Who's the right shirt sponsor for the Wellington Phoenix Women?

The Wellington Phoenix Women's team management have expressed their disappointment at not being able to secure a sponsor. However this difficulty is not unexpected for a couple of reasons:

Short notice

The new team was only announced at the start of September, only 2 months before the start of the season. Sponsors tend to view sports sponsorships in terms of multi-year relationships - one year would be the absolute minimum. Signing deals of this duration isn't typically a quick process. Also, companies don't usually have a lot of spare marketing budget sloshing around to spend on short-notice opportunities like this.

 

Audience Appeal

A sports team has to appeal to viewing audience, and WPW is a New Zealand team playing in an Australian competition which immediately narrows their sponsorship attractiveness. According to an extremely accurate and fully verifiable survey, 78% of Aussie A-League fans used the #NixOut hashtag at least once. This means Australian companies won't be interested, and New Zealand companies doing business in Australia won't want to draw attention to their Kiwiness.

Possibilities

Oppo as a global consumer brand is a great sponsor for the WP Men since they just want to raise their profile and aren't interested in parochialism. However it's unlikely a similar brand like Xiaomi can sponsor the WPW without damaging the WP relationship with Oppo. Maybe a global consumer brand from another category? Amazon and Ikea are planning to expand into New Zealand...

 

By sponsoring the WPM, Spark is both bolstering their Spark Sport brand and diluting the Sky NZ brand (I would love the Sky commentators to have to say "The Spark Wellington Phoenix"). But Spark is also signalling it has no intention whatsoever of expanding into Australia and is only interested in the New Zealand market. There may be other NZ-only businesses in a similar position who want to associate themselves with football - maybe Stirling Sports?

 

KPMG was last year's WPM sponsor. I'm not sold on B2B sponsorship in terms of actual marketing value, but for the WPW it does open the door to being sponsored by a wealthy but boring business that wants to be associated with something more exciting. In these Great Resignation times this type of sponsorship could help with recruitment and retention of young female staff.

 

Another possibility is a local Wellington business that didn't have deep enough pockets to sponsor the WPM and may be interested in a cheaper option. I don't know who that might be.

 

Personally what I would like to see are sponsors that say "We're Kiwi and we're awesome". A double bill of Rocket Lab and Weta Workshop would get it right up 'em.

The Expanded Club World Cup

 I think club competitions are important because of their ability to generate sustained grassroots support. Sports associations that rely too heavily on national and federational teams tend to be "hollowed out" and have difficulty maintaining a lasting following.

 

In a covid-free parallel universe, 2022 was set to be a big step in the right direction for football with an expanded 24-team Club World Cup. Unfortunately it has been postponed to at least 2023. In the meantime, the competition will follow the same format as in previous years - a knockout of the six confederation champions.

 

I'm totally supportive of an expanded competition. Why? Some reasons follow.

 

A true global club champion

 

France is genuinely considered the world champion based on its performances in the 2018 World Cup. Don't we want to know which club is the world's greatest, too?

 

We do have a Club World Cup already, but unfortunately it's not a prestigious competition. The 2020 edition pitted Bayern Munich (the UEFA Champions League champion and unofficial world #1) against the five other confederation champions, including clubs such as Auckland City (#136) and Al-Duhail (#114). For Bayern the competition was merely an exercise in bucket list completion and proved nothing in terms of accomplishment.

 

A 24-team competition would represent a far more serious challenge that would be reflected in the prestige conferred on the winner.

 

Based on recent results the lineup for a 2022 Club World Cup might have been:

 

Ulsan Hyundai, Persepolis, Vissel Kobe, Al-Ahly, Kaizer Chiefs, Wydad AC, UANL, Los Angeles FC, America, Palmeiras, Santos, River Plate, Boca Juniors, Racing, Gremio, Chelsea, Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund, Porto, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Liverpool and a club from the host nation.

 

Opportunities for talent from lowly ranked countries

 

Ryan Giggs had a storied career with Manchester United, earning medals for every club competition he participated in. However he never played in the World Cup. Why? Because he's from Wales - a football minnow that only ever qualified for the World Cup once, back in 1958. For players like Giggs who were unlucky enough to be born in the wrong country to parents of the wrong nationality, there is no path to global achievement and recognition. Frankly, there should be.

 

Giggs actually won a Club World Cup medal with Manchester United in 2008, but it was almost meaningless as an achievement. In the final they defeated LDU Quito (unofficial world ranking of #163).

 

For the women too please!

 

Women's club competitions are still immature in many parts of the world. Currently there is no women's Club World Cup at all. About the closest it gets is invitational tournaments like the SheBelieves Cup which are little more than exhibitions. But the pieces are starting to fall into place. In 2021 CAF joined UEFA, CONMEBOL and AFC in holding women's Champions League competitions, and CONCACAF intends starting their own tournament after the 2023 World Cup. Only the OFC has not yet announced any plans.

 

Hypothetically if everything had been in place this year, a 2022 Womens Club World Cup might have featured:

 

Tokyo Verdy Beleza, Jiangsu Suning, Incheon Red Angels, Mamelodi Sundowns, Hasaacas Ladies, Malabo Kings, Washington Spirits, Chicago Red Stars, Tigres, Chivas, Corinthians, Santa Fe, Ferroviara, Nacional, Kindermann, Eastern Suburbs, Barcelona, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Lyon, Manchester City, Wolfsburg and one club from the host nation.

In support of womens sport

 To me the obvious way to give womens sport a “hand up, not a hand out” is to host mixed gender competitions – particularly at the highest level. It worked a treat in tennis where women and men compete in parallel at the same Grand Slam tournaments. The resultant organic growth in fan following for women’s tennis has been the starting point for media attention, viable sporting career paths (not just for players but also coaching, administration, fitness, media etc), large committed player base and everything else needed for a sustainable professional sport ecosystem. Sure, some young women may initially wilt under the sudden spotlight of massive media attention, but others will seize their opportunity and take flight.

 

A mixed gender FIFA World Cup would rapidly and dramatically raise the profile of women’s football. Cost and logistics have been thrown up as obstacles, but how significant are they really? FIFA is already planning sprawling, continent-wide World Cups for the future (and seems intent on diluting the elite status of the competition in the process by adding ever more men’s teams). The real obstacles are conservatism and short-term greed.

 

Like many first world males, my view on gender equality was that we aren’t quite there yet but we’re generally going in the right direction apart from some occasional backsliding. This view was utterly shattered when my daughter started showing signs of enjoying and having an aptitude for sport. It didn’t take much research to find that of the wide range of sports providing men with financially self-sustaining careers, only tennis and golf were reliably viable options for women. I’m embarrassed to admit that somehow this yawning gulf of gender disparity eluded my notice until there was a possibility it would affect a member of my family.

 

From there it didn’t take long to become aware of online commentary to the effect that women’s sport is a joke, they don’t have the physique to compete and nobody’s interested because of the low level of performance and skill on display. Often online seems to be a place where everyone’s trying to be a shock jock, but you have to assume that at least some of that sentiment is genuine and worth responding to. So here goes:

 

It’s true that most of the records for physical feats are held by men (ultramarathon and freediving among the few exceptions). For some, this is what sport is all about – running the fastest, jumping the highest, throwing the furthest – and those people can get everything they need from the Guinness Book of Records and track & field (which ironically is a big promoter of women’s sport thanks to its joint competitions). But for the rest of us, record breaking is of relatively fleeting interest compared to oppositional sports where humans compete with all the resources they can bring to bear – physicality, skill, instinct, determination, adaptability, deception and brainpower. Two committed opponents contesting a finely balanced game is one of the most reliably entertaining forms of reality TV in existence. Doesn’t male domination of sport make this a more one-dimensional experience for everyone?

 

Balance is crucial to the drama of sport. In balanced sports we often see an entertaining “arms race” where teams and players continually strive to find new and improved ways to counter each other. Balance is also why elite level women and men don’t generally participate together in highly physical sports – there is little entertainment in lopsided competition. But there is no reason why women-only competitions should be any less competitive and entertaining, and they can actually be more interesting than men’s sport. Some male tennis players have excessively powerful serves that cause an imbalance between attack and defence, with a large percentage of points only involving one hit of the ball. Female tennis players generally aren’t as able to dominate with the serve, resulting in a more engrossing contest.

 

Sport can give us many gifts – goals and direction, building of character, camaraderie, health, and maybe even income. But the greatest gift of all is the chance to live life with heightened meaning through high-stakes competition in front of large, passionate audiences. Are there really any worthwhile reasons to deny women the opportunity to share in these experiences?

Wellington Phoenix Women - The Final Signing

Edit 26 Nov: well that theory was shot to sh** in super quick time. Lisa de Vanna just signed with Perth Glory.

I did a brute force search of all available forwards with ALW experience yet to re-sign and came up with 9 as follows:

Rosie Sutton, Sharn Freier, Nickoletta Flannery, Sasha Grove, Gabe Marzano, Evelyn Chronis, Marianna Tabain, Katarina Jukic, Leena Khamis

• Khamis has the most impressive resume with 10+ professional seasons and 25 appearances for the Matildas including 5 goals.
• Also with 10+ professional seasons but limited international experience are Sutton, Tabain and Jukic.
  
• Marzano and Flannery have 5+ seasons each.
• Freier, Grove and Chronis don't have the experience the WPW will be looking for
  

 Sooo...probably Khamis then?

 

Edit 24 Nov: I am soooo suspicious.

Gemma Lewis is turning out to be a very sneaky coach. She's been extremely cautious about showing her hand in pre-season warmup games, and now she's waiting until the last moment to announce her final Aussie selection.

I'm now leaning toward Lisa de Vanna. Her Wikipedia entry says "In September 2021, De Vanna retired from football", which effectively meant she was not re-signing to Melbourne Victory. The new WPW team was also announced in September, so I find the timing of events extremely interesting.

 

De Vanna was dropped from the Matildas squad in June, meaning she missed out on the Olympics. This was a big call - despite being 36 at the time and theoretically in the twilight of her career, she was still in great form.  The Victory took the W-League 2020-21 title with her help and she earned individual recognition for Goal of the Season and inclusion in Team of the Year. De Vanna has been pretty vocal about her disappointment at being dropped. She also went public with accusations of historic abuse in the W-League and has been unhappy with the lack of support from Football Australia.

 

So I'm really hoping she wants to send the national organisation a big f*** you by kicking some Aussie ass for the WPW in the ALW. A Phoenix-like rebirth indeed! It's exactly the kind of move you would expect from de Vanna who has a track record of relishing challenges, having played for over 20 different clubs in her career and taken leadership roles in young, unproven squads.

With 19 signings so far, the roster for the very first season of the Wellington Phoenix Women is almost complete. They need one more player to comply with the FFA eligibility requirements.

Who will it be? How close can I get to the name with just guesswork and google? Without even watching anyone play?

WPW need a forward, must choose an Aussie, want experience and don't have a hope of poaching internationally or from the other ALW sides at this late hour. All that's left are former ALW players, ideally recently demoted to the state leagues and not yet totally out of touch with the big time. The pool is small - in the past 2 years, out of 21 players dropped there were only 5 forwards.

 

Meleri Mullan already got herself back up by re-signing with Adelaide United.

 

Madelyn Whittall has ghosted the football world for the past year, I'm guessing she's retired.

 

Liana Cook only got on the field 4 times for the Glory - probably not the level of experience WPW is looking for.

 

Adriana Jones has played both ALW and overseas, was top scorer for her side this season and is giving back to the game by participating in a global FIFPRO player mental health initiative. Doesn't she sound like an awesome caring wise head for our team of mostly debutantes? On the other hand...New Lambton also came dead last in the Northern NSW Premier League, and Jones was quoted as saying pro football is brutal and she doesn't want to uproot herself from her beloved Newcastle community any more. What a head case...(joking, don't cancel me!!) Wollongong is only just down the road if she changed her mind and wanted to give it another crack.

 

But my virtual money is on Abbey Lloyd who had two seasons with the Roar going back to 2017 and was also a lynchpin this season for the Western Pride in the Queensland state league.

 

Selwyn United: the ultimate NZ football underdog?

 

 

I wrote back in March that for the 2021 season NZ Football has restructured the domestic competition into three regional winter leagues feeding into a summer "Champions League" competition. The previous summer format was a federation franchise system with no promotion and relegation, so this is the first time since 2003 that clubs have been able to access the full competition pyramid available to New Zealand.

With the conclusion of the Southern League today, the clubs joining the Wellington Phoenix Reserves in the National League were finalised as follows: Auckland City, Auckland United, Eastern Suburbs, Birkenhead United, Wellington Olympic, Miramar Rangers, Western Suburbs, Cashmere Technical and Selwyn United. As expected most of these clubs are regional powerhouses, but one stands out as a huge surprise.

To get a feel for the odds the "Stallions" aka Selwyn United has overcome to play in the National League, let's review their timeline as follows:

2013 Selwyn United is formed from a merger of Rolleston and Ellesmere Football Clubs to better provide for the large influx of players into the area following the Christchurch earthquakes.

2017 Selwyn United is promoted to the Football South Championship for the first time.

2018-2020 Football South Championship: Selwyn United comes second to last every year. They got as close as 3 points away from a last place finish and relegation.

2021 Football South Championship: the top 5 gain promotion to the new South Island Football Championship. Selwyn started the final day in sixth place, playing their fifth place rival Nomads United who had an advantage of 3 points and 1 goal difference. To qualify Selwyn needed to win by 2 goals - which they did with a goal in each half, and even saved a penalty in the last 10 minutes. See the final day report for more details.

2021 South Island Football Championship: the top 2 qualify for the National League. By the final weekend Cashmere Technical had already won the league and qualification, while Selwyn started Saturday in fourth place in a race with 4 other teams for the second place spot. Otago University were 2nd, but had played their final match on Thursday and could do nothing but watch events unfold. Coastal Spirit was 1 point behind Selwyn but was expected to overtake on Sunday, with their final game expected to be a romp against wooden spooners Green Island. Christchurch United had an advantage over Selwyn of 1 point and 5 goal difference, and with a 2-0 lead over South City Royals they were on a canter to qualification until the Royals came back to win 3-4, leapfrogging into 2nd with a 2 point lead on Selwyn. On completion of this match, Selwyn dropped to 5th place.

Selwyn's match was against Nelson Suburbs, a dangerous spoiler who were out of the running for the season but had consistently been in the top 2 of the Mainland Premier League in recent years. Selwyn went behind 1-0 in the first half, equalised in the second and were looking like a 4th place finish until they scored a winner in extra time to leap up to 2nd place and qualification. Again, see the final day report for more.

Will the fairytale continue? Will Selwyn scrape into the top 2 of the National League on the final weekend? Will they snaffle the National Grand Final with a goal in extra time? Will they somehow sneak through to win OFC Champions League final? And finally, will they find a way to pip a footballing juggernaut like Bayern Munich on penalties in the final of the Club World Cup to win the $US6million prize?

Most would say it's unlikely. But it was unlikely for them to even have gotten this far. Do we dare bet against them? I'll certainly be following their progress closely.

Footnote: National Womens League

With suspension of the Northern Premier Womens League due to covid restrictions, the current top four teams will qualify for the National Womens League as follows: Eastern Suburbs, Western Springs, Northern Rovers and Hamilton Wanderers.

Wanderers are the only club from outside the three major centres to qualify for the National League across both men and women. More provincial representation would be great, and the retention of Central and Southern franchise teams may make sense from a logistical perspective but is disappointing because it prevents clubs with a good pedigree from qualifying such as South City Royals (nee Dunedin Technical), Coastal Spirit and Wellington United.

And now that the Wellington Phoenix will have a W-League team, they'll need to give their reserves some competitive matches too. It seems obvious they'll mirror the men by playing for Upper Hutt City in the winter league and fielding a Phoenix team in the National League. But maybe not this season given the recency of the announcement.

Looking further ahead, the women should have the same "stairway to heaven" as the men with a confederation club competition like the OFC Champions League, and a Women's Club World Cup with a crazy payday.

Sports videos using Momax Selfie Stable

 

I want to video the big-field outdoor ball sports my family members participate in. But I also want to get enjoyment out of watching them play. I don't want to spend the games having to focus on being a full time cameraman.

So I got excited when I saw the Veo sport camera. If you haven't heard of it before, it's a giant fisheye action camera on top of a long pole that videos the entire field. You set it up on the sideline and hit record. At the end of the game you upload the recording to Veo for processing, and in a few hours an AI-generated video is available with the fisheye perspective corrected that follows the ball with a good level of zoom and has great depth of field because of the height of the camera.

The Veo software has plenty of cool options for sharing video, creating your own highlights and even focusing on off-the-ball activity.

The only problem is the price - it starts at $US1450 for the camera and stand, and an additional $US35/month for the subscription that generates and stores the watchable videos. I might consider it if my family members were treating sport as a career and doing things like aiming for sport scholarships, but they just aren't. I could try to persuade schools, sports clubs or teams to fund one collectively - but that's starting to sound like effort. I already said I didn't want to be a full time cameraman, so you can probably guess I don't want to be a part-time committee worker either.

OK so how about an object tracking camera that sits there and rotates around to follow the action? The cheapest one I could find that made confident claims about being able to track a soccer ball reliably on a big field was the Soloshot 3, but this costs nearly $US1000. The much cheaper Zhiyun or DJI also have object tracking, but reviews weren't great for even quite simple scenarios. I wasn't going to go with them unless I found someone who had successfully used one of these for sports.

I tried attaching an action camera to my head using a head mount strap. This was actually not too bad for pointing in the right direction, as the camera obviously turned in whatever direction my head was facing. The image was pretty shaky, but I used the Animotica software to stabilize it adequately. The biggest problems were the lack of zoom - players on the far side of the field looked like ants - and swaying horizon. I never realized it, but my head leans as I turn it side to side which creates a nauseating ship-in-a-storm effect in the video. I haven't found any free software that fixes swaying horizons.

Then I came to the realization that my run-of-the-mill smartphone is actually better than my action camera in most of the respects I care about - it's not fisheye, it has higher resolution and more digital zoom, and has way longer battery life. My action camera has better built-in image stabilization, but I still had to fix it up with software so there was no advantage there.

To avoid the swaying horizon I bought a Momax Selfie Stable which is a selfie stick with built-in gimbal. If you're not aware of gimbals, they're devices to keep things level. Possibly the most famous would be a Segway which keeps itself upright via motors, gyroscopes and software. Gimbals have really come down in size and price recently - to the point that you can now get them as part of a relatively cheap selfie stick.

So for my next experiment I mounted my phone on the stick and held the stick in my hand. As expected the video quality was better with the digital zoom helping a lot, and the gimbal kept the horizon perfectly level. The footage was shakier than with the action camera, but Animotica dealt with it. One problem was the recording would keep stopping because of maximum file size. Unlike with the action camera, there is no looping recording capability and I had to manually start recording again - annoying but not a showstopper for me. I have not found a smartphone setting or app equivalent to the action camera recording mode.

However the biggest problem I had was continuously ensuring the camera was pointing in the right direction. I had to keep checking the screen to make sure the right things were in frame, and when I got lost in the game the camera would be pointing in the wrong direction for a while before I realized and corrected. The footage despite being annoying was watchable, so as a lazy amateur cameraman I think I did better than expected.

But I decided I had to solve the orientation problem by reincorporating the head mount concept from my original experiment. The problem is, there is no head mount kit for the Stable. The action camera head mount strap isn't designed to support something as heavy as the Stable, so I was going to have to jerry-rig my own head mount. I settled on a bicycle helmet because it's cheap and rigid, and I used some of the straps from my action camera accessories kit to fix the Stable to the helmet.

The major decision to make was what orientation to mount the Stable in. A typical action camera with head mount strap rests on your forehead, and to monitor and control it you use a smartphone app to get the positioning right and start/stop the recording. A phone doesn't have an app to stream to another phone, so I needed to be able to see the screen. I ended up mounting it like this:

Pros: hands free, access to controls, ability to check the framing, ability to restart the recording when the max file size is reached

Cons: tired neck from all the offset weight of the stick and phone, furrowed brow from pressure at the front of the helmet, strange and arguably dorky appearance (but people said that about Youtubers and selfie sticks back in the day and now they're kinda mainstream so...maybe I'm just a trailblazer?)

If I had just put the Stable on the helmet like this straight out of the box, the detachable bluetooth remote would have been pressed up against the helmet and inaccessible. Luckily the hinge on the Stable is detachable, so I was able to unscrew and reverse it so the remote would be on top of the stick.

I'm satisfied with the quality I have been able to achieve with this setup. All up it cost less than $US100 which is nothing compared to Veo. And if I want better quality, I can just buy and mount a better phone or camera.

My next challenge is to video from a greater height to improve depth of field. But I really think this is going to be by standing on something instead of mounting some telescopic rod on my helmet, so it's not going to be very interesting for a blog.

SNC promo videos March 2021

From the March 31 update on Dream Chaser, LIFE Habitat, the overall space station system and lunar habitation in the longer term

NZ soccerfootball changes in 2021

 

 

If you dip in and out of NZ domestic soccerfootball like I do and have tuned in for the first round of the 2021 season, you may be wondering what the heck is going on. New club names have appeared (West Coast Rangers, Northern Rovers) and familiar names are showing up in unexpected places (Auckland City - now in the Northern Premier League!)

 

 Restructure

 

This year NZ Football (NZF) decided to shake up the top level domestic competitions. The way the system has worked up to 2020 is clubs played in their regional leagues during the winter season, and following this there was a shorter national competition in the summer with regional federation teams formed from players in each federation's network of feeder clubs.

For 2021 the format of the competitions isn't going to change much, but qualification will change to a Champions League style process with the top clubs in each region qualifying for an inter-regional competition.

 

Mens league

 

The new National League will also be expanded from 8 to 10 teams including 4 Northern, 3 Central and 2 Southern clubs. Yes that doesn't add up - read on to find out why.

With the disestablishment of the old NZ Football Championship (NZFC), the 8 existing federation teams were set to vanish unless they found new places in the system. So what happened?

 

• Team Wellington, Canterbury United and Hawkes Bay United did indeed cease to exist. We will see some new names in the National League as clubs from the central and southern regions qualify.
• Auckland City was always closely linked to Central United and the two have now formally merged under the Auckland City name.
• Waitakere United has merged with regional club Norwest United to form West Coast Rangers.
• Eastern Suburbs and Hamilton Wanderers always had regional club representation, so nothing needed to change for them.
• The Wellington Phoenix reserves are an exception, they used to play in the NZFC and will continue to participate in the National League as the 10th team. Apparently it's a condition of the Phoenix's A-league licence that their reserves play in a national level competition. I imagine the Phoenix saves a lot of money by fielding their reserves domestically instead of flying them to Australia with the first squad.

 

So this year there will be a minimum of one name (Phoenix) from the old NZFC, and a maximum of four (add Auckland City, Eastern Suburbs and Hamilton Wanderers if they qualify).

 

 

2021 is a transitional year for the Southern League. Unlike Northern and Central, its catchment covers two existing premier leagues - Mainland and South - and it was considered too disruptive to suddenly merge these into a single league for this year. Instead the existing leagues will run a shortened season to July, after which the top clubs from each league (5 from Mainland, 3 from South) will contest a shortened Southern League from which the top 2 will go qualify for the National League.

There is a lot at stake for the 16 premier South Island clubs in the first half of 2021. 8 will qualify for the new Southern League, while the rest will remain in their regional competitions. From 2022 onwards clubs would have to win their regional leagues to gain promotion to the Southern League.

 

Womens league

 

The Womens National League has undergone a similar overhaul but club strength is not considered high enough outside the north, so it will be 4 qualifying northern clubs vs 4 federations covering the rest of the country (the existing Southern United, Canterbury Pride, Capital Football and Central Football will remain). Since previously there were only 3 northern federations (Auckland Football, Northern Lights and Waikato-Bay of Plenty), more northern players will get to play in the National League.

 

The qualifying odds are also good for the northern teams as the Northern Premier Womens League only has six clubs in this first year of the new structure. Why only six teams? There were eight last year. Claudelands Rovers is one absentee - they were in the NPWL last year but are not fielding a team this year, and I don't know why. They came last, but I thought there was no promotion-relegation last year due to Covid. You can read on to find out what happened with the second missing club.

 

Why the change?

 

OK, so why is all this restructure even happening? Maybe if we take a look at why the NZFC was established in the first place. For the decades prior, there had been a persistent problem: clubs struggled to fund the expenses associated with national level teams. The number of clubs that could participate kept changing, sometimes dropping out in the middle of a season. In 2004 the federation system was put into place to provide some continuity at the national level.

 

But recently both NZF and the clubs seem to be much better resourced than they used to be, with some clubs clamouring to be allowed to play at the national level. It seems club-based promotion-relegation is now viable.

Also NZF has stressed that they want development pathways for younger players coming through, but the federation teams have stacked their teams with experienced old hands and imports instead of giving youngsters enough opportunities. Clubs concern themselves with a range of player ages and can take a longer view on development. In theory federations should care about player development too, but in practice it appears that regional rivalry and prestige ultimately mattered a lot more to them.

 

NZF has gone further with this by also setting minimum quotas of younger players for the clubs' first teams. You may be scratching your head as to why NZF is insisting on this. English Football wouldn't demand that Premier League clubs must have under-20 players in their squads. The difference is elite football is not fully professional in NZ; at best it's a stepping stone to a professional career elsewhere in the world. But the pathway is difficult if the top domestic competition has no space for promising talent and is filled with journeymen and tourists. NZ's football star of the moment is Sarpreet Singh who is now at Bayern Munich. Arguably his career progression would have been much harder without the youth programme at the Onehunga Sports club and Wellington Phoenix's emphasis on player development. NZF wants to continue to foster these talents because they will inevitably pay back in the form of international appearances, publicity and later on, coaching. The long game is to lift our national level which will increase the popularity of the game in NZ. NZers are notoriously fickle fair-weather supporters, so success is a prerequisite for crowds.

 

Overall I think the restructure is a good thing - as long as the clubs are strong enough to sustain their participation, and NZF stops tinkering for a long long time. Continuity and longevity are the hallmarks of successful sporting leagues, and pop-up federation teams offered little in this regard.

And finally

And what about Northern Rovers? Sorry, that was a red herring. Forest Hill-Milford United and Glenfield Rovers have indeed merged to form a new amalgamated club, but neither was ever a federation team.

 

However you could say the merger was an indirect consequence of the restructure, as suddenly there is a lot more at stake. Every club playing in their top regional league now has the chance to go all the way to the Club World Cup and earn a minimum six figure payday - which is a lot for NZ football! So all the regional clubs will be looking at what they can do to make themselves more competitive.

 

For Northern Rovers a merger was part of the plan. Both clubs were in the women's top flight, and their merger has actually shrunk the NPWL. So that's the second "missing" club.

South City Royals is another new club this year in the Football South Mens league with Caversham and Dunedin Technical merging to maximise their chances of qualifying for the Southern League. I salute their avoidance of boring merger names like Dunedin United or South Dunedin. Some of the quirkier club names are out of the running for the National League this year and will have to gain promotion - FC Twenty11, Stop Out.

Last year it was a similar story for Auckland United. Onehunga Sports and Three Kings United decided to merge to position themselves better to bid for a federation team under the old system. By luck of timing Auckland United is now well set up to compete for that big Club World Cup prize.

Vivo Y11s (V2028) - my experience after a few days

When I bought a Vivo Y11s I didn't find any reviews at all which made it a leap into the unknown. I thought I should write up my experience so far in case it helps others.

What I was looking for when I bought it: I used to buy flagship phones but I got fed up with paying for the broken promises of unproven new features that didn't turn out to actually work properly. So I downgraded to a well-reviewed but boring midrange device with a Snapdragon 630 that cost only a third of what I had paid in the past. But over time as I gradually used my midrange for ever bigger workloads, I hit a point where it was sometimes struggling to keep up. Then a junior family member's phone failed and they needed a replacement, and I took the opportunity to give my current phone to them and find something more powerful. However I have my eye on a sexy new upcoming flagship so I only wanted a stopgap device to tide me over in the meantime (yes I know, will I ever learn...).

The Y11s leapt out at me because it has a Snapdragon 460 - by far the highest benchmarking cpu in its price range. It's a significant jump from the older Y11 which only had the much slower Snapdragon 439. Also there was a 10% off deal at the time which left it completely unchallenged. If I wanted to take a further step up in benchmark, I would have had to spend 30% more (on an Oppo A5). The similarly-priced also-rans were the Samsung A02s, Xiaomi Redmi 9A, Moto E6s and Moto G8 Power Lite. They could compete with a Y11, but not the new Y11s. The mysterious Vodafone Smart V11 is in the same price bracket but I have not been able to confirm its cpu anywhere online; to me this is a bad sign and a reason to avoid.

Unboxing photos

I think these are self-explanatory. 

My impressions

Hardware

I hate filler in reviews. You can look up full details such as form factor, weight, materials etc easily enough.

The Y11s looks ok and not too cheap in glacier blue. Some people went "oooh" when they saw the iridescent back. The whole device is glossy surfaces, so fingerprints show up everywhere. It doesn't feel plasticky to hold - partly due to the weight - but I'm probably going to put a reasonably hefty case on it because I doubt it's going to be all that robust in a drop.

The fingerprint sensor on the power button is a much better placement than on the back on my previous phone which was annoying to reach in many situations - sitting on the desk, in a car holder, etc.

Micro-usb is a backward step for me and charging is definitely slower than Usb-c. However this hasn't bothered me so far because the combination of battery size and power consumption hasn't produced any battery life anxiety at all as yet. I had a day where I only used the phone for maybe half an hour all up and by the end it was still on 96%.

The Y11s is also listed as supporting reverse charging to charge smaller devices. This could be good for my wireless earbuds but I'll need to get an OTG cable to try it out.

Headphone jack on the bottom is not what I'm used to. I use wired earbuds occasionally on public transport when my wireless earbuds have gone flat. It's a little strange to put the phone upside down in my pants or shirt pocket, but not anywhere close to being a dealbreaker.

The bare minimum accessories are included - power adaptor and micro-usb cable. I have no complaints at this price point.

The Y11s supports dual sims. I don't use the second slot. I assume it works the same way most dual sims do.

Software

Even though FuntouchOS11 is supposed to be built on Android 11, it feels more like going 2 versions back. I don't really mind - the Q buttons and gestures didn't feel like a meaningful improvement to me. I'm thrilled to be able to remove the Google search bar from the home screen again.

I was worried there would be a lot of bloatware to deal with, but it's not too bad. And from reading online it appears Vivos used to be a lot worse. I haven't delved into the full list of executables, but on the app menu I see iManager, Vivo and own-brand Clock, Calculator & Compass apps. The official site says there should be a Weather app too but I don't have it.

Some FuntouchOS features aren't available on the Y11s:

• Always On Display and Live Always On Halo. Vivo only supports these for Super AMOLED, and this device only has an IPS LCD screen.
• Jovi smart assistant

Features I have confirmed are there:

• S-capture. I don't see what's so amazing to deserve a big mention on the website.
• Ultra Game Mode. I haven't tried it. I have no games installed.
  

Someone asked me if the Google Play Store is accessible with these phones or if it's subject to the same restrictions as Huawei. I have experienced no such restrictions.

Speedwise the SD460 lives up to my expectations. 3GB RAM appears to be sufficient. The specific thing I want is for MS Outlook and Teams to run smoothly with multiple accounts, most of which are subject to MDM. This seems to be hard as people I know with similar needs have similar performance problems even with flagship phones. From time to time a message list or body takes a little while to load, but it's much better than my previous phone.

The phone also supports face wake but I'm not a fan so I haven't tried it out.

Camera and Audio

I find it hard to get excited about either of these categories. If I can take a photo or video quickly in a range of light conditions and it isn't fuzzy and I can make out what's being shot then I'm satisfied. If I can hear audio clearly, the speaker phone works and the person at the other end can hear me then that's great. If I can make out the lyrics that are supposed to be made out on Spotify then that's plenty good enough for me. By these criteria I have had nothing to complain about with the Y11s.

I couldn't find the AI Image Matting feature for photos in the Y11s camera app, but the other AI features listed for FuntouchOS appear to be there - AI Editor for video, photo object eraser, etc.

When I get round to it I might put some photos up here.

Overall

+ Extremely affordable

+ Fast for its price point

+ Fingerprint sensor on power button is handy

- No Usb-c might be a problem for some

Final race of the Biathlon Womens Relay 2021

There's a chance she can do it.

She's gotta keep up if she wants to do it...

Ahhh, she's not going to do it.

Now there's no way she can do it.

Maybe she could still do it.

She might be able to do it.

She could do it!

She's gonna do it!

SHE DID IT!

Biathlon is myathlon

I stumbled onto Biathlon a few weeks ago, and I'm completely hooked. If you haven't heard of it before, it's a ski race where you have to periodically stop and shoot 5 targets, and for each miss you either get a time penalty or have to ski additional distance on "penalty loops".

I just described Biathlon in one sentence so it's a very simple concept. Why am I so excited? Biathlon actually has exquisite depths.

1. Internal conflict. Ski too fast and your heart rate goes up, bouncing your sight up and down and making it near impossible to hit your shots. Ski too slowly and you risk being left behind. A person could be simultaneously the world's greatest skiier and shooter, and they could still lose to someone who excels at judging and finding the balance between the two activities. This makes for many possible combinations of tactics with wildly different outcomes. Unpredictability and competitors trying to second-guess each other is exciting.
   
2. Momentum shifts. When I started following Biathlon, I thought I was going to become a full-on winter sports fan (I hadn't been paying much attention to winter sports up until then). But I quickly found that Biathlon has a level of excitement many other winter sports don't have. For instance, Skiathlon appears superficially similar to Biathlon, but is actually a "maximum exertion" sport where the person with the best speed, stamina and technique will usually get to the front and eventually win. By contrast, the Biathlon shoot is a moment of high drama. Clear all 5 and you have a golden chance to leave your competitors behind, but miss any targets and you'll find yourself plummeting down the order. Biathletes can't help but show their emotions at these critical moments which is also exciting.
3. Badassness. There's something about women in lycra racing around and shooting guns that's extremely watchable. It's the closest sport gets to a real life first person shooter video game. Actually I'm surprised there isn't already a Biathlon themed fps. OK must be time to go self-flagellate to atone for my crimes of objectification.

So thank you Biathlon26, Biathlon24, Biathlon999 and all the Youtube channels in between - defunct or yet to be - for raising my awareness. The British Eurosport coverage is great and the soundtrack gets me hype - so much so that I did my own version in chrome music maker

https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/song/4763425780006912

My space youtubers right now

Great

Scott Manley - First choice for space information of a technical nature. The definitive source for some topics such as Rotating Detonation Engines

Anton Petrov - fantastic space science news content

Angry Astronaut - refreshing opinions on latest developments, but also brings his own ideas and concepts. However it's unclear how well equipped he is to critically assess some topics

Everyday Astronaut - resting on laurels, content release has slowed dramatically. A lot of lazy live restreams. Stays in this section because he still does the best job on things like the year in review

Seeker - a more polished, less timely Anton Petrov. Easier to watch when low in energy thanks to soundtrack, graphics and lower common denominator presentation style

Nasaspaceflight - because we gotta have the up to the minute developments with Starship

2 The Future - similar to Angry Astronaut, but with more of a focus on the Musk empire

Not so great

What about it!? - some great interviews but mostly Starship recaps and lazy live restreams

TMRO - occasional great interviews, Peter Beck of Rocket Lab was epic. Other than that, not much to get excited about

Marcus House - perfectly fine content but frankly I'm not getting anything from this channel that isn't provided more effectively by someone else

Smallstars - some thoughtful work on artificial gravity undone by ridiculous concepts like a space station made out of a hundred rotating Starships

Isaac Arthur - needs to find some other medium instead of video. Challenging content that's difficult to follow due to glacial pace and distractingly irrelevant filler video on high rotate

Joe Scott - eclecticism is stupid, pick a lane! Seriously there are a few ok space vids in there but I tend to feel the content is overly padded with jokes and asides. Kinda like a mars bar inside a candyfloss

Fraser Cain - sorry but I mostly prefer scripted content. Interviews and group discussion have their place but not as cheap channel filler. Low information rate - why does every vid need to be an hour long?