Halbergs need new award for global sports
Midway through an intense NBA season, Steven Adams probably doesn’t care about the Halberg Awards — but we should care more about his achievements.
As Chris Wood contemplates his best year yet in the English Premier League, he wouldn’t be pondering the events of last Thursday, but we should be wondering why he wasn’t part of the night.
The same goes for Michael Venus, who broke into the top 10 for men’s doubles last year, and will be hunting more grand slam success in 2020.
The Halberg Awards are stuck in a time warp and desperately need a revamp. This year passed without too much controversy, thankfully, unlike some previous editions (Brendon McCullum’s test triple century snub the best example).
But there is still an inflated obsession with winning — something, anything — no matter how niche the sport. Measuring success by medals or podium finishes is fine but there is so much more to excellence in sport and the Halbergs have consistently failed to capture that.
Look at Adams. He is playing at the top of a very large tree; there are at least 50,000 professional basketballers worldwide, and more than 100 countries have their own national league.
All those players want to make it to the NBA and our kid from Rotorua has. Not just that, but he has played more than 500 games and helped Oklahoma to the playoffs five times.
And he’s been a finalist at the Halberg Awards just once, in 2014.
Wood is another bemusing example. Football is the national sport of more than 100 countries, with an estimated 65,000 professional players.
The English Premier League is the apex and Wood is starring. Only nine players scored more Premier League goals than him last year.
But within the Halbergs bubble, it’s almost like he doesn’t exist.
It’s a ridiculous scenario, because comparisons are so difficult. How can you measure basketball, the second-most popular sport in the world, against netball, which might have 150 fully professional players?
The Halbergs have been obsessed with rowing, with 12 Supreme awards. But how can rowing, which isn't a national sport anywhere, be judged against football, the world’s No 1 sport?
It can’t. The only solution is a new category to recognise the success of Kiwis in truly global sports. How about a Best Achievement in a Global Sport award?
That would bring in Wood, and other footballers like Ryan Thomas and Abby Erceg. It would allow for Adams to be given due recognition, and other basketballers who might follow in his giant footsteps. It would mean Venus would be in contention for his fabulous French Open victory or Wimbledon final.
It could be named after Wynton Rufer, who had a remarkable football career mainly in Germany but was a Halberg finalist just once, in 1991. But while Rufer remains a celebrated figure in football circles in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, some of the Halberg winners from that period wouldn’t even be recognised in their corner dairy.