If you know me, you know that I don't exactly follow professional sports. So this blog post represents absolutely everything I know about NZ sports. And some of it may be wrong, because I am unable to summon the motivation to fact-check. Here we go.
Soccer is called soccer here. You can enroll kids as young as 18 months in soccer classes.
Nobody plays basketball. If you must toss a ball in the air, you play netball. Netball hoops have no backboards, and there are some different rules about traveling or dribbling or something.
Rugby is THE sport. It is a rough game played without helmets or other safety equipment, and as a result, NZ has a higher proportion of sports-related brain injuries than most other countries. It involves a chunky oblong white ball that must be moved to either end of a field by large, fast men trying to murder each other. THE team in NZ is the All Blacks. They were originally called 'The Originals' (how original). But then a complimentary article on the sports page said that every member of the team was equivalently murderous as the depraved animals playing the kill position: they were 'all backs'. An unfortunate typo later, the name stuck.
2 comments:
Hmmm, sounds like the Kiwi's are a tough lot.
Does every high school have a team?
NZ may have a higher proportion of sports-related brain injuries than most other countries, but I am thinking their proportion of war-related brain injuries is a lot lower than, say, the U.S.A. Rugby is better than war, so God bless the All-Blacks!
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