Sport
By Michael Oliver | 6 Oct, 2008
When All Black Dan Carter stepped out to a hero’s welcome at Perpignan two weeks ago, he might have felt a little like the guest star in a television sitcom.
European rugby – differing perhaps only in terms of watchability and quality – is curiously similar to an American TV network. Instead of hauling Cher’s plastic-fantastic carcass into makeup and wardrobe, they wheel in people like – oh, I don’t know – Daniel Carter during their equivalent of sweeps: the Heineken Cup. More
By Michael Oliver | 29 Sep, 2008
There was a buzz pulsing around the arteries of our fair city in early August that the nondescript sports fan would in all likelihood have ignored. After all, the country’s news media barely blurbed about it, being a measly pre-season fixture in a sport that hangs on the rung below its more prominent ‘eggchasing’ cousins. More
By Michael Oliver | 22 Sep, 2008
News came to hand last week through that veritable hub of sporting journalism that is Vanity Fair magazine, that seven-time Tour de France winner, cancer survivor and former banger of Sheryl Crowe, Lance “I’m susceptible to Kryptonite” Armstrong intends on competing in next year’s tour in a bid to win an unprecedented eighth championship. More
By Michael Oliver | 1 Sep, 2008
In a perfect sporting world, all coaches would ply their trade in the same manner as Gordon Bombay, coach of the District Five peewee hockey team (better known as the Mighty Ducks) did in 1992. Despite numerous authorities and so called sporting aficionados insisting upon Bombay’s superb record being the work of mere fiction, (“…at a certain level it might appeal to younger kids. More
By Michael Oliver | 11 Aug, 2008
With the games of the 29th Olympiad finally underway in Beijing, it seems only fitting that this veritable hub of intellectualism and prestige known as Salient’s sports column forego any attempt to provide a healthy and balanced analysis of China’s Olympics in favour of bringing you a series of utterly pointless stories about the games instead. More
By Salient | 4 Aug, 2008
It’s like one of those sordid little love stories better left dwindling on the pages of some teenage paperback: club sees boy, club courts boy, club signs boy, boy loves club, club loves boy, boy inexplicably develops longing for strange new club with seductive French accent (and ADORABLE dreadlocks), boy bails on old club More
By Michael Oliver | 28 Jul, 2008
I’m not ashamed to admit that despite knowing of the existence of the “Oly-Whites” for a number of months, I had only recently clicked that the name was an ingenious pun on the word “Olympics,” so named for a festival of sporting furore whereby the nations of the world gather together in the spirit of sport to seize – as The Simpsons put it – medals of “glorious gold, so-so silver and shameful bronze.” More
By Michael Oliver | 14 Jul, 2008
Look inside yourselves, sports fans. You know it doesn’t get much more win-win than this. In an effort to succinctly curb the taunts and machinations of an increasingly curious Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) while simultaneously issuing a callous finger-wagging the likes of which can only be compared with the disapproving grimace of a kindergarten teacher, More
By Michael Oliver | 7 Jul, 2008
Since the All Blacks’ embarrassing flunking of World Cup 101 in Cardiff, a palpable wave of indifference has swept over our rabid rugby nation, gushing over the levees of our fraternal sporting affection and drowning our collective sorrows. This year’s Super 14 has hardly caught the imagination of a public More
By Michael Oliver | 15 Oct, 2007
I’m pulling this column together less than two hours after the All Blacks (in their Earl Grey strip) bid au revoir to the 2007 Rugby World Cup. My fingers are busy flicking from message board to message board; my ears are tensing up at the crackles and spits emanating from Radio Sport; my mind is hopping between thoughts of disbelief and shear embarrassment – it’s a sensory bonanza, and one of which I really could have done without. More
By Michael Oliver | 8 Oct, 2007
I’m not sure if science has ever studied this, but there really is something quite unsettling about watching and discussing cricket during the rugby season (and vice versa, even if it has been happening for years now). More
By Michael Oliver | 1 Oct, 2007
It seems as though New Zealand has always had a strange relationship with the sport many call the beautiful game. Despite 100,000 or so of us playing competitive and social soccer up and down the country, the sport has attracted minimal media coverage, overshadowed, as it were, by the proverbial juggernauts of New Zealand sport, rugby and cricket. More
By Michael Oliver | 24 Sep, 2007
Three weeks into the 2007 Rugby World Cup and already one prediction is more or less guaranteed to come true: the William Webb Ellis trophy or “Bill,” as his pals like to call him, is heading south of the equator, down SANZAR way. More
By Michael Oliver | 17 Sep, 2007
NRL finals time is always a little confusing for someone who tilts his hat in the direction of the 15-a-side code, but what I can gather is that the Warriors will have played in a do-or-die finals match this past weekend, and they would have almost certainly have done so with the assistance of Michael Crockett. More
By Michael Oliver | 10 Sep, 2007
With the eyes of the nation focusing on both the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille and Mt. Smart Stadium in Auckland this past weekend, I thought it only pertinent given this week’s issue to spin our sporting telescope back towards two weeks ago, when the halls of New Zealand sporting excellence opened its doors to Valerie Vili. More
By Michael Oliver | 3 Sep, 2007
I was at Westpac Stadium to bid a fond farewell to one of the finest, battle hardened rugby virtuosos, one Tana Umaga, and I – along with 20,000 other pairs of ears in attendance – found myself nodding quietly in agreement with the former All Black captain’s parting words. More
By Michael Oliver | 13 Aug, 2007
Ahh, another year, another ridiculous drug scandal ripping away at what shreds of dignity the Tour de France once had. Everybody’s favourite Needles on Wheels spectacular skidded off the Pyrenees and fell 20 stages down into a melee of bloodthirsty journalists, all of whom had mastered the art of writing “steroids” in three different variations of shorthand, blindfolded, and with invisible ink. More
By Michael Oliver | 6 Aug, 2007
Rugby League has often been on the short end of the stick in terms of media coverage in New Zealand. The sport that is often referred to as “the working class game”, has always worn the brunt of media-machinations concerning its rather unflattering image as a ‘poor man’s rugby’. More
By Michael Oliver | 30 Jul, 2007
New Zealand golfer Michael Campbell is an interesting creature. After finishing in a tie for third after the first round at the Open Championship (a display of surprisingly decent form from a sportsman who found himself languishing outside the Top 100 all but a week earlier), the man born in Hawera grinned as he said to a crew of waiting news media, “You’re probably all surprised, aren’t you? I’m not. More
By Michael Oliver | 16 Jul, 2007
Dear Alinghi,
Hey, guys! Congratulations on that whole “winning the America’s Cup” thing. What was the name of the syndicate you guys beat again? Ah, doesn’t matter, we’ll get back to them if we have some time – which is what they said before having to pull that penalty turn on the final leg, am I right? More
