SportsMay 9, 2016

KFC Super Rugby Power Rankings: Thank you Highlanders, but our Princess is in another castle

Scotty Stevenson

Senior sports writer

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The Crusaders once again show that they’re a force to be reckoned with in Scotty Stevenson’s latest Super Rugby power rankings.

1. Crusaders
Rd 11: 38-5 v Reds
Last week: 3 (up 2)

The Crusaders decided it would be best if they used Friday night as an opposed training session. Did this team really ever get out of third gear against the Reds? I don’t think so. I mean, seriously, who plays with 30% of the ball and still outscores a team six tries to one? Matt Todd can probably take a bow as the best on show for the Crusaders. Yes, Jone Macilai scored three tries, but Todd made 18 tackles and won four turnovers, a defensive performance that was emblematic of the entire Crusaders defensive effort. The only major for the Crusaders was the penalty count – a by-product of spending so much time tackling. They’ll want to bring the defence-offence ratio back a little against the Highlanders.

2. Highlanders
Rd 11: 26-13 v Chiefs
Last week: 4 (up 2)

Every Highlanders fan under this fair sun will be saying, hang about – we just knocked off the top of the table team, on their home patch, for the fifth-straight time and you still won’t put us at number one. Avid Power Rankings reader, Peter Reidie Esq. will be particularly incensed by this perceived slight. So, let me say this: the Highlanders came to Hamilton with a perfect game plan, looked infinitely more comfortable going wide with Waisake Naholo back in the mix, and hustled hard on turnover ball. However, they still missed 28 first up tackles, were gifted a horrific unforced error rate, and played against 14 men for 20 minutes. I’ma let you Highlanders fans finish, after the game against the Crusaders next week.

3. Chiefs
Rd 11: 13-26 v Highlanders
Last week: 1 (down 2)

The Chiefs fall a couple of places this week, as they must, but fans can take heart from the fact that the foundations of this team are still strong. This was a major off-night in the Tron for the Chiefs – a result of trying to squeeze a little too much out of the pattern after a fortnight of hard-fought victories against the Hurricanes and the Sharks. The Chiefs just kept dropping the ball, and that meant for the first 40 minutes they failed to string more than three phases of attack together. Losing Charlie Ngatai for ten minutes cost them dearly. I can’t see the Chiefs being this loose with the ball again.

4. Sharks
Rd 11: 32-15 v Hurricanes
Last week: 10 (up 6)

I am taking a massive leap of faith here. The Sharks remaining schedule looks like this: Jaguares (terrible), Kings (worst ever), Lions (a little shaky), Cheetahs (batshit crazy), and Sunwolves (knackered). Garth April has been a revelation since taking the first five jersey, and was classy against the Canes in Durban. The Sharks defence has been the team’s calling card all season long but they have started to add some attack, and that is a dangerous proposition for their conference opponents as the season draws to a close. I can’t believe I am doing this, by the way.

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5. Hurricanes
Rd 11: 15-32 v Sharks
Last week: 2 (down 3)

This was a total downer for the Canes, who still managed to run for close to 600 metres in the match but struggled to find a way to capitalise. Like the Chiefs, they have so many parts of the playoff puzzle already laid out, but 24 turnovers and 22 missed tackles, combined with an outclassed lineout only adds up to disappointment. As if to make it worse, Beauden Barrett said before the match that the Sharks will feed on Hurricanes mistakes. That was supposed to be a caution, it became a prediction.

6. Stormers
Rd 11: BYE
Last week: 7 (up 1)

Barring an absolute disaster, the Stormers will win their conference. And that is just the kind of over-confident statement that ends badly.

7. Brumbies
Rd 11: 23-6 v Bulls
Last week: 12 (up 5)

As much as I wanted to sleep in the bed I made with the Waratahs, the Brumbies’ win in Canberra – as coma-inducing as it was – gets the nod for the more impressive Australian win of the round, given the fact the Bulls are a better team than the Cheetahs. Get this, the Brumbies carried 128 times and beat nine defenders. You couldn’t come up with a less penetrative stat if you were running backwards. Still, a win’s a win.

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8. Waratahs
Rd 11: 21-6 v Cheetahs
Last week: 5 (down 3)

Thirty-one kicks in play! My goodness. I’m starting to wonder how much the Waratahs want to win this conference. This was a bonus point waiting to happen, and the Waratahs were guilty of waiting for it to happen, which of course it never did. If I was click-baiting the Waratahs I would headline this performance with “The Waratahs faced the Cheetahs in Sydney, you probably will believe what happened next”.

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9. Lions
Rd 11: BYE
Last week: 8 (down 1)

Needed a break and got one. The Lions’ form has been on a downward trajectory over the last couple of weeks. The spark they had at the start of the season has just not been there, but I am sure there is still plenty of fire in the side. They have the Blues this week, a team that the Lions no longer fear. Four of their last six games are against conference opponents. They need this game against the Blues to set them up for the run home.

10. Blues
Rd 11: 34-18 v Kings
Last week: 9 (down 1)

The Blues won away from home for the first time since the Harbour Bridge was built, or something like that, and should at least be happy with having shaken that monkey off their back. Stink thing is, the Blues again spent so much time inside their own 22 that you would think they were trying to buy it at auction given none of them can afford land in Auckland. Why won’t Ihaia West run more? Can someone please tell me why?

11. Rebels
Rd 11: BYE
Last week: 11 (N/C)

It’s D-Day for the Rebellion this week when they face the Brumbies. Fresh from the bye and with home advantage, this is a must-win and can-win. It’s a tough run home for the Rebs, and their best chance of a playoff is still going to be winning the Australian conference. Alas, they face the two top New Zealand teams, the top Australian team and the top South African team in their last six matches. Big ask.

12. Bulls
Rd 11: 6-23 v Brumbies
Last week: 6 (down 6)

Has a side this season actually done less in a game of rugby? Hardly carried the ball, hardly passed it, hardly formed a ruck, and scored no tries. Just when I was actually starting to like the Bulls’ chances they go and serve this sort of performance up. It beggars belief that a team can make 85 passes in a game and turn the ball over 20 times. Was it covered in bees?

13. Jaguares
Rd 11: BYE
Last week: 15 (up 2)

I’m pretty sure that if I was the Jaguares coach, I would have wanted to play this week on the back of the 73-point hammering of the Kings the week before. Mind you, they do have a Sharks team to face this week, the same Sharks team that flew to New Zealand, played three tough matches, flew back to South Africa for one game, and now fly to Argentina for another. I still think the Sharks will be too much for them, in much the same way that the Stormers were.

14. Force
Rd 11: 40-22 v Sunwolves
Last week: 17 (up 3)

Fair play to the Force. After a couple months of being hunted down like Ralph in Lord of the Flies, the Force finally found someone else to pick on, inflicting a big defeat on the Sunwolves who, it must be said, probably did more to lose this match than the Force did to win it. How about Marcel Brache scoring a hat trick? This was made even better by the fact those three tries were his first for the franchise. Speaking of tries, the Force scored six in the match and that still wasn’t enough to bring their average above two per game this season.

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15. Sunwolves
Rd 11: 22-40 v Force
Last week: 16 (up 1)

Showed the after-effects of celebrating their maiden win by blowing four genuine try scoring opportunities. Still managed to run 684 metres in the game, and still scored four tries. Here’s a cold hard fact for the Sunwolves: if they had thought about kicking the ball more than 12 times in the game, they would have had their second win of the season. The Force can’t kick return.

16. Reds
Rd 11: 5-38 v Crusaders
Last week: 13 (down 3)

Apart from one deftly weighted kick by Jake McIntyre which led to the Reds’ only try against the Crusaders, this was a team repeatedly banging its collective head against a brick wall in the vein hope that a crack would appear before their skull exploded. As it was, the Reds had no real change-up in attack and were repeatedly exposed by the Crusaders short-side manipulation. I’m going to give the Reds an A for effort, and a D for imagination.

17. Cheetahs
Rd 11: 6-21 v Waratahs
Last week: 14 (down 3)

The second of two South African teams to arrive in Australia, face underwhelming teams, and fail to score a single solitary try. The Cheetahs scrum looked so ordinary they should have renamed it a maul, but apart from the missed tackles, the appalling turnover rate, the ineffective kicking, the complete lack of attacking strategy, the low ruck retention rate and the one-sided scoreline, this was a great week in Cheetahs rugby.

18. Kings
Rd 11: 18-34 v Blues
Last week: 18 (N/C)

Didn’t suck as badly as last week, which was pleasing for the ten people who watched live at Nelson Mandela Stadium, and the thirteen others who watched live on television.

Tony Veitch Appears In Auckland District Court on April 16, 2009. (Photo: Getty)

OPINIONSportsMay 9, 2016

Tony Veitch’s decade in denial

Michael Field

Guest writer

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Tony Veitch Appears In Auckland District Court on April 16, 2009. (Photo: Getty)

Michael Field covered Tony Veitch’s original trial and reported on the release of his police file. He writes that the broadcaster’s column yesterday was just another instance of his abdicating responsibility for his actions.

A long time ago I sat in a court as a judge pulled a black handkerchief over his white wig and passed a sentence of death.

It was as dramatic as it sounded, and it was personal. The condemned man had murdered, in cold blood, a woman who had just recently become my mother-in-law.

I knew he would not hang, because in those days Samoa had a Head of State, Malietoa Tanumafili II, who refused to sign death warrants. He wasn’t especially pious about it; he just believed that when it came his time to enter heaven, he didn’t want to meet the people he had sent there ahead of him.

Sure enough the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In the end the man served about eight years in jail, came out, changed his name, and emigrated to New Zealand. He lives in Auckland.

None of my family forgive him. Nor would we want to see him writing in the New Zealand Herald about how it had all been a terrible mistake and that he was truly sorry.

Broadcaster Tony Veitch did not, of course, kill anybody. He was fortunate that he didn’t, after kicking his former partner, Kristin Dunne-Powell so hard that it broke her back.

Now he is outing himself again, doing the whole mea culpa thing for the Herald – with the paper having to address his prominent position at NZME ahead of the launch of its own family violence series this morning. One thing struck me immediately: the sad way in which his partner was absent from his anniversary piece.

I did a lot of work at the Auckland District Court at the time of Veitch’s trial. Most of my work was covering the grubby sad stuff you see in the courtrooms there any day of the week. Veitch’s case was different. His lawyers had a better cut of suit than the rest of the second-string legal defence teams that plough their way through that mountain of tragedy each day. The other striking thing was the media turnout. The array of reporters in the court included people from the gossip magazines, who seldom grace the realm of the working classes. This was celebrity.

There was hardly anywhere for me to sit in the press area. I ended up on the side. And so by chance I came to be sitting beside the woman Veitch had abused on more than one occasion.

At one point she had to address the court, explaining what had happened to her.

It would be ungracious to say that I could smell her fear, but there was a powerful sense of a beaten soul. She was shaking, and had clearly suffered profoundly. She probably still does.

Without getting into the politics of the justice system, what you see when women like that are in the court is a victim being further and systematically re-victimised. I did not want to be there, but she was linked to a minor celebrity, so just about every reporter in town had been ordered to cover the case.

I’ve no idea what Veitch’s victim makes of his statement yesterday. But I strongly believe that Veitch cannot talk about his apparent inspiring redemption without mentioning her. Much more, if anybody is given the opportunity to write moving columns about celebrity savagery, then it should be those those who paid the real price – the victims.

What riles me too is the fact that Veitch’s column read like it had been through the celebrity minder world that he comes from. As if it had been tweaked and massaged so that he would emerge as the reformed sinner.

But even in his mea culpa, Veitch managed to make a cynical statement distorting and minimising his actions.

In the second paragraph of the story, Veitch claims he made a single huge mistake in January, 2006. “Even though it was the only time that I have ever lashed out in my life, once was too much. I should have walked away, but instead I hurt someone and I can’t ever make that go away,” he says.

That statement is wrong, according to both the victim’s family and Veitch’s police file.

Veitch pleaded guilty to kicking the woman on the ground, breaking her back and putting her in a wheelchair for a time. Judge Jan Doogue sentenced him to nine months supervision and 300 hours of community service and imposed a $10,000 fine.

Emails exchanged yesterday between The Spinoff's Hayden Donnell and Tony Veitch. — Emails exchanged yesterday between The Spinoff’s Hayden Donnell and Tony Veitch.

Six other charges against him were dropped for reasons never explained – but it is common for certain charges to be dropped in exchange for a guilty plea so as to spare the victim the stresses and the state the expense of a trial. It should not be taken as evidence that the other charges were baseless.

I was with Fairfax in 2009 when somebody in the organisation fired off an Official Information Act request for the police file. Somewhat surprisingly they agreed, and the bulky Veitch file showed up in the newsroom. By chance, it fell to me to go through it and write a story. Now, oddly, if you Google Veitch’s name, inevitably it is my story that comes up.

There is no point now in going through it all but if you were to set an anniversary for Veitch’s violence it might be linked to the period from March 15, 2002 to April 19, 2003. There were more between April 14, 2003 and April 9, 2005.

The charge Veitch pleaded guilty to occurred on January 29, 2006.

That is the anniversary he refers to marking in his Herald column: 10 years since the event that got him convicted.

I’ve no interest in parading Veitch through the muck again. But I think he should stop writing self-serving columns if he can’t truly take responsibility for his actions. If anybody gets to write about what he did, it should be that woman; the one who was shaking the whole time I was beside her.

As for forgiveness, it’s not my business, but I like Samoa’s approach. Anybody who saw the film The Orator would have seen it – the ifoga. Transgress an individual or a family, and the chiefs and perpetrators of the transgression arrive outside the victim’s house before dawn. They sit with fine mats over them until they are invited inside. The ifoga can go for days and days. But seldom is there any refusal to accept the apology and to offer forgiveness.

It’s a more civilised, cultured way of resolving the pain than writing a celebrity column on some contrived anniversary.

If fa’a Samoa is too much for Veitch, he could perhaps reflect on John Profumo. A high flying British politician, Profumo’s life collapsed in scandal, sex and spies in 1963. He resigned and disappeared from public view.

What most of us never knew was that Profumo, destroyed and scandalised, went to the east of London and cleaned toilets for the charity Toynbee Hall. He did it for decades unnoticed, without writing self-aggrandising columns about it.

Only much later did his good works emerge, when the Queen gave him a gong.

His family had the real sense that through his quiet penance, he had redeemed himself.

(Additional reporting: Hayden Donnell)