Sports Chat for 4 June 2025
An update on what's happening in the sports world with Nathan Rarere.
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RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Netball: Tenacious Magic midcourter impresses as ball-winner
Magics Georgie Edgecombe Photo: DJ Mills / Georgie Edgecombe's ball-hunting abilities in a position that doesn't usually shine has been turning heads in the ANZ Premiership. The Magic midcourter has been the most consistent performer in a team that struggled until earlier this week when the Magic had a big win over the Stars to notch up their first win of the season. The 24-year-old's explosiveness off the mark and closing speed have seen her win a lot of ball at wing defence, a position which requires a lot of graft but doesn't necessary get the rewards. But after four rounds, Edgecombe is in the top 10 for intercepts and sits fourth for deflections behind circle defenders Carys Stythe, Catherine Hall, and Jane Watson. Edgecombe grew up in Hamilton and lives in Cambridge where she went to St Peter's for her college years. While she was at St Peter's, she played alongside some of the country's top up and coming female athletes in two other sports, including Tall Fern Charlisse Leger-Walker. Edgecombe won national sporting titles for her school and representative sides in basketball and touch. St Peter's were national New Zealand Secondary Schools basketball champions. Leger-Walker, who has made a name for herself in women's college basketball in the United States, spearheaded the college A-team, alongside fellow Tall Fern Ella Bradley, who also plays in the USA. Former Tall Fern Leanne Walker coached the St Peter's team back then. "I was keen to be a part of the basketball team and have some fun. Obviously Charlisse is a bit of a GOAT so it was cool to play alongside her and her mum Leanne coaching us, so we had a pretty strong team led by Charlisse and Ella," Edgecombe said. Edgecombe also played in the U18 Waikato touch team when they became national champions. Members of that side would go on to represent New Zealand in touch and sevens. "Touch was definitely my summer sport that I gravitated towards and would still love to play but there's not much time in the year at the moment but loved touch and that kind of whānau based sport that I grew up playing, I spent a lot of summers on the touch field." Charlisse Leger-Walker of New Zealand Tall Ferns. Photo: Photosport Edgecombe's start in netball was typical. "I started playing when I was about eight or nine. I was definitely super sporty and netball was just one of the sports I participated in," Edgecombe said. "My parents encouraged us, I've got two older brothers we did as many sports as we could, mostly as a social thing at first and as we got a bit older got a bit more competitive and wanted to take it more seriously." At St Peter's she came under the tutelage of former Silver Fern Amigene Metcalfe, who would later become the coach of the Magic when Edgecombe first joined the team. Edgecombe captained the Senior A netball team for the three years that she was in the side. In her final year at St Peters, she was head girl and very busy. "I tried to play those other sports as long as I could but going into my final year was probably when I thought 'I could continue netball after school' and started thinking about it a bit more seriously. In year 13, I focussed mainly on netball, I still played touch in the summer but in those winter months it was just netball, it was school, it was reps." Her decision to focus on netball paid off - later that year she was named in the NZ Secondary Schools Squad for 2018. In her first two year's out of college, Edgecombe was a Magic training partner and played for the feeder team in the National Netball League. In 2020, she made the NZ U21 squad ahead of the 2021 Netball World Youth Cup, which was cancelled due to Covid. Her second season as a fully contracted Magic player in 2022 was a baptism of fire, when she was thrust into the wing attack position to help cover injury. She was mostly a circle defender at high school and the new position was counter-intuitive to what she was used to. In the season's since then she has mostly played wing defence and a bit at centre. "Wing defence is where I feel most comfortable and feel like I can have the most impact on a game at the moment but I do enjoy when I get to play centre just having the ball in your hands a bit more." Georgie Edgecombe (right). Photo: Photosport Now in her fifth year at the Magic, Edgecombe has taken a number of stunning intercepts this season. "That's every defenders most exciting part of the game and what we work towards in our trainings. I think wing defence can sometimes be a bit of a grind position where you do a lot of work out front to set things up for the defenders behind you, but it's cool in our defensive unit we've got structures where anyone can get ball. "It's just putting yourself in the right positions and definitely exciting and an adrenaline rush when you get those cool intercepts." What are the physical attributes that allow her to cover so much ground? "Agility comes into it but a lot of it I would say is fitness, having a good engine to be able to keep going for the full 60 minutes. My fitness is something I worked hard on in the off season and it allows me to keep running, that's my mentality. The wing attacks are running everywhere so I have to try keep up with them." Edgecombe was named in the Silver Ferns development squad for the first time last year, played for NZA in training matches against the Silver Ferns, and played for the FAST5 Ferns in November. She graduated from Waikato University at the end of 2022 with a Bachelor of Communications and is still figuring out what she wants to do with it. Edgecombe is not afraid to say she has her sights on the Silver Ferns. "For sure, that's definitely the goal long-term. For now my main focus is helping the Magic to be successful ... and whatever will be in the future whether it's this season or in the next season ...hopefully, it's definitely the goal." Veteran Magic circle-defender Georgia Tong said it was an asset having someone as tenacious as Edgecombe in the team. "You know that she's always going to have your back and she's just going to go and go and go again and she's a really positive person as well. Being on the line next to her is really good when you know you haven't got a few balls in awhile, she's always like 'come on we've got this next one'," Tong said. The Magic meet the Stars again on Monday night in Auckland.
Otago Daily Times
an hour ago
- Otago Daily Times
Initiative ‘fantastic' chance to learn
John Marrable is always looking for ways to improve. The Dunedin para athlete recently wrapped up his time as part of the second intake for the para sport collective, a Paralympics New Zealand initiative to provide more support for athletes. The collective involved three in-person camps and monthly Zoom sessions over the past year, with topics including skills, nutrition, mental resilience, recovery and injuries. A range of sports, including shooting, taekwondo, equestrian, snowboarding and swimming were covered. Marrable was one of three table tennis players among the cohort, and each athlete worked through personalised performance programmes. "I'm grateful to Table Tennis New Zealand for putting my name forward to be part of the para sport collective and also the New Zealand coach John Tuki,"Marrable said. "They've been really good support." Marrable, who has been involved in para sport since an accident as a child left him in a wheelchair, relished being part of the collective and listening to Paralympians share their stories. "I've been involved in para sport almost ever since I had an accident, so a lot of it was great to get reinforced where I'm heading and then also up-skilled with a lot of the changes in dietary requirements or that type of thing." Programmes such as the para collective were important for all athletes but especially in para sport as there was the "added challenge of having your disability or impairment". Being able to bounce ideas off athletes who fundamentally understood what others went through, and had various different strategies for travelling with additional equipment or helping their bodies respond in different situations, was invaluable. "It was just fantastic meeting other like-minded people." Marrable is part of the New Zealand para table tennis development squad and hopes to be included in the Oceania championships in Auckland later this year. He is also a seventh dan in karate. "The two sports really go hand in hand, because through the karate you're doing your stretching, your aerobic work, plus reaction time. "Then of course with the table tennis I'm doing the ball skills and stretching." Marrable has tried his hand at countless sports through the years. He felt New Zealand had always had great representation at the Paralympics and world championships. But there had been great improvements across the board, and ParaFed Otago and the Halberg Foundation played a big role in helping get more youth involved. "As the sports improved, the athletes have had to improve and really it's people's attitude as well. "Not the athletes or the coaches... but sometimes people didn't really think that the paras were serious athletes. "I think sometimes that can affect the athlete and that's, again, knowing that the opportunities are there. "Any sport you can think of can be adapted." Dunedin was fortunate to have a good athletics programmes through Athletics New Zealand para lead Raylene Bates, and strong wheelchair rugby and table tennis programmes, he said.
RNZ News
9 hours ago
- RNZ News
How All Whites 'act and behave' on field to be tested
Players of both teams (Michael Boxall and Bill Tuiloma) argue during the New Zealand All Whites v Qatar friendly football match in Austria, 2023. Photo: PHOTOSPORT Nearly two years ago to the day, All White Michael Boxall was central to a moment that captured the attention of football players around the world and the sports global governing body. On 20 June, 2023, the All Whites refused to take the field for the second half of a friendly game against Qatar after Boxall was allegedly racially abused by an opposition player late in the first half. The referee took no action on the field and New Zealand Football believed the All Whites had done the right thing by abandoning the game at half-time. It was a situation the All Whites had not faced before. Boxall said he moved on "pretty quickly" from the incident and does not look back at it. A "non-issue", he said. Just another thing that happened during an international career that began 14 years ago and involves tales of disruptive tactics by opposition fans and 50 hour travel days, amongst the winning moments such as his goal for the All Whites in March. Boxall could add more memories at his first Football World Cup next year. The centre-back, who captains his club side Minnesota United in Major League Soccer and has worn the armband for the All Whites, said despite his experience, he was not the loudest voice in the lockeroom. "I've never really been one of the more vocal people but if something needs to be said I won't shy away," he said. Boxall has played 55 times for the All Whites and tentatively said that some of his younger New Zealand team mates look to him as a leader. New Zealand captain Michael Boxall leads the All Whites team out against Mexico in 2024. Photo: © Photosport Ltd 2024 "Because this is such a good group and we have so many players who also lead at their own clubs, that it's not often that things need to be said. When things are going right it's any easy group to be a part of because everyone 99 times out of 100 does the right thing. "In the upcoming few months, we're going to come up against some top opposition and be in some tough circumstances where we will look to players like Chris Wood and, perhaps players will look to myself as well. We will have to do a bit more than just lead by example and kind of steer the ship a little bit, but we'll cross those bridges when we reach them." The All Whites are competing in the Canadian Shield against the higher ranked Côte d'Ivoire (world number 41) in Toronto on Sunday followed by world number 25 Ukraine on Wednesday. It is part of NZF's push to get the All Whites playing against nations from each confederation in the build up to the world cup. "Over the last few years, we've kind of carved out an identity and how we want to play and how we want to act and behave on the field and I think against the the island teams when we're qualifying for the world cup it's easy to show those attributes. "But then when you're really in the fire against top 40, top 20 teams, which we'll be facing the next week, it's when we'll really be tested so if we can carry on those attributes in to these games against world class opposition then that'll be the true test of where we stand and what we need to work on heading into the 2026 world cup." Part of what Boxall said he liked about international football was witnessing how the game was treated by fans in countries where the round ball was most popular. Michael Boxall takes a header for the All Whites. Photo: PhotoSport "I think back to when we were in Peru, the fun and games that they would play, they wouldn't allow our plane to land in Peru so we had to stopover in Chile for three hours landed at 1am, there's no cars on the highway and they give us a police escort going 20km an hour just to screw up our whole travel day. "The night before the game they've got people letting off fireworks outside our hotel every hour starting at 2am. "It upsets your preparation but it's just an eye-opening experience to how other nations treat this game and how big it is around the world." Boxall could expect a warmer welcome in the USA, Canada or Mexico next year, when the three countries share the hosting of the world cup. He has been a mainstay in the MLS with Minnesota having an option to extend his contract next season and is confident his performances will keep him in All Whites coach Darren Bazeley's thoughts for the global event. "Ticking on eight or nine years at the club, playing almost pretty much week in week out I'd say as long as I can keep myself at the my current level and stay healthy, then I don't see a whole lot changing in the near future." Given his base in the American midwest, getting into the current All Whites camp for the Canadian Shield games in Toronto was one of the shorter travel days he has encountered. "Just a two hour flight for me and a one hour time difference was a stark contrast to the March window, where I had a few missed flights and connections gone awry, so it ended up being like a 50 hour travel day. So this was much better received." The trip to Norway in October will be a bit longer but again it is all part of build up over the next few international windows that will include different nations. "[It's] really just to open our eyes to the way those teams play, and then once the draw happens, then we can narrow down and really refine our preparation for who will be facing at the World Cup." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
