It is institutionalised bias and while it might have been acceptable in the 1960s and 1970s when the damn colonials needed educating on the finer points of the round-ball game, it speaks to nothing more than laziness and expedience that these roles keep getting filled by men with CVs that fall a long way short of compelling.
Football is no longer a minority sport. By some metrics it is the most popular game in the country. So when are we going to start trusting those that have grown up with the sport here and understand what makes our footballers — men and women, boys and girls — tick?
New Zealand Football is being picked on but they're far from the only administration that goes weak-kneed at the sight of a well-placed umlaut, the sound of some Cockney slang, the sonic boom of an American or the nasal twang of our nearest and dearest neighbours.
The amount of unfit, modestly talented American coaches and players that have (dis)graced our National Basketball League over the years could fill a book, but the opening chapter would have to be reserved for Dan Wright, a Los Angeleno who ended a stint with North Shore by holding up a gas station.
Swimming, athletics, tennis ... they've all preferred to look outside the tent.
Cricket went through a phase of wanting to be like Australia, so employed Ric Charlesworth and John Buchanan in helicopter roles. They were touted as change agents but nothing of note changed until wee Mikey Hesson of Maori Hill came on board in a hands-on position.
Hesson leaves as arguably New Zealand's greatest cricket coach. To be blunt, I thought he was a cost-saving appointment rather than the best candidate but he proved me hopelessly wrong and you wonder how many coaches and administrators are out there
waiting for the opportunity to prove others wrong?
This is not a call for a Little New Zealand approach, nor does it try to minimise the many wonderful foreign coaches (and the odd administrator) who have made immeasurable contributions to the sporting landscape but it is a call to at least look inward.
That should start at the top but it just so happens the most glaring example of this awkward phenomenon sits at the pointy end of New Zealand sport.
The appointment of Australian Michael Scott to run High Performance Sport New Zealand should feel like a slap in the face.
(He replaced a Canadian, of course.)
I don't know Scott from a slab of VB, but if we care about administrative pathways in this country we should all give a XXXX about how somebody with consecutive two-year stints at Rowing Australia and Swimming Australia is elevated above homegrown candidates.
In a first-class piece of corporate waffle, High Performance Sport NZ chairman Paul Collins said of his selection: "[Scott] understands what it takes to be the system leader, but also brings the critical perspective of our partners, national sport organisations, as
well as the high-performance systems of Great Britain and Australia."
Really, the only explanation he needed was the last four words of that sentence.
If the country's leading high-performance sports agency picks a modestly credentialled Australian to fill the most important role in the building can we really be surprised when other national sporting organisations invariably choose to look yonder?
There is a sport that has been notably absent from discussion to this point. Rugby's governing body is far from perfect but the one thing you have to admire is they've never been embarrassed about their New Zealand-ness. They've been quite successful over the years, I hear.
