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Martin Devlin: Covid overshadows a massive weekend of sport

Author
Martin Devlin,
Publish Date
Mon, 1 Mar 2021, 1:27PM

Martin Devlin: Covid overshadows a massive weekend of sport

Author
Martin Devlin,
Publish Date
Mon, 1 Mar 2021, 1:27PM

What did we learn from another huge weekend of sport?

Covid. Bloody Covid's come back throwing a spanner into all our live sport.

 Whatever plans were in place this week out the window as Level 3 lockdown strangles Auckland and causes the rest of the country to reach for the Plan B playbook.

Netball NZ will now stage all four Constellation Cup tests in Christchurch, the America's Cup start now delayed until March 10th at least, the final three T20 matches vs Australia will now all stay in Wellington and the Crusaders vs Hurricanes SRA match switched from Saturday night until Sunday afternoon.

And those are just the pro sports. The national athletics champs are now postponed until further notice, same for this weekend's Taupo Ironman, Golden Shears, Woodville races, Warriors season launch; the list goes on and on.

I guess what it does if nothing else, and believe me I'm scouring for the positives here, is reaffirm to us all (and me especially) not to take anything for granted. Here we are in NZ happy to show and tell the rest of the world how we can watch sport complete with sell-out crowds and then, uh-oh, in the space of a weekend it all comes crashing down.

And this almost a year to the day when all sport all over the world suddenly stopped and we spent 13 weeks – yes, that's right, because doing this for a job I was counting - without any sport anywhere at all.

I loved the rugby over the weekend, thoroughly enjoyed the boxing (although must admit the event itself more than the main bout) and even caught most of the Warriors pre-season warm-up hit out vs the Titans.

But the message I take away louder than any other is to, in this current climate, stop assuming all is ok here in paradise and NZ is the one country with Covid under control. Because quite clearly like the rest of our planet we are still, also, pandering to the pandemic.

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