Hail to the Chief
Life on the road with David Leggat, PLUS: Small redemptions for our team sports.
One of the most recognisable names in New Zealand sports journalism died last week.
Hopefully by now you’ve read the lovely tributes to David Leggat from his colleagues and great friends Chris Rattue and Suzanne McFadden.
They had the pleasure of knowing David - mostly known as Leggo and very occasionally as Chief Sitting Bull - for the bulk of their working lives.
I am not going to try to sum up his career or his considerable strengths. They’ve done that beautifully, but I will say that although he had a long and fruitful stint at the New Zealand Herald, I always felt the New Zealand Press Association was Leggo’s true calling, his métier.
When you’re faced with a day when you need one journo to write four 450-word stories on anything from Manawatu v Southland in the NPC, to a preview of the upcoming national swimming champs at Henderson, to a round-up of the overnight fortunes of New Zealand’s golfers, before finishing with a measured follow-up to a “beat up” (one of his favorite terms to describe stories written by anybody else) in the morning’s Sunday papers, then Leggo was your man.
He’d do it loudly and super efficiently - and still have time for a visit to Hollywood Bakery.
Yes, Leggo loved food. His range was impressive, his capacity legendary. He could have been Auckland’s greatest restaurant reviewer… if all you wanted to know was how big the portions were.
It’s part of what made Leggo the best “tourist”1 I’ve covered an event with.
We’ve done a few shifts together. There were Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and Delhi; Olympics in Athens (we were on different teams), Beijing and London; Rugby World Cups both here and in France; cricket up and down the country. I’ve spent more time away from home with Leggo than any human bar my wife.
My last day touring with him was in Melbourne, 2015, in the aftermath of the Black Caps’ Cricket World Cup final loss against Australia. Follow-up pieces filed, we soaked up the sun in a biergarten on the South Bank. Any lingering disappointment he felt at New Zealand’s callow performance was offset by the pork knuckle that arrived on his plate.
They probably sound fantastic, those trips. They are, but you work hard, especially at the Olympics, which tend to be 18-hour days. You sleep where and when you can. Leggo was a master of getting “bobos” (rhyming slang: sleep = Little Bo Peep) on all forms of motorised transport.
He was also the master of keeping you sane. He’d make sure that every few days the team would meet for a “graze”, where he’d hold court with stories from his days as a cadet at The Press, or as NZPA’s man in London, or trying to field in the slips for Christchurch High School Old Boys after a night out while Dayle Hadlee looked disapprovingly on.
I’d heard them all many times and never tired of them. They never really came with a pay-off line, but it didn’t matter. The journey was the fun part, not the destination.
We argued all the time. It was how we rolled. I just loved talking with the bloke and if our shared language was petty disputes about modern trends in cricket, then I was fine with that. I did wonder how others viewed it, however, when I heard one of our younger colleagues say: “Oh look, mum and dad are fighting again.”
It was never about anything consequential, though he was genuinely pissed off with me once.
He was sports editing the print section of the next morning’s paper and I was still there when he left the office that evening. I saw the back page proof when I was leaving and, deciding to have a bit of fun, put a big post-it note on it and wrote: “David, can you please explain to me why we are leading with this rubbish,” and put the editor’s name and number under it.
I knew I was on safe ground because I always got in before Leggo in the mornings. I envisaged seeing him get to his desk, frown, sigh and then just before he rang the editor (and he would because he was a big believer in newsroom hierarchies) I’d let him in on my hilarious joke.
Except he went back to the office later that night. Fair to say the editor had no idea why Leggo was ringing him at home to explain his decision-making process, and also fair to say that once they cleared up the confusion neither of them were in doubt about the perpetrator.
As I read Chris’s tribute yesterday, it made me realise how much I miss winding him up. How much I miss his rejoinders, his stories and even his endless collection of polo shirts.
If we could debate just one more time about whether batters should put a higher price on their wicket as the lunch break approached, I might even concede that he was right. That would really throw him.
Rest easy, Chief.
Until this morning it was shaping as a brutally bad weekend for our team sports.
The All Blacks were outclassed and Ian Foster’s claim it was their most improved performance was widely derided. I’m not sure many are buying the aerial-safety-concerns deflection either if the comments under this story are an indication.
The Silver Ferns were smashed by Jamaica($) in their Commonwealth Games semifinal.
The Black Sticks women were pipped in their Commonwealth Games semifinal against England. The Black Sticks men faced the indignity of a playoff for fifth.
The Warriors were so, so, so bad against Souths, to the point where you felt embarrassed for stand-in coach Stacey Jones as the Rabbitohs continued to waltz over the line by doing nothing more than catching the ball.
The White Ferns were competitive but beaten by Australia in their Commonwealth Games semifinal.
When you rewind back to the first week at Birmingham and recall the sevens, do you sense a theme developing?
There was a measure of small redemption overnight, though, with the Silver and White Ferns both defeating England for a pair of thirds. While it’s hard to get too excited by Commonwealth bronze in sports where there are a limited number of competitive teams, this was an important result in particular for new coach Ben Sawyer and the White Ferns.
He’d have an insight now into just how over-reliant the team has become on a handful of players. Captain Sophie Devine (177 runs at 44.25; six wickets at 14.83) led the way.
There will be some soul-searching at Hockey NZ after the Black Sticks failed to medal.
It doesn’t really matter anyway, we’re clearly a nation that operates best on wheels. Our cyclists were the stars of the Games, with Aaron Gate brilliantly adding to his gold-medal haul in the road race against a strong field. Four golds, the last the one he’ll remember most vividly.
“I was literally on the razor edge of getting to the line,” he told Sky TV, saying he’d been cramping up in the final three laps.
Shane van Gisbergen is making a mockery of the Supercars season, the great Scotts Dixon and McLaughlin finished one-two in the latest IndyCar race, and Liam Lawson is on the cusp of an F1 drive.
THIS WEEK
No newsletter tomorrow, but there will be an edition on Wednesday afternoon to mark the return of The BYC.
Anybody who has ever covered sports overseas as part of team coverage is lumped into one of two categories: “A good tourist” or “not a great tourist” depending on your capacity to combine hard work and sociability. Leggo had his own category - he was “the ultimate tourist”.