Henry can do no right
By MICHAEL LAWS
Sunday Star Times Sunday, 08 June 2008
Last night the All Blacks played their first test of 2008. I doubt that, in the history of New Zealand rugby, so many rugby supporters have actually supported the opposite team. For there is an insurrection under way in the rugby heartland that no onfield success will quell.
But then New Zealanders are an odd people. We're not really happy unless we're miserable.
We eschew colour in our dress and our outlook: we are our ancestors, brown or white.
Let's be honest, neither's antecedents were anything wonderful. The Maori got lost and have their civilisation carbon-dated by rats. And the Europeans were very much the fag-end of their generation: if they had been any good, they would have stayed at home.
We are a nation composed of the eject of others.
Maybe that's why we really don't like ourselves. After all, we've always looked elsewhere for inspiration and affirmation whether from the Home Country, Hawaiki or Hollywood. And it's still true Scott Dixon and the Conchords were nobody until they did something overseas. We are now obsequious in our deference.
So is that why Graham Henry is the most reviled man in New Zealand? He lost us the 2007 world cup our collective statement to the world and, short of winning the 2011 contest, he remains the OJ Simpson of the oval world to a good proportion of rugby fans. Their blame remains the guy took our best chance, blew it, and now we have neither the pity nor the compassion to forgive.
And let's make no mistake here: we are still bloody serious about our rugby. It remains the most tangible expression of our nationhood. Sure, Hillary climbed Everest and Jackson won an Oscar, but that's peripheral stuff. Our identity rises and falls on the backs of our All Blacks.
Then there is Robbie Deans. St Robbie. Always smiling like some village idiot who strayed too near the transformers. Who never says anything remotely inspirational or insightful and perhaps because of that, has been elevated to the pantheon. Again, it took the interest of another nation for him to be properly valued.
Yes, you could buy into the nonsense that he is the best coach ever, of any sport in any generation. Or you could be a tad more realistic and say that your dead great-aunt could have coached the Crusaders, such is their talent and esprit de corps.
None of this vaguely excuses, though, the sedition of this past week. It ostensibly began with a treasonous column by the New Zealand Herald's sports writer Chris Rattue, declaring that he would neither watch nor support the All Blacks while Graham Henry remained at the helm. It was the literary equivalent of booing John Hart's horse at the Addington raceway after the metro gnome had blown New Zealand's other best chance in 1999.
Of course, Rattue could have just been stirring. It is not that unusual for some columnists to take an antsy angle just to gee up their readers. (Fortunately, I am not one of those. My prose is measured and moderate and it is my mission to be optimistic and complimentary about the human condition.)
But the reaction to Rattue has been interesting. A sizeable chunk of the New Zealand sporting populaton agrees that the All Blacks versus Wallabies epic this year, which includes four tests, is actually a contest between Graham Henry and St Robbie, and only one of them has horns and a swishy tail.
Even television newsreaders are opining "Go Robbie" in much the same asinine way that Americans think they have found a black Kennedy in Barack Obama. Indeed that is the analogy the ABs are coached by George W and the Wallabies by the junior senator from Illinois.
This level of fan antipathy is not necessarily a unique thing in the history of New Zealand sport. Rugby has seen darker days and the Springbok Tour of 1981 was an instance. We have also had our coaching feuds John Hart versus Grizz Wyllie and John Hart versus Laurie Mains. But this is the first time, surely, where a coach's opprobrium has spilled over and affected support for an entire national team.
But then one might argue that this is the Henry way. He has an unfortunate demeanour with a half smile that suggests the questioner is a loon. His offsiders aren't from the Carnegie charm school either "Shag" Hansen a gruff Cantabrian and Wayne Smith exuding an unsettling evangelism about quite ordinary players. The three horsemen of the apocalypse Pestilence being detained somewhere in Albanian soccer.
In many ways, they are your typical All Black coaches. If they were fully rounded individuals, they would be doing something else, but this is sport. It has always been completely mad. Elevating a recreational pastime to the moral equivalent of war does addle one's sensibilities.
But that New Zealand's national sport is inciting so many to insurrection so insidious that we would rather the Wallabies won than our national representatives that is more than madness. That it is fanned by the rugby media is also bizarre.
But then these are many of the same sports journalists who declared that Henry must go in the wake of the Rugby World Cup thinking that he would. It did not enter their minds that his services would be retained. Now that he has been reappointed, they have nowhere else to go. Henry must start the 2008 international season as their villain.
So if the All Blacks do lose this year, it will not be because of bum refereeing decisions, players dropping their bundles or because many of our best players are off chasing skirt and the euro on the Riviera. It will be Henry's fault. Pure and simple. Except if they win. Then it will be despite the former headmaster's leadership.
For the first time in my life, I feel genuine pity for a guy earning 10 times the average salary. The man who can do no right.
