Comms 101: How not to react to a loss

PLUS: A small (but frightfully important) favour to ask of readers

“Don’t worry Sam, I’ll clear all this up tomorrow.” Photo / Getty Images

It has been painful yet instructive watching the slow-moving train crash that is New Zealand Rugby’s once-carefully engineered communications strategy.

The All Blacks lost on Saturday night, you might have heard about it. It was a crushing blow to any pretence that they were still a great team just going through a rough patch.

Since that loss, the ABs’ comms team has done the equivalent of making sure they are constantly tackled behind the off-field gain line.

It’s been an object lesson in not what to do.

The wrongs and further wrongs of cancelling the Sunday morning press call (without Foster’s input, apparently) have been discussed, mocked and lanced wonderfully well elsewhere.

Fresh from [Jo] Malcolm’s remarkable and poorly-constructed LinkedIn revelation that “it was my decision, not Ian Fosters, not to front” for the traditional post-test coach’s press conference on Sunday, it is believed Malcolm has cited some general bad juju in the marketplace and an inability to stop the media from writing really, really, really bad stuff about the All Blacks and New Zealand Rugby as the final straw that led her to cancel the much-anticipated [Springboks v NZ] match.

The Bounce is tempted to add paraffin to the bonfire because the tenor of the referenced LinkedIn post is so damned obnoxious. The following line being the clearest indication of the contempt NZR holds for those who give the national sport thousands upon thousands more column inches, air and screen time than any other sport here.

“I felt he needed a day or so to work out what he wanted to say and not just be a punching bag for the media, who lets [sic] be clear, wanted blood. Let’s not pretend there was a higher purpose here.¹” 

Wow, just wow!

Adding to the pile-on could be fun and probably warranted, but instead it would be more constructive to offer solutions.

My first would be to burn it down and start again.

When starting again, understand these two truths as your bedrock:

• The media are there to cover New Zealand Rugby, not serve it;

• If your default position is that the collective media is an adversary, do not then act hurt when the relationship becomes adversarial.

My biggest single piece of advice would be to spend an away day with the summer cousins and take notes.

New Zealand Cricket has hit depths far lower than rugby. Circa 2012-13, the “Black Caps” brand was toxic. The results were poor, the players were entitled, the captaincy was a topic of speculation, the new coach was unpopular and every series seemed to bring a new calamity.

(They’d also just come through Justin Vaughan, CEO, era. In many ways he is reminiscent of Mark Robinson. Both had represented their country at the sport they ended up leading, both were intellectual, driven, confident and competent individuals - and both struggle/d to communicate with the public in a relatable way.) 

Where NZR still throws up walls whenever times are tough, NZC set about dismantling them. They were cognisant of the fact that sports departments in newsrooms around the country were being hollowed out and took steps to make the lives of cricket reporters easier. If they felt that cricket was being under-covered, they would set about trying to offer help, like this WhatsApp excerpt received when it was noted there was not a single New Zealand cricket story on the NZH sports homepage in the middle of the 2020-21 summer.

They never tried to influence the tone of the coverage, not overtly anyway.

Over the past 25-odd years I’ve written some ill-informed hot takes on cricket. I’ve written decent takes that I’ve butchered by stretching the point too far, and some columns that have dwelled too long on individual failings.

Not once in the past 10 years, not that I can recall anyway, has anybody at NZC contacted me or my editors to criticise or even point out those misjudgements. They even seem grateful for the bad stuff under the no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity communications clause.

Rugby has a different attitude and it’s embedded deep into their psyche. They actually have people send emails to editors bitching about stories. They believe the media is out to get them and that any criticism is an example of playing the man not the ball .

The subtext of that is that rugby reporters should bow down and appreciate just how lucky they are that they get to cover the greatest team the world has ever known.

And in all honesty, many do.

Compared, say, to the way the English cover football or Australians cover league, New Zealand’s coverage of rugby is obsequious. But if you ask a Steve Tew, a Grant Fox or a thousand others of that ilk who have come before or after them about the reams of glowing testimony rugby gets, they’ll instead remember a line Chris Rattue wrote about someone that was really mean.

Their post-match performance was a crystallisation of that bull-headed angst. Instead of fronting up - now there’s a good rugby term - and showing perhaps even a hint of vulnerability, they expected the worst, so further muddied the waters by shielding the coach and instead issuing a mealy statement from the CEO.

Imagine how much more powerful the imagery could have been, and how much shorter the story cycle would have been, if Foster and Robinson had appeared together on Sunday; if Foster had acknowledged the poor results and said how determined he was to put them right; if Robinson had reminded the media that Foster was contracted through to the end of the World Cup and while he and NZR were concerned about the results, their primary focus was to determine what resources the coaches needed to put it right.

Instead it’s Wednesday evening, I’m still (loosely) writing about a poor test and I have no idea what NZR is doing with the coaching staff ahead of the mini-tour to South Africa.

Neither, it seems, does anyone else.

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Are reports of ODI’s death exaggerated?

Ben Stokes is bailing out, Kane Williamson can barely be bothered playing it any more. South Africa are not even getting on the plane to Australia. Can anybody be bothered with one-day cricket now?

Also, it wasn’t so long ago that we were outwardly pondering whether the Black Caps needed a new voice following the compelling 0-3 failure against England. That seems quaint by comparison with our winter sport.

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NOTE TO READERS

Since starting this newsletter on September 6 last year with a personal essay as to why I was, well, starting The Bounce, I have attempted to cover sports in a way you won’t find elsewhere. If I’m doing this right, then you will find a little something in each email that you might not have thought of, even if it’s just me pointing you in the direction of somebody else’s wit and wisdom.

I love putting The Bounce together. Technically speaking it’s work, but most days it doesn’t feel like it. After a Black Caps test, for example, I might self-audit and realise I’ve spent more hours watching, reading and writing about the test than is healthy, but none of it feels wasted (except, maybe, that second test against South Africa last summer - what a shocker that was, thanks guys!).

I still get a childlike buzz every time my email inbox dings and I have a new subscriber. There have been a lot of them over the past couple of weeks  - welcome one and all! - which has been exciting.

That’s why I’m pushing this note out now, because I’m really not sure why there’s been a sudden splurge and one of the reasons for that is because I’m really bad at spreading the word - I’m close to social-media phobic - and telling The Bounce’s story.

That’s where I could use your help.

If you like what drops into your inbox three or four and sometimes even five(!) times per week, please help me spread the word. You can do this by hitting the “share” button and posting it to your soshmed channels, but even more important is just telling friends, family or colleagues you think might be interested about it.

I know times are tough and when people are having to take loans to fill the car the call on the discretionary dollar is tight.

To that end, I’m relaxed if people remain on the free subscription plan. At this stage, the majority of my newsletters are free for that reason. That might change with time, but my sense is that people who can afford to pay will eventually do so if they feel The Bounce offers value. 

In the meantime, my goal for the next six months is to continue to grow the base. I’ll get over my social-media fear, but you can also help give this a nudge.

Thanks for reading, thanks for the intelligent feedback and thanks for the support,

Cheers,

Dylan Cleaver

1. I have never met any rugby reporter who has expressed a personal dislike of Foster. He is a thoroughly decent person. There are many who do not believe he is up to the job of being the head coach of a struggling All Black side, but the idea rugby reporters are after “blood” is pure paranoia.