Arise, Sir Robbie
Arise, Sir Robbie!
The New Zealand Rugby Union has attracted its fair share of criticism over the years, so we should not begrudge it the plaudits for devising and then implementing a strategy that has been brilliantly successful.
The outcome of that strategy is there for all to see – nine straight wins against the Wallabies, the Bledisloe Cup in New Zealand hands for an eighth straight year, and the All Blacks encouraged by those successes to approach next year’s World Cup with justifiable confidence and the knowledge that one of their most dangerous rivals is firmly on the back foot.
While the results may be obvious, the strategy that produced them is not well understood, and nor should it be. Indeed, secrecy and subterfuge were the essential keys to success; but those who devised the scheme could never have foreseen that the secret could have been maintained for so long. It is only now, when the penny is about to drop, that the true story can be told.
That story began in the immediate aftermath of the terrible disappointment of New Zealand’s failure in the 2007 World Cup in France. Within a week of the end of that tournament, New Zealand’s rugby bosses held a crisis meeting in secret to see what could be rescued from the wreckage and what course could be followed to ensure the right result next time.
The first issue for resolution was coaching. The team led by Graham Henry was widely seen to have failed, and there was considerable pressure to move quickly to appoint a new coach. The call for a new appointment was of course greatly strengthened by the evident availability of a well-qualified replacement.
The strategists were initially tempted to make a clean break and start the 2011 World Cup campaign with a fresh coaching team. There was of course some reluctance to ditch Graham Henry and his colleagues, whose record – apart from the 2007 defeat to France – had been impressive. There was a strong belief that they might still deliver the World Cup victory that the country craved.
It was at this point, as they wrestled with the complexities of what to do next, that the outline of a daring plan was conceived. It is not clear who first had the idea – an idea so outrageous that it was at first dismissed out of hand.
But, as the rugby bosses thought more about the plight they were in, the conviction grew that something extraordinary was needed, and that there was a chance – a slim chance – that the more unthinkable the plan, the better the chance of success.
They realised that the first task would be to hoodwink the man whom many regard as the sharpest operator in rugby – the Australian rugby supremo, John O’Neill, the man who singlehandedly out-manoeuvred the NZRU and walked away with sole rights to the 2003 Rugby World Cup tournament. If they could suck him in to the plan, the rest would become so much easier.
What was needed, of course, was the right man for the job. And, as luck would have it, the answer was at hand. The very man whose credentials made him a real contender for the All Blacks coaching role, and whose candidature accordingly created a real dilemma for the NZRU, was the one person who might have a chance of pulling off the coup.
So, a top-level deputation was sent to Christchurch. They talked far into the night. There was, of course, an initial disbelief and outright rejection, then a reluctant consideration of the chances of success, and finally – in the early hours – a simple handshake. The deal was done.
The rest of course is history. The initial result – a Wallaby win – was agreed upon as the necessary confirmation that the deal would stick. The original expectation was that the plot would be uncovered after five or six Wallaby defeats. Nine All Black victories on the trot, and an unshakeable grip on the Bledisloe Cup, have exceeded all expectations.
But, it now seems inevitable that, with his keen eye for a conspiracy, Peter de Villiers will bust the plot wide open. And even John O’Neill’s credulity has its limits. By the time he is brought face to face with reality, however, the damage will be irretrievable – at least on any time line that culminates with next year’s World Cup.
Robbie Deans, finally unmasked, will return home a hero.
Bryan Gould
9 August 2010
The World’s Best
We know that the All Blacks have again struck top form when overseas rugby writers start to talk about “peaking too soon” and to mutter darkly about “choking” at World Cup time. It is almost as though they need to comfort themselves with the thought that, despite the evidence of their own eyes, the All Blacks cannot be as pre-eminent as their results and the manner of achieving them show that they are.
The comfort is of course illusory and the criticism is fatuous. The “choker” label is an undeserved slur. The All Blacks win a higher proportion of their international matches than any other international team in any sport, and they accordingly bear a heavier weight of expectation than anyone else, but even they win just three out of every four matches. On any given day, there are at least three or four teams who could beat the All Blacks. In any World Cup tournament therefore, the odds must be against the All Blacks (and even more in the case of other teams) winning seven matches in a row – and the nature of the competition is such that one loss in the latter stages is enough.
While the disappointments of successive World Cup campaigns are real enough, they reflect the capricious and unpredictable nature of a knock-out event rather than any mental frailty on the part of the All Blacks. This is, after all, a team that isn’t content to focus on one tournament every four years but is ready to defend its superb, century-long record every time it steps on the field. That record is not maintained and enhanced by a team of chokers, as we see again from the triumphs of the past two weeks.
But it is not just overseas that the All Blacks are at times written down. Even at home, it is apparently fashionable to suggest that the New Zealand public’s support for rugby and the All Blacks is not what it was, while other sports and other successes are lauded. It is almost as though the All Blacks’ amazing record has become old hat for media that are hungry for novelty.
Unscientific opinion polls are produced to show that “only” two-thirds of Kiwis support the All Blacks and – shock horror – one in ten “hate” rugby. It seems not to be realised that such a result, even if accurate, would demonstrate the centrality of rugby in New Zealand life, rather than the reverse. No one would “hate” a sport that mattered little or that made no impact.
But, as it happens, we have had the chance over recent weeks to make a fresh assessment of the merits of rugby and of our number-one world-rated team. The Football World Cup in South Africa has been followed by the opening matches of rugby’s Tri Nations – and we don’t need to belittle the skill required for football and the spirit shown by the All Whites to conclude that the two recent rugby tests have shown us an altogether superior spectacle.
Television coverage of the World Cup revealed that football is a game in which it is relatively hard to score, the ball gets moved up and down the field for long periods while little happens, the chances of a draw are very high and teams are often tempted to play for that inherently unsatisfactory result, and goals often come out of the blue with little build-up to stir the blood. The appeal of football as a spectator sport depends greatly on the atmosphere created and passion shown at big matches by supporters who flock to the grounds and who largely entertain themselves.
Rugby at its best (and I mean union rather than league – union is a more varied, complex, demanding and therefore interesting proposition than that offered by the staccato and relatively simple rhythms of league) provides by contrast a stirring contest requiring not just the skilled feet or head of the individual footballer, but the collective skills, speed, strength and courage of the whole athlete, and the whole team. A rugby try almost invariably comes as the culmination of a passage of play that raises excitement and heightens expectation. There is little in sport to compare with the speeding winger heading for the corner, or the interplay and sleight of hand of a smoothly functioning back line, or the expenditure of every last ounce of effort and resolve as a forward pack masses to drive across the line.
And we in New Zealand have an added bonus when we watch a top rugby match. No other team in world rugby can match the pace, power, precision and sheer elan shown by the All Blacks as they once again emerged victorious from renewed clashes with their greatest rivals. Surely we should savour and celebrate as we watch the world’s best in the knowledge that it is our team – our All Blacks – that have again maintained their century-old pre-eminence?
Bryan Gould
19 July 2010
Remembering The Holocaust
This is the text of a speech delivered by Bryan Gould in the Grand Hall, NZ Parliament Buildings, to mark the UN Day of Holocaust Remembrance on 27 January.
Sixty five years after the defeat of the Nazi regime, we mark again today the United Nations Day of Holocaust Remembrance. The passage of time has inevitably reduced the numbers of Holocaust survivors. And, some may say, in a world that has sadly become enured to other atrocities – the killing fields of Cambodia, the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia – the Holocaust is gradually losing its power to shock.
I beg to differ. The Holocaust must be and will be remembered because it is unique in the annals of man’s inhumanity to man.
It is not just the scale and intensity of the savagery that was inflicted, though they were both unprecedented. There were so many other aspects of the Holocaust that demand that we should fully learn the lessons it should teach us.
It was, first, a deliberate and planned expression of that most ancient and pervasive of all racial prejudices – anti-semitism. This was no careless paroxysm of sudden anger against a briefly vulnerable minority; it was the central and structured element of a hateful ideology that used anti-semitism as both an end in itself and as the means to unite a deluded people in the pursuit of other goals.
Furthermore, this was state-directed savagery. This was not the work of a small group of criminals pursuing their goals while the state turned a blind eye. This was the state itself, directing and demanding that the crimes should be carried out in its name.
Nor was this a case of the state suddenly being taken over by a gang of desperadoes, who then perverted the state’s powers to serve their own ends. This was the legitimate, elected government of one of the world’s most advanced nations. The German people, knowing what Hitler intended, nevertheless voted him into power. It was a government that remained in power for twelve years. And this in a country which had a strong claim to being at the heart of European culture and civilisation.
No one could mistake what Hitler intended. His targets did not choose themselves by becoming criminals or outlaws. They did not hold up their hands by acting or conspiring as a group against the regime. They had, through their mere existence, been in Hitler’s sights from a long way back. They were targets because they shared one characteristic and one only – they were Jewish. Women, children, the elderly, the sick, all qualified so long as they met that one single criterion. That was all that was needed to destroy their homes, shatter their families, and send them to the gas chambers.
What remains astonishing, even at this distance and even in a modern world that is sadly harder to shock, is the sheer indifference to human feeling and suffering that those responsible for the Holocaust demonstrated. It was the denial of humanity to the victims that made it possible for the perpetrators to do what they did.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and as the horror of the Holocaust became fully apparent, there was a feeling that what had been revealed was a deep flaw in the German character – something specific to the country that had allowed Nazism to flourish. But gradually the understanding developed that, if it could happen in Germany, it could happen anywhere.
When the Allies convened after the war to set up the United Nations, they were determined to ensure that those lessons should be learned. New Zealand was one of those architects of the post-War world. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation was the first UN Agency to be set up.
In 1946, when UNESCO’s Constitution came into force, New Zealand was the second country to step forward to sign it. We did so, in the aftermath of that tragic conflict and with the horror of the Holocaust fresh in our minds, so that the instinct for peace and for a common humanity should take hold in the minds of new generations. So, with other founder members, we signed up for a future built on the life of the mind and the heart and the spirit – on education, culture, the sciences, and the free exchange of information and ideas. We saw these as the building blocks for a world that would strive to avoid such dreadful events in the future. And that is why the National Commission for UNESCO, which I have the honour to chair, will gladly play its part in today’s ceremony to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day – to help ensure that we will never forget.
Bryan Gould
23 January 2010
The All Blacks – Just Another Team?
The All Whites’ success reminds us yet again of the remarkable sporting record achieved by this tiny country which has for much of its short life been only about half as big – in population terms – as the City of Birmingham. When we add to the All Whites’ exploits the success enjoyed over the years by our teams in rugby league, softball, hockey, and cricket and the individual triumphs in athletics, rowing, cycling, equestrian events – the list is endless – we can see how much we punch above our weight in international terms.
Yet none of this – remarkable as it is – remotely approaches our record of achievement in a sport which is truly international and which could be regarded as one of the three or four most important team games in world sport. The All Blacks, who have again this week resumed their number one world ranking, have dominated the sport of rugby union for more than a century.
No other country gets even close. Over the whole history of rugby as an international sport, the All Blacks’ record is incomparable. This is not to say that the All Blacks always win, or are not at times overshadowed briefly by others. But year-in year-out, the All Blacks have established a statistical record that makes them the “winningest” national team not only in rugby but in any international sport.
Look at the figures. The All Blacks have over more than a century achieved a winning percentage in all their international matches of 74%. The next best percentage among major rugby nations is South Africa’s, at 63%, with the French, English and the Australians coming next at 55%, 53% and 52% respectively. All of these competitors trailing in our wake have both populations and in most cases rugby player numbers much greater than ours.
What’s more, the All Blacks have a positive winning record against every other international team. Even after three successive defeats this year against the Springboks, our winning ratio against them is 42 to 33. The record against another proud rugby nation – Wales – is 22 to 3.
Nor do the statistics tell the whole story. The “aura” of the All Blacks (something debated in some quarters over recent days) means not only that they are the best-known and admired rugby team in the world – the one that others most want to play and beat – but they are probably the most famous national team in world sport. The haka, the black jersey, the silver fern, are potent symbols of sporting success. Whereas the rugby teams of other nations are usually referred to by their country’s name, the All Blacks have established their own powerful identity.
One consequence of this success is that the All Blacks are hugely important to New Zealand’s national identity. For millions of people around the world, the All Blacks are what they know best (or perhaps all they know) about New Zealand. Their perception of our country is formed by what they see and know of the All Blacks.
And who can doubt the significance of the All Blacks in the development of how we feel about ourselves as a nation? Together with our experience on the battlefields of two world wars, nothing has contributed more to our sense of nationhood than our success on the world’s rugby fields. It is no accident that rugby is a game that requires great individual skills, courage, strength and resilience but also requires the individual to subordinate his or her interests to those of the team – exactly the qualities required to build our small nation from the earliest days.
And what a happy miracle that the qualities required were not only those demanded of the earliest settlers but were also displayed in abundance by the tangata whenua. Rugby asked our two founding cultures to make common cause by bringing to their enjoyment of the game an arena where they could also learn mutual respect. Rugby has done much to bring our society together.
Given the success of rugby and its importance to New Zealand, how surprising it is to find, at least in some quarters, that in recent times rugby is denigrated, the All Blacks diminished. Yes, of course, we should celebrate sporting success in other arenas, but we can surely do so without demeaning our achievements in rugby. It is almost as though some journalists and commentators resent our rugby success, or (reflecting their profession’s constant quest for novelty) have grown bored with it. They seize upon the chance offered by success elsewhere to compare rugby unfavourably with the latest (usually transient) triumph.
The All Blacks, and rugby’s administrators, make their fair share of mistakes, and should not be immune from criticism for doing so. But do the carping (and sometimes sneering) critics realise what a national taonga they so carelessly demean? Do we have to do ourselves an unnecessary injury by thoughtlessly devaluing something we might appreciate fully only when we have lost it?
Bryan Gould
18 November 2009
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 20 November.
Bryan Gould Speaks to UNESCO
Speech to the UNESCO General Conference By the Chair of the New Zealand National Commission Mr Bryan Gould
Tena koutou katoa kua huihui mai nei i tenei ra.
(English translation: Greetings to all who have gathered here today).
Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen
In 1946, when UNESCO’s Constitution came into force, New Zealand was the second country to step forward to sign it. We did so, in the aftermath of a tragic conflict, so that the instinct for peace should take hold in the minds of new generations. So, with other founder members, we signed up for a future built on the life of the mind and the heart and the spirit – on education, culture, the sciences, and the free exchange of information and ideas.
Sixty three years later, New Zealand continues to support UNESCO’s goals. Both at home, in managing our own affairs, and in offering an example internationally and particularly in the Pacific sub-region, we try to demonstrate through our actions the value of UNESCO’s agenda for progress.
So, we are strong supporters of education for sustainable development and we have an active network of ASPnet schools committed to UNESCO’s values. In science, we focus on waiora, the Maori word for our sustainable fresh-water resources. The bicultural foundation of our country – Maori and pakeha – gives us a strong base to take advantage of the growing cultural diversity that enriches our society. And we continue to enjoy, and encourage others to emulate our commitment to, a free press and the free exchange of ideas.
What we seek is to lead by example, to cast new light on old problems, to think strategically, to change attitudes, to open minds, to know and understand more of ourselves and of others.
We like to think that New Zealand lives UNESCO’s ideals. We do so at what is another critical moment in the world’s affairs. The global recession may not be a disaster on quite the scale of the Second World War, but it should lead us nevertheless to re-affirm the great value and importance of what UNESCO stands for. The recession, after all, was the end result of a doctrine that said that all that really mattered was the maximisation of profits for the masters of the global economy.
We now know that we cannot entrust human progress to the tender care of the bottom line. That way lies not just economic crisis, but ecological degradation, social disintegration, and international conflict. Man is not just an economic animal. The lessons of the recession should teach us that the way forward lies – not with ever faster and less responsible consumption of material things by a small fraction of the world’s population – but with learning more about and responding better to our relationships with each other and with our planet.
A General Conference is inevitably concerned with budgets, elections, resolutions, organisational structures and processes. But we must never lose sight of UNESCO’s true purposes, and each of our individual decisions should be judged according to whether it advances or hinders the achievement of those goals. So, New Zealand, from our vantage-point in the Pacific sub-region – the sub-region most distant from Paris and covering the greatest number of countries and the largest geographical area, but a sub-region challenged not only by immediate dangers of which last week’s tsunami is a sad and destructive example, but also by longer-term threats such as climate change – has naturally been a consistent advocate for decentralisation. We welcome the report of the second task force review. But modalities are less important than people. We continue to be concerned at the damaging delays in recruiting professional staff to the UNESCO Office for the Pacific in Apia. There is no point in changing the structure if we cannot commit the resources to make it work. Similarly, we are concerned about the performance indicators proposed in the draft 35C/5. We are not convinced that these largely quantitative performance indicators will provide a meaningful assessment of the Organisation’s effectiveness. They may be easily measured but they tell us little about our real achievements; at worst, their adoption could lead to a diversionary goal displacement. We strongly encourage the Organisation to undertake further work on this issue. We continue to believe that working across sectors and themes is the way UNESCO should operate. The next Medium-Term Strategy UNESCO programme should, we believe, be organised around these intersectoral themes with a Secretariat that mirrors this structure. Two years ago, my predecessor delivered her speech to the General Conference while wearing a Maori cloak or korowai. I am similarly privileged today. The cloak that I wear has been gifted by the National Commission to UNESCO as a taonga or cultural treasure. It is a work reflecting the great skill of a traditional weaver who has brought together a range of materials to produce something of significance, value and beauty. It is, we like to think, a suitable metaphor for the role that UNESCO should and must play in tomorrow’s world.No reira, tena koutou katoa.(English translation: In conclusion, greetings to you all).