The Silver Fern

Victor Meldrew

@Donsteppa said in All Blacks 2026:

Together We Walk might also have new meaning tomorrow.

That Together We Walk shit was cringe-worthy. Thank fuck someone saw sense and ditched it pronto

Donsteppa

Together We Walk might also have new meaning tomorrow.

Bones

@Canes4life said in Highlanders 2026:

@Bones said in Highlanders 2026:

Razor to serve out his contract leading the landers to SR victory.

Not without the messiah Dylan Pledger.

Considering he won multiple titles without even considering Higgins for his squad, he'll cope.

Victor Meldrew

After the Foster debacle with NZR undermining the head coach, I'd have thought NZR would have learned their lesson and treated the coaching staff & players with a bit of respect. Specifically, make sure the review was conducted privately and professionally - and those involved reminded of the need for confidentiality and be warned of the consequences of leaking stuff.

Instead we seem to have a film sequel - Foster 2 : Who Will Get The Chop?

No wonder NZ Rugby is in such a mess when senior dudes can't even do the basics like treating their employees with respect. What a shit-show

Donsteppa

Canes4life

@Bones said in Highlanders 2026:

Razor to serve out his contract leading the landers to SR victory.

Not without the messiah Dylan Pledger.

Victor Meldrew

@No-Quarter said in All Blacks 2026:

And then they went crawling back to him on the EOYT and expected him to bail them out when injuries struck? Christ on a bike what the fuck is wrong with these guys, please move the whole coaching team on.

Without taking any sides on this, you have to wonder if there is something almost neuro-diverse in the attitudes being shown here.

Tim

@Smudge Thanks for the summary. I'd been meaning to use a Substack free-trial for that.

Smudge

There's a very good summary of the NZ sports media on Dylan Cleaver's The Bounce substack, but it's paywalled...

TL;DR is:

NZR has really leaned into its role as the holder of all information and access. It's managed to get parts of the media to become too compliant (as you say, Tim) by dripfeeding them info under a soft embargo. The quiet-part-not-said-out-loud is that if a journo breaks the soft embargo, they become persona non grata.

There's also a weird thing when someone does legitimately break a story, a rival org's sports department (or the reporter with that round) will say "oh, there's nothing in that". They'd rather dampen down a rival story than acknowledge the scoop and look to top it with further info.

Thirdly, stating the obvious, the resources are thinner than ever in journalism. We may in fact be under 1000 full-time journos in NZ now across all platforms (if it is more, maybe 1500 max). Certain subjects get the clicks - there's a reason why Liam Lawson gets so many more stories written about him than NPC - so a lot of the sports journos have to feed this machine rather than have time to spend on longer-term investigative pieces.

Bones

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