Nz Oaks winner Pulchritudinous has her first run in Australia, after moving over and becoming a part of the Waterhouse Bott stable tomorrow. She will be racing in the Australasian Oaks at Morphetville. I'm a massive fan of this filly and it loves running over distance. Has had one trial over 1400 a couple of weeks ago. Looked like it was to blow out some cobwebs on the track. Also running in the same race will be the horses that ran 2nd and 3rd behind her in the NZ Oaks
SouthernMann
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@mikey07 said in 2024 New Zealand U20s:
A little bit off topic but the squad was in force at the dawn service here in Lower Hutt. I thought that was very classy.
Good to hear them getting out and about in our community
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@frugby said in Highlanders v Force:
@SouthernMann said in Highlanders v Force:
- Holland back
- Dunshea to debut
- Same loose trio as last week
- Third 10 in three weeks, Patchell back after two weeks of club footy at fullback
- CGB at 11
- Te Hiwi at 12, Gilbert dropped or rested
- Tucker back on bench
- Renton back on bench
- Millar retained. No Faleafaga
- Bogado on the bench
Seems like we are moving the deck chairs around a bit
Harsh to say we're moving the deck chairs I think. A combo of rectifying past mistakes, and bringing back those who are fit. This is far closer to what everyone said was our best team at the start of the year.
- Our best seven is now our no8
- The hooker rotation continues
- Probably our best locking duo. But, jeez we have seen some names roll through.
- Patchell comes off playing club footy at fullback to be back at 10. Dropping Faleafaga completely. Millar looked tits.
- Te Hiwi has been unsighted and now slips straight into the starting team, for our vice-captain who was rubbish on the weekend.
- Everyone thought CGB was probably on the slippery slope out the door and now he is a starting winger.
I'm generally pretty positive about the franchise. Have to be, otherwise it is sad. But, we have to be honest, this is full on pressing the panic button.
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- Holland back
- Dunshea to debut
- Same loose trio as last week
- Third 10 in three weeks, Patchell back after two weeks of club footy at fullback
- CGB at 11
- Te Hiwi at 12, Gilbert dropped or rested
- Tucker back on bench
- Renton back on bench
- Millar retained. No Faleafaga
- Bogado on the bench
Seems like we are moving the deck chairs around a bit
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@Kiwiwomble said in Highlanders 2024:
i think what i see compared to some other sports at different levels is that the Franchises are still not an inherent part of their local communities, not too the extent we see elsewhere....when these sports teams ARE then we see people volunteering their time because they want to be part of it and all those perifial things flesh out the whole organisation...but what we see is this very lean organisation...they play rugby...and thats kind of it
Disagree here. The Highlanders have stepped up their community engagement a bucket load over the last year.
- Pre-season tour in Central Otago
- Easter egg hunt in the botan gardens
- Split Crusaders/Highlanders trip to Temuka
- Southland Highlanders in Invercargill
- Updates around who is playing club rugby each week
- plus, plus
From a social media perspective, sure they could probably do a couple more things and I reckon they'd be nailing it. One, being like a players corner on a Wednesday or something similar. Plus a coaches round-up. There seems like a lot of short-clips, but from the sound of things, people are wanting a bit more depth.
If I was them, what I'd do with the ODT as a sponsor, would be say, if you are a Highlanders member get a 50% subscription reduction. Get ODT to do their videos, play 30% of them on the Highlanders social channels and say for the rest they are behind the wall on the ODT website. Creates content and drives traffic for a sponsor.
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Blues also have substantially more comms and engagement staff. Highlanders are sadly run on bare bones
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@Landers92 said in Highlanders 2024:
@SouthernMann haha ok mate good for you.
Again, as per my previous comment, football/NFL/NRL all have press conferences and the likes on YouTube, Facebook and their own website all for free… Why can’t super rugby teams do the same? How good would that be?! Maybe then we could perhaps even know just a little bit about some of our injured players, at the moment all we get is an email if you’re a member saying ‘unavailable due to injury’.
Just on this. Resources. NFL/NRL/football have decent comms staff. The Highlanders have a few digital media team members. Earlier in the season they did put up press conferences. Probably need to do that again. Unfortunately feel as if they have gone inwards after a few shit results.
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@Kiwiwomble said in Highlanders 2024:
@SouthernMann surely you have to acknowledge there is a middle ground here....we had a couple of decades of online news paid for by advertising, couldn't open an article without a banner ad....so i dont think its completely out of the blue for people to notice the change....there are reasons for the change but for me i found the articles and even quality of the website becoming poor or at very least not keeping up with the rest of the net...and then they wanted people to pay for something i was less and less inclined to read anyway
its like adds on sky...the whole reasons for pay TV back in the day was so you didn;t have adds
Comes down to choice of the consumer. My ODT subscription costs me about .50c a day. For that small cost I get to support journalism in the city I'm from and read stories about the rubbish teams I support. In terms of advertising millions has been stripped out of the local advertising market. Free advertising won't keep stories on teams going. The stories that should go behind the paywall are the ones people want to read. Often for people living out of region, those stories centre around our sporting teams. Is the ODT perfect? No. Does it try hard to cover sport for its readers. Yes. Can you get it elsewhere? Not really. Supporting journalism through .50c a day seems like a win-win for the consumer and news producer.
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I'll always stand up for news agencies when it comes to people feeling they have the right to free content and grizzle when it isn't free. I buy the ODT subscription completely for the sport content. The content is there, easy to access and cheap. The ODT is the only newspaper in the country that provides decent sports coverage. it deserves to be supported.
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@Landers92 said in Highlanders 2024:
The ODT are making it even harder to follow this team. Pretty hard to have more engagement when the ODT now have a ‘subscriber’ only system to read some of the articles which just so happen to be 80% of the articles about the highlanders.
And before anyone says to subscribe, there is no chance I’ll be paying for an online news service.
Also an observation, would love it if super rugby took an approach you see in football/NFL/NRL of coaches doing weekly press conferences and the likes and loaded on to team websites. Would create even more interaction which we are in need of. Could also perhaps give us some more answers to a lot of the questions constantly being asked.
Maybe one day haha
Oh dear what a shame you can't access content for feee that the provider has to pay staff to create, printing services to print, servers to host, rent on buildings, fuel into cars. The subscription service costs $15 a month. ODT does video content on club rugby four or five Highlanders articles a week. If you don't pay you have no reason to complain. You get what you pay for, and the moment you are complaining about the lack of content when you pay nothing. Sadly Paul Cully has been taken off the Highlanders now too. So the quality from stuff has gone down. The Highlanders fan engagement has improved greatly. Unfortunately the on-field perfoamnces haven't matched the lift in fan engagement.
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I'm looking forward to our cripple fight with the Crusaders in a few weeks.
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I live in Lower Hutt. I'll likely never leave Wellington. The Canes are top of the table and I have hated them since the late 90s. But jeez it would be nice to support a side that has some capability and wins. These guys suck
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@Bones said in Reds v Highlanders:
Brilliant chip kick option again. No idea why that hasn't come off the last dozen times.
Because he licks windows on the shortbus, while wearing a helmet to get 'em tasty flavours
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@Landers92 said in Reds v Highlanders:
@SouthernMann you know what I meant…
Like saying you will get beaten by your little brothers team, most of which play in your team or aren't good enough to make your team
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@Landers92 said in Reds v Highlanders:
I really hope this whole coaching team are feeling the heat. Otago NPC squad would beat this highlanders team tonight and that’s saying a lot
Nah they won't. Most of the Otago NPC side are either in this squad or playing club footy. Otago will be bloody terrible too.
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Great evening watching the Warriors and 'Landers.
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@antipodean said in Reds v Highlanders:
@SouthernMann said in Reds v Highlanders:
@antipodean said in Reds v Highlanders:
@SouthernMann said in Reds v Highlanders:
@antipodean said in Reds v Highlanders:
Holy fuck Gilbert, do everyone a favour and injure yourself.
Built like a brickshithouse and plays like a fucking marshmallow
A marshmallow would catch the ball.
He rides the shortbus
Wearing a helmet.
Clip off visor, so he can enjoy 'em tasty windows
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@antipodean said in Reds v Highlanders:
@SouthernMann said in Reds v Highlanders:
@antipodean said in Reds v Highlanders:
Holy fuck Gilbert, do everyone a favour and injure yourself.
Built like a brickshithouse and plays like a fucking marshmallow
A marshmallow would catch the ball.
He rides the shortbus
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@antipodean said in Reds v Highlanders:
Holy fuck Gilbert, do everyone a favour and injure yourself.
Built like a brickshithouse and plays like a fucking marshmallow
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@antipodean said in Reds v Highlanders:
@SouthernMann said in Reds v Highlanders:
Get Millar off. He's mud.
The majority of the team is mud.
Millar is the worst
Rough tips and other bets...
2024 New Zealand U20s
Highlanders v Force
Highlanders v Force
Highlanders 2024
Highlanders 2024
Highlanders 2024
Highlanders 2024
Highlanders 2024
Highlanders 2024
Highlanders 2024
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders
Reds v Highlanders