PAUL THOMAS, WRITER
Featured Columns
2017 Sports Quiz
There’s more to sport than high shots, low blows and fine lines. Test your familiarity with sport’s rich tapestry by tackling this quick quiz of the 2017 sporting year!
What Now For The Trump Show?
Among the many things Donald Trump either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about is the Christmas message of peace on earth and goodwill to men.
Obama - Lone Adult in the Schoolyard
As never before, the international community wishes it had a say in the American presidential election.
Martin Crowe: Requiem for a Perfectionist
Two of the new faces in the 1977/78 Auckland cricket training squad were a journeyman all-rounder (me) and a 15 year old Auckland Grammar boy named Martin Crowe.
News
Paul won the
Canon Media Awards 2016
Sports Opinion Writer award.
These are his winning columns:
Big and Bigger - Jonah Lomu
Jonah Lomu’s death was a reminder of sport’s essentially ephemeral nature and its paradoxical capacity to engage emotions and transcend race, language and geography.
It’s Our Game
And with a single result we were free. The All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup triumph is laden with significance but perhaps its single greatest merit from the New Zealand rugby public ‘s perspective is that it delivers peace of mind…
Polynesian All Blacks
Next week’s All Blacks-Samoa test in Apia will be, among other things, a celebration of the Samoan influence in New Zealand rugby.
Featured Essays
My Favourite Sports Books
Back in the days before all sporting events of any significance and some of no significance at all were accorded live television coverage (or, in my case, before television itself), the young sports fan had to make do with books.
Hannibal the Cannibal has Crime Fiction for Breakfast
Evelyn Waugh described him as ‘the greatest living American novelist.’ T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden were equally big fans.
Short Stories and Book Excerpts
Death on Demand
Excerpt from Paul’s 2012 book Death on Demand.
Females had always found him hard to resist. When he was small, his aunts and cousins cooed and fussed over him, telling him how gorgeous he was.
Marge Bristow, This is Your Life
Short story from Paul’s 2003 novel Sex Crimes
Marge Bristow had had it. Up to here. No, really, she’d reached the end of her tether.
The Empty Bed
Excerpt from Paul’s 2002 book The Empty Bed.
I’m not sure of anything any more. Except this: ignorance is bliss. What we don’t know can’t hurt us. And what we find out can erase our certainties, like words wiped off a blackboard.