48 hours: Johnny-come-latelies meet familiar fate

By RICHARD BOOCK

It was Oscar Wilde who insisted that experience was something you could never get for nothing, and it's a fair bet he hadn't even heard of the Auckland Rugby Football Union, or its head coach Pat Lam.

But if the great playwright one day hoped to be vindicated in vivid and irrefutable Technicolor, he couldn't have dreamed of a better demonstration than that provided this winter by Auckland's Johnny-come-lately coaching staff.

New Zealand sport is littered with the debris of well-intentioned but ultimately doomed coaching appointments, and it would be a major surprise if Lam is not included alongside them when (and if) he gets to the end of this season's commitments.

Certainly, the recent endorsement from Auckland chief executive David White should provide him with little reason for optimism, especially if the trend in English football is anything to go by.

Over there, public support from the front office is like code for "an axing is imminent"; the stage that immediately precedes the press release advising of the coach's decision to step down and to pursue a new career in butterfly catching.

Lam might receive a little more leeway at Eden Park, but questions still need to be asked.

How many times do we need to have it spelled out that great - or even halfway decent - players don't necessarily make successful coaches, and that they should always be made to serve a full apprenticeship?

At least that way the folk who end up in charge of our province's sporting icons would need to have a proven track-record in obtaining results, and would have already learned valuable lessons from their experience at lower levels.

I mean fast-track, sure. But fast-track to where? At this point of Auckland's rapidly disintegrating NPC campaign, it seems like the slippery slope to complete and utter ignominy, and only a year after winning the championship at that.

It's not as if there haven't been a few well-documented cases of sports officials being promoted and fast-tracked until they ultimately reached their level of incompetence.

It happened with Jed Rowlands a few years back after Taranaki had a particularly strong NPC season, and Otago now seem to be facing similar problems after unsuccessful alliances with Greg Cooper and then Wayne Graham.

Cricket also learned some lessons from the issue, most notably in the early 1980s after fast-tracking former Canterbury batsman Keith Thomson into an umpire's role - and then fast-tracking him straight back out.

Thomson apparently made a name for himself for all the wrong reasons, with players complaining that he was having constant conversations with bowlers and non-striking batsmen, and proving more of a distraction than an aid.

Even the country's most famous batsman, Bert Sutcliffe, was viewed as an ordinary coach, and someone who found it difficult to impart the lessons he'd learned in an international career spanning 19 years.

No one is suggesting that we have to go back to the amateur days when Laurie Mains slaved over his Southern club team at Bathgate Park, when John Hart dedicated himself to Waitemata, or when Grizz Wyllie earned his spurs in Christchurch club rugby.

But for Auckland to have employed a coaching trio of Lam, Shane Howarth and Frank Bunce - none of whom has any meaningful job experience - must rate as one the most careless administrative acts since Maori Television began wooing John Davy.

And when you consider the decision was made by the NPC holders and one of the biggest contributors to the All Blacks, it all just seems unnecessarily reckless.

It's not to say that Auckland shouldn't have been interested in Lam. But if they were going to take the plunge with a coach so thin on job experience, surely it would have been better teaming him up with someone more established - such as former All Black Bryan Williams.

Then again, maybe Wilde was also right all those years ago when he spoke of the pure and simple truth being rarely pure and never simple.

Lam would probably agree with that, at least.

High Point

A rare high point for tennis, when New Zealander Marina Erakovic teamed up with Dutch woman Michaella Krajicek to win the junior women's doubles title at the US Open.

Low Point

For the second time in successive tournaments, the ICC's Champions Trophy draw receives the nod for the most unattractive format in international sport. Six days between games, one loss and you're out ... yawn.