Hey, you know how I said I was going to start blogging more regularly, and doing a lot of news blogging? Yeah, didn’t happen. BUT, I was inspired by my friend Jess’ recent revamp and daily blogging to pick up the pieces of this shitty little blog here. SO, new name, new design, lets GO!
I’ll jump into the news shortly, but first, a little housekeeping. As the name implies, I’ll be posting sometime midweek. Sometimes I may stray closer to the beginning, sometimes closer to the end, but I’m going to be blogging every week. If I don’t, feel free to slaughter me in the comments. Also, I realise the current header is rather cliche, and maybe that’s because it’s the default header. Don’t worry. When I have some time, I’ll make a proper header to fit more readily with what this blog is all about.
RIGHT. This week, there’s really only one thing that’s been on my mind, and that is football. With the World Cup on currently in South Africa, the media is inundated with sports coverage, particularly after New Zealand’s heroics in managing to remain unbeaten in the group stage. Earlier this week, I talked to James Coe from Editing the Herald about the game, and you can hear that here. After that little discussion, I felt like I could have added my two cents to the debate.
See, whenever New Zealand does something unexpectedly well, we seem to blow it way out of proportion. The media have loved the All Whites’ success on the world stage, and you could be forgiven for thinking we’d won a game. I’m guilty of this too. I even caught myself tweeting that we’d won the World Cup after drawing (yes that’s right, drawing) with Italy. Sure, New Zealand did really well for a team that was the second-lowest ranked team coming into the competition. In fact, if you told me that we would go unbeaten in the group stage, I would have slapped you and told you to wake up from this crazy fantasy. Still, this surely needs a little perspective.
We went unbeaten, yes, but we didn’t win a game. We drew with first-timers Slovakia, and an old, decrepit, and frankly very average Italy. Everyone says we beat the world champions, and that’s true, but that was four years ago. That doesn’t mean they’re good today. Further, if we had beaten Paraguay (and we had chances to do so), we would have qualified for the last 16, and a juicy encounter with the Netherlands. That would have been an incredible achievement. And, if you think about it, Australia still beat us. They had 4 points, we had 3. So before we starts getting all jingoistic and brag about how awesome our football team is, just remember that there is a hell of a lot of work to do before we can really call ourselves contenders.
Still, I’m a football lover, and love the All Whites with all my heart. I told an old guy outside a pub before the Paraguay game that I thought they were going to dick us. He took great offense, and to be honest, I like that. It’s the kind of blind faith that football fans in the UK and Europe have, and we need more of that here. The true test of how successful this World Cup venture has been is what happens in four years time. If we’ve got fans just as faithful as that old guy, and if we’re drawing our way through the World Cup group stage again, then that’s a success. Better than waiting another 28 years.
See you next week.
You inspire me, McLucas!