Tim Finn – I See Red

Interesting. After the world cup loss a poll was held where about 80% of the people polled said that Graham Henry deserved to keep his job. Today a poll on Stuff indicated that had dropped to about 40%, so what happened?

As I was overseas while the roots of this were taking hold, I didn’t get to be caught up in the flow. So I feel a bit more of an outsiders point of view – the media started out like everyone else: the referee was useless. And they were right. The French played hard but they played illegally, and they were right – hell, even the French public acknowledge that fact. You cannot ignore an independant FRENCH review of the game saying the French should have been penalised around 24 times, even the IRB conceded that several penalties were ignored.

And let’s not all focus on just that forward pass. Leon McDonald’s yellow card was unjustifiable and while he was off the French took advantage of the hole in the defences for a try – even then it was after some gruelling defence against dozens of powerful All Blacks phases. The referee regularly said “I don’t know” – well there’s a video ref for a reason you numbskull, and the referee singled out Richie McCaw from the opening whistle. This forced Richie to play a bit more reserved than usual so as not to get sent off. Putting the All Blacks at a disadvantage against an inspired French side sounds a little like a conspiracy doesn’t it?

But over the last few weeks some hard questions have been asked, and each of them were answerable. Questions like “Why did the reconditioning and rotation policy fail?” well, it didn’t, as it was only a very very MINOR variable in the whole affair. In fact, the only question that has been asked that still remains open for me is “Why was Doug Howlett not in the line up?” – sure, Dougie was not the obvious choice for the match, but he would have been extremely useful on the bench for the second half as he’s consistent, hungry for results and almost always leads to exciting rugby and above all lots of tries.

The other thing I’ve noticed over the last few weeks has been the media rhetoric changing from blamepointing at the referee’s incompetence to blamepointing at the coach, Graham Henry. There have been words used like “now Henry must defend the indefensible.” Excuse me? This from the same rag that a month ago was finding plenty of defensible material? Then the Robbie Deans drumbeat started up: Robbie Deans, Robbie Deans, Robbie Deans… Lest we forget that Robbie Deans was also part of a previous failed world cup attempt. “Oh, but he’s got better as a coach and learnt from his mistakes!” Ummm and Henry is suddenly incapable of learning from his mistakes too?

The other argument that “well, history says that if you don’t bring home the world cup then you lose your job” is just silly. We had a history of using lead in a lot of our products, and asbestos too. Should we have kept using those for the sake of history? I mean.. I’m just saying… Following tradition blindly for tradition’s sake is just shortsighted.

I thought my fellow New Zealanders had grown up, and were above kneejerk idiocy. Instead, I feel I’m surrounded by people who, much like the poms, did not watch the same game that I did and are now overanalysing it. Graham Henry is not solely to blame, he should not lose his job because an incompetent referee failed to do his properly, he should not lose his job because the team failed to work as a unit, and he should not lose his job because a population that are following a sensationalist media’s Robbie-Deans-drumbeat like sheep say so. Judging him on his merits and his track record, Graham Henry should keep his job, the All Blacks should stay the course, and some fundamental changes to the sport should be argued by the NZRFU to the IRB:

1) The coach of a team should be able to object to a call made by a referee, as is the case in many other sports
2) The video referee should be able to overrule and/or guide the referee within a particular timeframe (eg 30 seconds)
3) A much fairer world cup format based around team points gained over the course of the tournament

Wake up, New Zealand, and pull your heads out.