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Liberato Cacace of the Wellington Phoenix charging through Melbourne Victory players at Eden Park (Getty Images)
Liberato Cacace of the Wellington Phoenix charging through Melbourne Victory players at Eden Park (Getty Images)

SportsFebruary 16, 2019

See the Wellington Phoenix now, because this magic won’t last

Liberato Cacace of the Wellington Phoenix charging through Melbourne Victory players at Eden Park (Getty Images)
Liberato Cacace of the Wellington Phoenix charging through Melbourne Victory players at Eden Park (Getty Images)

For once, the Wellington Phoenix are actually cool. Alex Braae was part of a record crowd that went along to see them in Auckland last night.

“Have the Phoenix always passed it around this much?” I was asking my mate, who was as bewildered as I was about what was playing out in front of us. The energetic vigour was coming from the black and yellow shirts, shaping pretty triangles all over Eden Park with the ball, and looking threatening and creative. They were up against the Melbourne Victory, 2nd in the A-League, with a long, imposing record of success. And the Phoenix, so recently little more than the butt of a not particularly funny joke, were the ones playing the actual football.

Neither of us had ever actually been to a Phoenix game, despite both growing up in Wellington. I’d barely even watched them on the telly, and every time I did, they were rubbish. As exiles in Auckland, we went along on a whim of vague hometown patriotism, and sat in the cheapest seats. Before this season I had a half-formed, lingering, and perhaps unfair memory of teams playing in Ricki Herbert’s grim bus-parking style. There seemed to be an endlessly revolving cast of forgettable journeymen Australians, and every once in a while something absurdly dysfunctional would happen, like the first owner Terry Serepisos having to sell the club because his property empire was collapsing.

To tell the truth, if you asked me what I thought about the Phoenix before this season, the answer would have been simple – not much at all.

The fans were absolutely losing it. Photo by Getty Images

It was a completely different team that ran out at Eden Park. Perhaps it helped that there was a record crowd to play in front of. But when Roy Krishna scored, thrashing a loose ball into the top corner, the roar was huge and genuine. He thumped his chest as he ran towards some yellow shirts in the crowd. It felt inevitable – of course the Phoenix would take the lead, despite playing against a much better side on paper.

When the final whistle blew, I was desperate for more. It wasn’t even that it had finished 1-1 – that seemed like a fair result. It was just that the frenzy had set in during the last half-hour of the game, and it was impossible not to get swept up in it. The Yellow Fever were singing, the huge walk-up crowd of casual fans were hanging on every kick. Perhaps a thousand people stayed behind afterwards, to get a last glimpse and maybe a selfie with a player. Krishna, who grafted away for so many years at Waitakere United before getting finally getting a professional run with a mediocre team in a lowly league, was a popular target for the admiration of the fans. The moment belonged to the long-derided club from Wellington, and they deserved it.

But it will almost certainly never be repeated again. Not like this, at least. There’s an air of impending doom hanging over the Phoenix – a sure knowledge that next season will always be worse than this season. For a couple of years in a row now, they’ve proved that right. Last season got so farcical that the assistant coach and his player son quite literally grabbed their ball and went home in a huff. Crowds were poor week after week, everything on and off the field was terrible, and when the A-League threatened to kick the club out, by rights they probably should have. The axe still lingers over their ongoing existence, with a license to play in the A-League in place only until the end of next season.

David Williams of the Phoenix vs Keisuke Honda of the Victory. Photo by Getty Images

Even this year, with the team playing beautifully and setting the league alight, they’re still only in 6th place. 6th! Out of 10! In what are seemingly the absolute best of times! But it all hangs by a thread, which looks certain to snap soon. Roy Krishna is soon off-contract, and likely to get some seriously decent offers. Coach Mark Rudan is refusing to commit to staying another year. Andrew Durante, older than time itself, is about to have a testimonial dinner put on in honour of his decade of service. Young wunderkinds Sarpreet Singh and Liberato Cacace will surely move up in the world within a few years. The sponsor Huawei is looking at the door – even geopolitical wrangling is conspiring against the Phoenix. It was perhaps fitting that the whole affair was hosted in a stadium currently in massive, ruinous debt.

But somewhere, in some other godforsaken hellhole, the reality of New Zealand’s sporting landscape was being dragged to the surface again. At the same time the Phoenix were painting with joyous colours, the Super Rugby season was starting. A zombie competition, that brings no happiness to anyone except broadcasters, which cannot be killed no matter how many times administrators shoot it, and we’ll still have to talk about it for months to come. An entire season will probably pass without a single, perfect moment to match Krishna’s goal. Super Rugby now only proves one thing: that the sporting gods are real, and they want us to suffer.

The Phoenix too prove the sporting gods are real, in that they have been blessed and cursed by the tantalising sniff of success, but with little power to hold onto it. There are just a few home games left, in what might well turn out to be their final season of football worth watching. See it with your own eyes while you can.    

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Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

SportsFebruary 10, 2019

Adesanya caps off a flawless night for New Zealand MMA

Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

New Zealand goes three for three at UFC Melbourne, culminating in Israel Adesanya’s win over Anderson Silva. 

Israel Adesanya’s victory over Anderson Silva in Melbourne was a masterclass in creativity and a coming-out party for New Zealand MMA.

Facing down a near mirror-image of himself, Adesanya fought fluid and confident, switching his stance, here fighting off his right, there off his left. Silva, 43, was equal to the challenge, manipulating his timing, rhythm and defensive postures minute to minute, fighting as if he had three different brains. Though Silva was wobbled early on, any concerns about his durability were soon dispelled, and he remains near untouched after all these years.

The fight was more performance than brawl. There was an air of a demonstration, as if the sequences and beats were choreographed ahead of time. But of course it wasn’t, and every strike felt as if it could be the last. It was the antithesis of the exciting but ultimately unsustainable ‘just bleed’ mentality pervasive in so much of MMA. Both fighters executed with all the smoothness of a video game. As UFC president Dana White said backstage following the bout, “it was like a kung fu movie”.

The timing, reflex and athleticism on display were exquisite. There were flying knees, jumping kicks, spins, pirouettes, shades of Bruce Lee at every step. Adesanya at one point attempted to run up the cage. Paint them both in tie-dye and it could have been Cirque du Soleil. Silva had his moments, stinging Adesanya and forcing him momentarily onto the back foot.The momentum oscillated, with Silva potentially stealing the second round when he momentarily confounded Adesanya. But there was never a moment to equal Adesanya’s shot in the first round.

“I’m passing the baton on to you,” Silva said following the fight.

It was the performance of the night, putting an extra $50,000 in the pocket of each fighter, but sweeter still for Adesanya would have been the performances of his stable mates Kai Kara-France and Shane Young.

Kara-France opened the card with a tough performance against a much taller Brazilian, landing his signature overhand right with  less effect than in previous bouts, but ultimately doing enough to secure the bag unscathed.

Straight after, Shane Young threw upwards of 400 strikes en route to a victory over American Austin Arnett. From the opening bell, Young pressured his taller opponent, forcing him onto the back foot against the cage. The fight had echos of his last performance, a second round knockout of Filipino slugger Rolando Dy. The range proved difficult at times for Young, and he sported a dripping black eye following the fight. Young dropped Arnett at the very end of the third round, ultimately taking a judge’s decision. He used the moment to thank his mum, then draw attention to the rates of youth suicide in New Zealand, and backstage continued in the same vein. 

“I went home to Maraenui and all my whanau said, ‘oh you’re like the toughest dude ever’, so if I can use this platform to show them that, hey, I cry, I reach out and talk to people, then I will. I’ll keep saying it until our rates are the opposite, until we’ve got the highest amount of happy kids.”

The wins put City Kickboxing at a near-perfect 14-1 in the past year and a half. Head coach Eugene Bareman has established Auckland as the beating heart of kickboxing in Oceania, and the already-crammed facilities are likely to be near impossible going forward. For a coach in his prime, it’s a good position to be in. For Adesanya, a return to Nigeria beckons, and then it’s onwards to the title. New Zealand martial arts have never been stronger.

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