KEY POINTS:
Somewhere deep in the annals of Kiwi slang, there is a reference to "the bushman's friend".
It meant any variety of large-leafed plants pressed into service in the bush when said bushman was, er, without normal toilet accompaniments.
The New Zealand Rugby League is not only performing its
urgent ablutions rather distressingly in public, it also appears to have forgotten about the bushman's friend and grabbed a clump of poison ivy instead.
Recovering its dignity is going to be difficult after this week's public revelations that the Kiwi team's senior players didn't want a bar of coach Gary Kemble and his subsequent resignation.
Any players who turn on the coach have to take some of the blame - especially when said players performed like little girls in the infamous 58-0 hiding by Australia and a similarly depressing thrashing by Great Britain in Kemble's tour debut last year.
Last time I looked, it wasn't Kemble taking the ball up the middle, off-loading and tackling - or not tackling. That'd be those fellas with the Kiwi jerseys.
The Kiwis were appalling, perhaps the worst international side ever fielded under that name. While the coach must take some of the blame, the players would have to fit in the dock alongside him.
Clearly, from day one of Kemble's reign, things were not good. There was the performance in Wellington where the team looked like they'd been forced to play for Kazakhstan and be coached by Borat - and followed it up, some of them, with some dubious "sexy time" with a woman in a hotel bedroom in Wellington which had allegations of rape flying around before the police lost interest in it.
Don't think you can put that one down to Kemble either.
But a coach who can't hold the dressing room is a sorry thing. The strongest image from that tour was Kemble in the dressing room at halftime, talking to his troops, with his arms spread wide. It may not actually have been a gesture of supplication but that's what it looked like - and the players looked like they were declining to accept it.
This whole business stems from the NZRL's forcing of Brian McClennan's hand when he resigned to coach Leeds.
You can forget all that business about 'residency clauses'. Insiders assured me some time back the real issue was that "Bluey" was getting too powerful and taking the Kiwis away from management control; surrounding himself with cronies.
That is a legitimate management concern. But you don't solve the problem by blowing out your best coach and replacing him with a tyro. You keep the best coach and engineer a transition.
Current chairman Ray Haffenden can be excused as that one happened on previous chairman Andrew Chalmers' watch. But, again, if the players are to be believed, they tried to tell Haffenden and the NZRL about their lack of regard for Kemble - only to find him re-appointed and their advice overlooked.
Which brings us back to the bushman's friend and the place to which it is applied. That is where the game of New Zealand rugby league is at the moment.
Sad - but help is on the way. Wayne Bennett is rightly regarded as one of the best rugby league coaches ever and has won more NRL grand finals than any other.
An interesting, complex character, he is an avowed non-drinking, non-smoking, non-gambling disciplinarian who manages his teams closely; who knows his players in depth. Just what the doctor ordered, right?
Respected rugby league scribe Roy Masters wrote an intriguing piece in December 2005, when Bennett resigned as Kangaroos coach after the 24-0 hiding from the Kiwis in the Tri-Nations and after Bennett's infamous, rock star-style dash to his car to avoid a media pack in Brisbane.
Bennett said he decided not to talk to the media when he saw a newspaper picture of Anthony Minichiello and Willie Mason at The Church, a bar which has seen some poor excesses by touring teams.
Bennett felt betrayed. He had expressly forbidden the team to go there after the defeat.
Then he found out it was a photo from the previous year - and his fury was re-directed at a "jackal" media whom he thought tarred the tour with hypocritical coverage. He dashed from the airport to avoid the waiting scrum; something he has since said he regrets.
Could be an interesting reign. Bennett would likely have hated the Kiwi bedroom capers in Wellington and the drunken episode which allegedly saw Tame Tupou secretly sent home from the tour.
And it's Kiwi rugby league. With NZRL administrators.
Better keep a big leaf handy.
