NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

The depleted NZ Breakers are short on time and fit players.

The end of the ANBL season is quickly approaching – with four regular season games to play – and after the club’s sole training session of the week on the eve of Thursday’s home game against South East Melbourne Phoenix, coach Petteri Koponen had resorted to relying on hope.

He had just held a session without star import guard Parker Jackson-Cartwright who was not at the club’s headquarters due to illness, as blossoming Next Star Karim Lopez sat out with a strapped lower right leg, back up point guard Alex McNaught took a blow to his hand late in the scrimmage and Sam Mennenga, Rob Baker and Izayah Le’Afa were only at the practice court as observers after their own season-ending injuries.

“I just hope we’ve got some of the guys ready to go and they will be there… I’d be much happier if [the injured players] were with the group,” Koponen said about what could be an under-manned roster for the upcoming two games in three days.

“It’s a difficult moment but we have to have that next man up mentality and no excuses.”

Koponen often put a positive spin on the situations the Breakers found themselves in during the season but it was obvious things out his control were playing on his mind.

Travel and double-header weekends had limited the Breakers’ opportunities to spend time on the practice court in the last few weeks.

After winning at home last Friday against Melbourne United, a trip to Tasmania ended in a potentially season-defining two-point loss to the JackJumpers on Sunday.

Needing to get on winning streak to have any outside chance of making an appearance in the post-season, Koponen was wary of the team being under-prepared.

Koponen said the JackJumpers game was an example of what could happen when training opportunities were stymied by the schedule.

“We couldn’t prepare and some of the things in the game looked exactly like that.

“I told the group ‘when you are not perfect and you’re not feeling great how do you respond’ and Rob Loe with his 27 minutes on Friday and 27 minutes on Sunday he showed if he can do it everybody else can.

“I think especially for our younger players it’s a great learning experience because maybe they haven’t been there too much yet in their careers but when you are tired you have to do the little things with even more focus and also mentally get your mind ready and your body ready to fight.”

Koponen characterised the performance against the JackJumpers as “flat” – something he wanted the players to avoid with a game against the Illawarra Hawks coming less than 48 hours after the game against the Phoenix on the North Shore is over.

Import shooting guard Izaiah Brockington said the game against the JackJumpers would not be moved on from easily.

“That loss definitely hurt because of the play-off implications so we definitely felt it but we’re at the point in the season where it didn’t completely derail our chances so we’re on to the next one,” Brockington said.

The next challenge was against a Phoenix side that had won nine of their last 12 games and beaten the Breakers three times this season.

Brockington did not think the Phoenix would show them anything they had not seen before but he had heard Koponen’s message about being “mentally sharp”.

“Our biggest challenge is just going to be on the defensive end. They’ve been scoring really well for the past few games so our main thing is just figuring out how we get stops and turn those stops into points.

“We feel like they pressure a lot but we saw a few openings last game where they were over helping or they were a little wild but we’ve just got to stop them from getting threes, getting offensive rebounds, getting whatever they want on that end.”

Brockington might be one of the few Breakers players feeling fit and healthy at the back end of a season that started in September but he still saw the benefit of his hobbled team mates, Baker, Mennenga and Le’Afa, offering their insights.

“Those guys watch the game on TV so we get to hear what they saw and their perspectives of each game so it’s definitely been good having them around.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Black Foils skipper Peter Burling is supremely confident his boat will be back on the water for SailGP Auckland next week, after suffering significant damage at the league’s season-opening regatta at Perth last month.

New Zealand and Switzerland collided in the opening race at Fremantle, shearing the transom at the back of Amokura and sidelining the Kiwis for the rest of the weekend.

Adding insult to injury, the race umpire adjudged the Foils at fault and docked them seven race points, which became academic, when they weren’t able to take the water again.

They arrive at their home event at the foot of the league table and a slight question mark over the seaworthiness of their boat.

“We’ve always been very confident we’d be on the water here,” Burling insisted. “SailGP Technologies and the whole tech team have done an amazing job keeping all the boats in one piece and back together.

“That confident is growing as well. We’ve seen the boat arrive and get shipped out to C-Tech, where they’ll put the new piece on. The stern is already here – that arrived a couple of days ago.

“It’s cool to see it all happening. There’s some complication around getting the physical parts to New Zealand in time, so that part’s all gone well and I’m sure the team will do an awesome job finishing it off now.”

Under the SailGP agreement, all replacement parts are produced by the organisers and shipped from their innovation centre at Southampton. Amokura has been transported to Avondale, where the new piece will be fitted.

The hardest part of that equation has already been achieved.

“It’s been pretty impressive to see them build the whole thing from scratch and turn it around in a 10-day period, then shipped down to New Zealand to meet the boat,” Burling said.

With no practice scheduled until Friday next week, the Kiwis are under no pressure to take to the water until then, with racing on the Waitematā Harbour beginning the next day.

“We won’t get any additional hours and I don’t think we should need any additional hours,” Burling said. “There’s nothing from an electronics/hydraulics point of view, where you normally need time commissioning.

“There’s not a massive amount attached to the back of the boat. There will definitely be a fair bit of checks going on in the shed and we’ll go through a process on that first day to load it up reasonably slowly, but that’s about all we can do.”

While all teams have been idle since the Perth stopover, the damage hasn’t inconvenienced the Kiwis unduly since.

“The biggest thing was we missed two days of racing in Perth, which is never ideal,” Burling said. “You learn a lot during the race weekends, and every weekend you go into with parts you want to practice, parts you want to improve.

“SailGP is very much about evolving, while you’re racing, so there’s definitely a cost to the team for missing that racing. We were in really great shape going into that weekend and it was tough getting taken out in the first race, but that’s part of sport.”

Burling still doesn’t agree with the penalty slapped on his team, but is resigned to the outcome.

“I’ve definitely seen [the incident] a few more times – it seems to pop up everywhere. We still don’t really agree with the call, but we have to live by what the umpires say.

“Tough break in that regard, but also we’re hoping the league can learn from the incident, in terms of how we can keep the boats apart… we hope there’s some good change in that regard.”

New Zealand are now on the backfoot, as they pursue an elusive SailGP crown. They have contested the last three finals, topping the table in 2024, but have managed just second and two thirds.

With 12 more events on the calendar, the Kiwis still have plenty of time to chase down their rivals, but Auckland did not prove a happy hunting ground for them 12 months ago, when they failed to make the final.

“Last year, we had a lot of gremlins with the boat, with the electronics, and hopefully we’ve managed to get them behind us,” Burling said. “Everyone has a few waves, where they have things go wrong with the boat and they struggle to get to the bottom of quickly at times.

“Hopefully, we’re clean on that part of the boat and we can put on an awesome show.

“It’s a little too far out for long-range forecast, but we’re really excited with the preparation we’ve done and the consistent line-up we’ve managed to keep.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand