Kaiju movies. But they aren't scary, at least not any more. Lon Chaney as the Wolfman was terrifying in his day but watching it now he comes across as campy and hackneyed.

You know as well as I do that the best horror leverages off the societal fears of the day. So the Communist threat of the Bodysnatchers became the consumer-culture zombies of Dawn of the Dead which became the anger-fuelled hordes in 28 Days Later which became (for some reason) CGI vampires trying to kill Will Smith.

This is why I am Legend and Cloverfield sucked. Neither film gave real relevance to their antagonists. I am Legend started well with the "what will Earth look like when we fuck it up" meme that was floating around and then proceeded to screw up the ending (by the way totally recommend watching the alternate ending instead).

How do I know I am Legend failed? It didn't scare me. Not once. And it should have because it is all about the thing I fear the most: the end of society.

Really that's what we all fear. We fear the end of life as we know it, whether that means constantly running from zombies or giant ants or having to kill loved ones because they got bitten by something weird. Interestingly plain old death isn't as scary as being the ones left afterwards. This is why apocalypse movies aren't scary; the apocalypse just kills you, it doesn't turn you into a monster.

I should also mention that things that scare us the most also tend to be in the "uncanny valley". Easily the creepiest werewolves ever were the ones in Harry Potter (followed by the Nazis in American Werewolf in London). Again it's the base of our fears; something that looks like a person but isn't moving or acting correctly. It what makes Tool videos creepy.

So that's why I was surprised to find myself suggesting yesterday that we rent Quarantine. Quarantine is the American remake of the Spanish film REC, which was described as the "scariest film ever made". And while Quarantine was not as scary as I thought it would be, my imagination still had me lying in bed with my eyes wide open, and ears straining to hear every sound, for at least an hour. Stupid brain.

I get mail:

Dear Hadyn
Will you please write about this on your PA blog?

One of my workmates, who is a gay, has been taking great delight in it. Great delight.

Yours sincerely

What could "this" be? I thought. So I had a look.

"This" is the new Adidas Super 14 promotion called Jersey Swap. On the site you chose two of five local players to swap jerseys. The players remove their own jersey, then take, but don't wear, their friend's jersey.

The mathematically inclined amongst you will have figured out that this means ten possible combinations of manly rugby shirtlessness. At time of writing there was no button to watch the players being hosed down while they wrestle.

In terms of LOLZ this ad is almost as good as the one for the All Blacks that featured Sione Lauaki, Josevata Rokocoko and Leon MacDonald when none of them were playing for the All Blacks.

Speaking of uniforms did anyone catch the Cheetahs-Brumbies match last weekend? This is what you would've seen if you had.

What the fuck Cheetahs and Brumbies? In any sport the home team is allowed to wear white it wants to, and many teams do so. But then they should really make sure their opponents know what the situation is. In fact I know that the Super 14 franchises get together before the tournament with the sole purpose of making sure these kinds of clashes don't happen.

The Cheetahs home strip is white and has been for a long time. Their away strip is… well, ugly. So really the onus was on the Brumbies to bring their rather fetching dark blue ensemble.

Actually in writing this I've discovered some details in the Cheetahs jersey that I might bore you all with another day.

Instead watch this fucking amazing full court, nothing but net basketball shot by a little kid…that didn't count.