Dylan Cleaver- sub-stacked

You gotta wonder about Cleaver- I’m sure he’s been basically an anti-soccer guy before. Was wondering about subscribing to his magazine- but tbh I can’t really get interested in a lot of the Olympic sports and the more traditional sports that are difficult to get coverage of overseas. And while I always love a decent test match, cricket has long been a mess.

The only thing I thought in his comment here was the lazy comparison, however unintended, between Barstool sports and WelNix. Probably a lack of knowledge. I definitely put him in the category of people who nodded along when all the rowing idiots and Parore slagged off the World Cup All Whites for drawing with Italy. There’s a clear malice/defensiveness towards football in some quarters. I remember a weird comment slagging off football when the ABs won the WC.

Cleaver wrote in a year wrap:
“17. I discovered that even with the best will in the world, I can no longer pretend to be interested in either the A-League or the Australian National Basketball League.

I do worry this makes me a lesser sports junkie, but to make up for it my interest in the NZ NBL has been re-piqued, while my son’s fanaticism has rekindled my love of England’s Premier League, so I'm by no means lost to those sports.

I do believe, however, that Basketball NZ does a lousy job of promoting and marketing the Tall Blacks, who are really good.”

Think that was bad, read down the article to this hack's views on the Football WC. Peter Laamp has been writing for the Manawatu Evening Standard (meaning Rugby), before I was a Massey Uni student in the early 1990s.

God knows how his erroneous fluff, gets a regular airing on Stuff.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/300771732/gregory-peck--a-star-in-our-midst-but-not-the-american-one

Geography counts
The rather strange football World Cup format where teams qualify according to where they sit on the map should benefit New Zealand in four years' time.

FIFA is expanding the World Cup teams from 32 to 48 and if the All Whites win the Oceania Confederation, as they usually do, then that should get them to the United States.

As it is now, they must beat the fifth-ranked South American side and that was Peru in 2017 and Costa Rica this year, tough chores indeed.

Yeh sometimes you kind of forget how difficult it is to get sustained good coverage for the Nix and then to get people to become fans.

I do think that across numerous sports the landscape and the future  is a bit weird.