Rugby bosses fail in times of emergency
OPINION: NEW Zealand rugby has had a habit of shooting itself in the foot for decades.
Offending women? In the 1970s NZRU chairman Jack Sullivan smacked away the hand of a female reporter holding a tape recorder because he didn’t like her question.
Offending liberal thinking? In the 1980s there was the belief that rugby contact with South Africa wouldn’t, as it did, cut junior numbers at some Auckland rugby clubs by two-thirds.
Treating players like dirt? Instead of trying to help him, they secretly banned a 1960s All Black, Ron Rangi, who was struggling with alcohol issues.
Rugby once had such a staggeringly strong grip on the country it got away with grovelling to apartheid-era South Africa, sidelining women, homophobia, and arrogance towards the media, and, by extension, the public.
They got away with it because, if you were a Kiwi in the 1960s, ’ 70s and ’ 80s you came from a society where rugby was a religion, and rarely questioned.
Yet the seeds of dissent were sown then. Growing up in a small country town, Waihi, as a reasonably big and fit, if very moderately talented, kid, I didn’t question the fact that during my five years at high school the only winter sport available was rugby. I loved it, and I’ve been a rugby tragic ever since.
It was years before I began to think how lonely and alienated a boy who didn’t play the game might have felt.
Today, despite huge affection for the All Blacks and sellout test matches, there’s also a substantial group of New Zealanders whose stance on the game ranges from indifference to repugnance.
If that comes as a surprise to rugby’s leaders, it shouldn’t. As far back as 1986 future politician Sue Kedgley produced a huge rating television documentary A Little Bit Tough in which a founder of a group called Women Against Rugby expressed her disgust with the game, saying: ‘‘The only role women can play in rugby is to bring along the drinks and eats, to wash the men’s rugby gear, and to stand on the sideline and hold the men’s false teeth.’’
I thought the closeted environment among our rugby leaders, one I observed at first-hand in the past, had changed, and in many ways it has.
Today’s officials have become much better at caring for the players. Look at the inclusive nature of the current All Blacks team. Look at the support offered to numerous players like George Moala to deal with alcohol and violence issues.
But where it turns to crap is GETTY IMAGES when the men in charge have to engage with wider social issues, and people outside the rugby cocoon.
We’ve seen tone-deaf, appallingly bad crisis management in recent weeks.
Startlingly the first instincts of the game’s leaders, who, contrary to recent evidence, are actually intelligent men, when faced with a scandal have unfailingly been dumb.
When the Chiefs’ stripper fiasco began their CEO Andrew Flexman slagged the woman involved by saying ‘‘her standing in the community is not beyond reproach’’.
The only rugby leader whose reflex reaction was right and proper was All Blacks coach Steve Hansen who said, quite correctly, that Mad Mondays should be ‘‘kicked to touch’’.
When New Zealand Rugby organised an investigation into the stripper debacle they used a staffer, and didn’t release his name.
When four young men and women were brutally assaulted by a rugby player, Losi Filipo, NZR’s chief executive Steve Tew didn’t immediately make an apology to the people he hurt.
When Wellington Rugby CEO Steve Rogers was quizzed about Filipo he played the ‘‘see no evil, hear no evil’’ card claiming they had only ‘‘generic information’’ about his case. And then backed Filipo until he didn’t back him, and accepted his offer to quit his contract.
The right things were eventually done. Flexman apologised. NZR will talk with women’s advocate Louise Nicholas. Phone calls to apologise were made to Filipo’s victims.
Maybe, and, judging by recent history, it’s only a maybe, lessons will have actually been learned.
Rugby leaders should know now that if outsiders are harmed, treat them decently, the way you’d treat your rugby family.
Only then, after you’ve genuinely tried to make amends with the victims, make sure you do what you can for someone like Losi Filipo, who, despite his appalling behaviour, is, after all, an 18-year-old at huge risk of being thrown on life’s scrapheap.