Bruce Cameron: Our Sports Personality of the Year

For a while there, it seemed the Steamers were destined for Heartland rugby.
The irony is it was someone from deep in the arteries of the Bay of Plenty heartland who grabbed the struggling union by the scruff of the neck and dragged it into a position of relative comfort.
Bruce Cameron's Otamarakau farm lies just about smack-bang in the geographic centre of the province.
After years successfully trading in the business world, when the time game for the 81-game Steamers prop to re-enter the rugby ranks, he did it the only way a farm-raised front-row forward knows how.
Head down, straight into the fray, Cameron's tenure as chairman of the union - which began in late May - has been marked by stout honesty, passion and the stomach to make a range of tough calls.
He's also flown the flag nearly everywhere, popping up throughout the province and uniting the various factions through his positivity and force of personality.
Cameron is at pains to point out he hasn't acted alone - deputy Glenn Cotterill and financial whiz Mark Thomas have been there from the start, and chief executive Jeremy Curragh has also been a key figure.
But every team needs a leader, and right now the BOPRU are following confidently in Cameron's wake.
"I guess in the end I was always going to take this challenge on, as Bay of Plenty rugby has always meant a lot to me," Cameron says. "The province has a strong tradition at the top end of our national game and it is important to keep us up there where we justifiably belong."
Rendered rudderless a year ago when chief executive Paul Abbot resigned, the union battled through crisis after crisis - like the loss of major sponsor Blue Chip - until the NZRU stepped in and appointed a statutory manager, Dennis Pickup.
Pickup quickly realised the $760,000 loss announced in February was actually much worse, to the tune of another $156,000, and Cameron's new board had the task of stemming the tidal wave of expenses.
Even after three weeks of due diligence, the incoming board still faced a number of unpleasant surprises.
"The financial position was a lot more difficult than previously known. The budget that had been presented to the NZRU by the statutory manager was reliant on revenue expectations that became unrealistic due to the present economic climate.
"It has been a rollercoaster ride, with some very tough decisions needed to stem the financial bleeding, as the union was still geared very high in terms of monthly overheads that were put in place after the purple patch in 2004 from the Ranfurly Shield win and the proceeds of the 2005 Lions tour."
After axing half the union's 10 fulltime jobs, Cameron's board is now running the union more like a ski-field, with extra staff resources in the rugby season and a "maintenance crew" on for the summer.
The off-field fix-up job seemed to inspire the on-field crew, who battled back from their horror 13th-placing in 2007 to finish the round-robin stage of the Air New Zealand Cup in fourth, eventually losing a home quarterfinal to Southland.
Now the union seems on an upward trend for the first time in three years.
Curragh is now likely to stay on permanently as chief executive, Cameron's appointment to the Chiefs board is timely with the Super 14 likely to expand soon, and strategic planning is in place with emphasis on club rugby, Maori rugby and establishing the union as the natural home of the sevens game.
It's all in a day's work for Bruce Cameron though.
"It's all very well to make tough decisions but there has to be a positive outcome - I believe we have a strong and robust medium-term perspective now."