04/27/24
August 06, 2023
SportsFilter: The Sunday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
We're over all that and are more interested in things like why Japan and Spain get to stay put in NZ while the Netherlands and Sweden have to travel over from Australia to play them. Seems a bit of an unfair scheduling advantage.
We also want to know why the step-on-her-arse Lionesses are assigned to play their next match in Sydney while the ascendant host team trundles off to Brisbane.
Which Spain will show up in the quarters? The crushers or the crushees?
Rooting for the USA team was like rooting for the "long balls to Peter Crouch" England team that drew its way out of group stage and could only score on penalties and set pieces.
Thankfully, the coals will soon be quenched in Vlatko's forge and he'll be pounding out no more ballast on our behalf.
posted by beaverboard at 07:44 PM on August 07, 2023
Fair questions.
The east coast of Australia is only a two hour flight from Auckland, so not really a big travel burden for Netherlands and Sweden. Dunedin would be harder to get to. If anyone could be bothered going there and judging by the crowds, not many did. Meanwhile the Australian stadiums are all sold out.
Stadium allocations were worked out months ago, so Australia playing a QF in Brisbane only happened because we topped the group and won the R16. If we'd come second the path would have been different. I went to the Denmark game on Monday and have tickets for Saturday in Brisbane, so happy that I gambled and won when I bought them months ago!
posted by owlhouse at 02:31 AM on August 09, 2023
Nobody wants to talk about this? I'll go and have a cup of tea then.