u/Dudu-gula

Some are my friends who is not from here asked me the other day as we were watching the All Whites game, 'where are the fast and strong Māori/Pasifika guys in the team, you know like the ones in the All Blacks?'

I think he has a fair point, when you look at the teams in this world cup, the French, the English, the Brazilians etc. they are full of athletic fast brown/black guys. Māori and Pasifika guys are some of the most talented athletes we have in this country, we need them in our football team.

I feel because cost is a big barrier to play football in this country, we are losing out the chance to have our best athletes, who are sometimes/often come from low income families. Do I have a point or am I missing it? What can we do to attract more talent from this demographics?

The amount of boneheaded and reckless decisions this guy has made as coach is incredible, not to mention he never admits mistakes, always refuses to be flexible about his tactics and always puts his EGO first. I don't want him anywhere near NZC not even our provincial teams.

While we at it, I don't want Tim Southee and Ben Stokes near our set up either. Southee has Jofra Archer in his prime and hes somehow bowling worse than hes ever been, Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse (whos injured this series) remember them? They tore us apart in our home series in 2024, yet ever since Southee took over as bowling coach they all been bowling worse!

Ben Stokes is self explanatory, like Baz he puts himself first ahead of the team also you can tell by his body language he's not exactly a supportive captain. If he ever becomes a coach or director of cricket he probably brings the same mentality

(Jeetan Patel however you can come anytime you like. Bashir has come leaps and bounds under him also Rashid is one of the best at white ball spin bowling)

Henry Im sorry I ever question your place in the team. Youre a plunket shield god now youre our lord. What a piece of fielding!

Nice innings from both of them. Put us in a great position. Also apologies for saying Zak Foulkes is mud. How good have all three been this test match!

Report has it that Baze is one of the lowest paid coach this World Cup at $150k per year. I don't know how true that is but let's assume it is. At that price range, you're looking at either young upcoming coach or someone older looking to settle down.

Young upcoming coach wouldn't want to coach a team with only handful of competitive games every four years, so you pretty much left with only older guys who is willing to settle just coaching a few games per year and live the chill live in NZ. And from that category it's hard to find someone better than Bazeley.

With our budget and situation the only pool we can draw on is our National League coaches, like the ones coaching Birkenhead United, Auckland City Fc and Miramar rangers etc. I really doubt any of them can do better than what Baze has done

Over the past 12 months this man in Test Cricket scored 80, 25, 11, 12, 0, 44, 68 and 11 last night. Thats an average of 31 and his 80 came from a match against Zimbabwe. He's an incredible white ball player but in Tests he just doesn't cut it.

We need to bring in Brad Schmulian, he has scored truckload of runs in Plunket Shield as an OPENER. They say Opening is the hardest job in red ball cricket so bringing in Schmulian to the team doesn't necessarily mean he needs to open. He can bat down the order and perform better than Daryl.

Anybody who has watched domestic cricket recently knows this guy is a clean hitter of the ball. Can access 360 degrees of the ground, has pure talent. Many say we can lock in Rachin for the next ten years but sorry to say on current form he deserves to be dropped. It's not his scores that's the biggest problem, its the way he gets out. He keeps throwing his wicket away in dumb ways and he's a liability on the field.

Stackpole is only 21 but we should bring him in ASAP on all formats of the game imo. It's better to blood him in than going on a merry go round picking Chapman, Young, Kelly, Abbas, Robinson, Chu, Neesham etc. What Stackpole has that these guys don't have is pure clean 360 degrees ball striking talent.

We have set openers on all format as well as GP and Daryl. Kane is a legend but Latham, GP, Darryl, Conway with Finn and Seifert in the T20 format, you look at our batting history we don't produce players like them often. If we want to win the world cup or WTC again we can't waste an extra top order spot on Rachin or the journeymen I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Our XI against Chile: Paulsen, Old, Bindon, Surman, Payne, Bell, Stamenic, Randall, Just, Barbarouses, Mccowatt

Our XI in WC so far: Crocombe, Cacace, Surman, Boxall, Payne, Bell, Stamenic, Just, Singh, Mccowatt, Wood

Lets go through the players who play now who didn't play against Chile.

Crocombe: Is he to blame for our goals? No. But one thing I can't help noticing is by the body language of him and the team, he's just a negative black hole. You see him shouting and pointing all the time when we concede, in today's game you can see Libby had to restrain him because he was talking too intensely with the ref at half time...

Boxall: This guy is supposed to be our senior CB but he just gets lost all the time. I can't count how many times he kept a player onside because he doesn't follow the rest of the line. He's a passenger on that backline

Wood: I might get some flak for saying this. Yes he's a legend, our top ever goalscorer but the past few games he played for us including Haiti and England, he lacked the effort. Often someone makes the run down the wing and he couldn't be bothered making runs in the box. In today's game he was offside a few times just from plays you shouldn't be. idk if its injuries but his effort has been truly disappointing. In the game against Chile, say what you want about Kosta but he was constantly making runs, constantly trying to drop back and get the ball and try to turn with the ball. CW when he gets the ball back to the goal just don't look to turn and look for opportunity, again like Crocombe and Boxall his body language ain't good

Singh: This man needs to make a run behind if he doesn't have the ball. He spends way too much time standing still in the middle of the pitch, 'asking for the ball' even when we all know the middle is cramped. We scored four against Chile because guys like Randall and Old were making runs behind, that's it aint complicated.

Don't need to say anything about Libby, he deserves to be there unlike the four above I mentioned.

Mine would be Shane Filan, JC Chasez, AJ McLean, Nick Lachey and I might want a bit of rap and versatility so Im going with Simon Webbe to wrap up my 5.

I see that South Auckland Rangers has made it top chatham cup top 16. I never seen them play but I heard that they play rough and have not so good sportmanship all round, can someone who has played with/against them tell us their experience?

Also with them on the National stage now do you reckon they still try 'this kinda stuff' against some of the biggest club in NZ?

With Kane retiring do you think there's still a possibility a Kiwi one day reaches 10k Test runs? If so who do you think it will be?

I don't know if anyone here is a fan of Blue but I saw some of their recent performances and Lee Ryan who used to be their best singer, now struggling to hold the note like he used to. And since he sings majority of their solo the songs don't sound as good anymore.

For those who has seen them perform lately, is this a fair assessment or have I only caught videos where Lee just not having a good day?

Guys I'm not hater. Good on Tim Payne for getting that many followers within a week. But we need to touch grass a little bit here, you know why the latinos are doing this right?

They shitposting him (and us). We know we're not that good at football. But previously when we lose, we can talk about Bazeleys coaching, the formation the tactic etc. but now you see in all social media spaces, there's only one type of comment, all in Spanish something along the lines of:

Dale la pelota a Tim Payne. (Give the ball to Tim Payne)

It was fun yesterday but please don't bandwagon the shitpost anymore. This subreddit is probably the last place we can truly talk about NZ Football before eventually people will come along and flood the comments with 'Tim Payne es mejor que Messi'

Being the biggest UK boyband mogul, we all heard stories about Simon Cowell. He overworked them, underpaid them and seemed to be completely up himself. I know we can't compare him to Lou Pearlmann since Lou was a sexual abuser but I'm surprised none of the boyband members, 1d, Five, Westlife etc came out and completely try to sue him or have a tell all about him.

Is it because he has changed or time simply has passed that they decided to move on?