Former All Blacks head coach Sir Graham Henry. Photo / Getty
Former All Blacks head coach Sir Graham Henry. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
Maybe Sir Graham Henry was taking the mickey when he made comments about the media in the charity “debate” to support the Auckland Mayoral Relief Fund.
Some of us would greatly like to gain relief from the mayor – but that’s another story. I wasn’t at theso-called debate and, when you read about these things afterwards, the printed word doesn’t always do justice to the delivery and intent of the speaker.
So maybe Henry’s tongue was firmly lodged in his cheek but, just in case it wasn’t, some of his remarks need addressing. Henry said: “The All Blacks are the best team of any sport in the world but the media treat them like shit.”
The media drove Wayne Smith out of the All Blacks coaching job, he said, by “influencing the board”, but “I got him back”. The media “tried to make sure Smith, Henry and [Steve] Hansen weren’t reappointed” after the 2007 World Cup quarter-final loss. “Thank Christ those drongos didn’t get their way. What we want is for the media to be positive, to support this country instead of knocking it, to help with making it great again.”
Let’s not waste any time on his Trumpian call for the media to “be positive” (translation: do and say what I want), nor on the media treating the All Blacks “like shit”. Then England coach Eddie Jones called New Zealand rugby media “fans with keyboards” ahead of the 2019 World Cup semifinal and said they weren’t asking enough questions of the All Blacks. England gave the All Blacks a bit of hiding in that game. So who’s right? The truth will be somewhere in the middle – coaches usually have a tactical motive behind public remarks.
The media are there for the fans; they are the eyes and ears of the huge base of rugby followers in this country, empowered to ask questions the fans can’t and to express opinions many of the fans hold. So to strongly imply that the media did Wayne Smith in when he was disastrously ousted as All Blacks coach in favour of John Mitchell is just plain wrong – even in jest.
Smith gave a frank, honest self-appraisal in a low moment which led to NZ Rugby mistaking the very qualities that made him a great coach as weakness. Smith told the Herald in 2006: “Others [in decision-making posts] saw it as a weakness. To me, I was just trying to be accountable, to ask them to ensure they chose the right man for the job. I wanted to be that man but had areas to work on.
“I was responsible, I made the comments and statements. We’d lost a match to Australia we should have won and I said publicly what I was thinking. Had I said nothing I would have kept the job because I had a really high mark in my review.”
Wayne Smith and Sir Graham Henry. Photo / Photosport
The media, in other words, were the messengers, not the architects. Big difference. I raise all this guff from the “debate” simply because it also speaks to the innate conservatism which many outside the All Blacks camp think has detrimentally affected the team in recent times.
It was encapsulated in an enlightening Chris Rattue interview with former skipper Taine Randell who spoke about the team’s stale game plan: “Wayne Smith, Steve Hansen and Graham Henry changed the game, but it’s moved on and it feels like we are playing the same system and doing the same things that weren’t good enough to win the World Cup in 2019. In schoolboy rugby, you find everyone has got the same pod system, the same terminology etc. We have a bit of group think with the style that started with Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen. It did fantastically but we’ve been overtaken.”
That’s not the media saying that. But, if we were being “positive”, in Henry’s world, we wouldn’t have printed it. Debate, it appears, is encouraged but only if the “right” things are said.
For the Rugby Championship opener against Argentina, head coach Ian Foster’s match-day 23 saw eight leading players unavailable or rested. Yet only one of the six new All Blacks appeared.
Foster has done this before – taking newbies away but giving them little game time – and his conservatism, and the issues expressed by Randell, rub many fans the wrong way. It seems unlikely many of the new boys will be flung into action against South Africa – but maybe I misjudge Foster.
He’d be daft if he showed his World Cup hand now, but the uncomfortable feeling remains that his eggs are going in the tried-and-tested basket and not the one labelled “Inventiveness”.
Big issues remain and, as much as Foster (or any All Blacks coach) is doing his utmost, the role of the media is to put those issues in front of the people rugby cannot do without – the fans.
