No joy for football, netball, ‘Queen Suzie’

Sport does not always give you a fairytale ending.

The All Whites, the Southern Steel, a New Zealand and Otago cricket great and the New Zealand Warriors all accepted that reality at the weekend.

No fairytale finish for Bates and friends

One team copped a sobering Belgian reality check at the Fifa World Cup and the Steel had to be content with reflecting on how far they had come as they fell to defeat in the national netball final.

And that cricketer? Well, shall we just say a guard of honour was extremely well deserved, even if her team did bow out of the T20 World Cup on a flat note.

New Zealand’s footballers were left licking their wounds after a 5-1 hammering by Belgium in Vancouver on Saturday.

The vast disparity in world ranking was brutally obvious at times as the Belgians cut the Kiwi defence to ribbons.

There was at least another goal for breakthrough star Elijah Just — New Zealand football fans now watch eagerly to see if he will move from his Scottish club to a bigger league — but the All Whites again missed out on a place in the World Cup knockout rounds.

In Auckland, the Southern Steel competed for large parts of the game before falling to a 56-46 loss to the Northern Mystics.

The Steel were chasing their first title since 2018 but, given they were mired in a 21-game losing streak not that long ago, even making the final represented a significant step.

In Brisbane, the Warriors conceded a last-gasp try to fall 26-24 to the Dolphins, although the silver lining is they still retain second place in the NRL standings due to superior points differential.

New Zealand cricket fans, meanwhile, woke up yesterday to the reality the great Suzie Bates would not be seen at international level again.

Bates and fellow retiring players Sophie Devine and Lea Tahuhu were given a guard of honour at The Oval, in London, after the defending champion White Ferns bowed out of the T20 World Cup with a nine-wicket loss to England.

Otago’s beloved ‘‘Queen Suzie’’ leaves the international arena with a record 370 appearances and an astonishing 10,740 runs for the White Ferns.

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