Man quits job
The Bounce is rudely shaken from its post-Olympic reverie, PLUS: The SJ farewell tour hits home in The Week That Was.
So there I was yesterday, patting myself on the back for choosing this week to catch up on admin and hundreds of unread emails, when some unexpected sports news hit out of nowhere.
THE ALL BLACKS HAVE BEEN ROCKED(!) BY A SHOCK(!) DEPARTURE.
It wasn’t meant to be this way.
The Olympics had run its course with few controversies or recriminations.
The Warriors season was folding in on itself in a very there-is-always-next-year kind of way.
The cricket season was making those first few awkward attempts at breaking free of its winter cocoon.
The All Blacks were basking in the first signature performance (the first half at least) of the Scott Robertson era…
… when the reverie was rudely interrupted by the sound of the stylus scratching across the vinyl.
Or, to put it another way, by the sound of the door slamming shut behind former All Blacks assistant coach Leon MacDonald.
“It wasn’t meant to start out this way but this is where we’ve got to. Just over a period of time coaching together we feel like it hasn’t quite clicked.”
Robertson said he did not “want to go into detail’’ around the differences and stressed MacDonald had ”worked really hard’’ but the pair “haven’t lined up where we need to on the rugby side of it”.
Pressed further, he said it was “just a little bit of philosophy on rugby, how it’s played. It just didn’t quite click in different aspects.”
You have not had cause to read this from me very often but credit where it’s due, NZ Rugby did a decent job of managing potential fallout from the split.
This was no your-Dad-and-I-still-love-each-other-but-we’ve-grown-apart soft-soaping of a divorce. Nope, this was telling it to the kids straight: all we do is argue and can’t bear to be in the same room together.
Over at the Herald, Gregor Paul reckons we might have missed the signs ($), from circa 2017-18 when the Robertson-MacDonald partnership was successful but short-lived at the Crusaders.
The relationship between MacDonald and head coach Scott Robertson always felt like it had a fragility to it and limited potential to go the distance through to the World Cup.
There was a bit of baggage in their history, a little uncertainty about whether they were professionally aligned and personally compatible given the way MacDonald prematurely departed the Crusaders back in 2017 to unexpectedly pop up not so long after at the Blues.
Fair-ish point, although many things seem to have a “fragility” to them after they’ve broken.
At Radio NZ, Jamie Wall hints that ambition and the fact he wasn’t officially Robertson’s 2IC might have led to such a hasty retreat.
Another way of reading between the lines is that perhaps it is because MacDonald did not quite end up with the official right-hand-man role. The one that Steve Hansen had next to Sir Graham Henry and the one Ian Foster had next to Hansen[. It] is something that Robertson may well be using this season as an audition for.
Given MacDonald had been on Robertsons coaching ticket for a long time now, it would not be a surprise to find out that simply being treated like everyone else (or maybe being leapfrogged already in the pecking order) came as a bit of a shock.
It’s plausible, I guess.
The All Blacks of 2024 do read and sound like a Crusaders Greatest Hits remix, with the other coaches playing the maracas and dancing at the side of the stage while the core trio of Robertson (singer), Jason Ryan (lead guitar) and Scott Hansen (bass) turn their amps up, Spinal Tap-style, to 11.
Throw in skipper Scott Barrett (rhythm guitar) and newly appointed comms manager Juliet Calder (keyboard), and Razor is only a Sam Whitelock (drums) comeback from getting his favourite line-up back together.
Without hearing from MacDonald it’s all speculation but it would not surprise if he already knew that no matter what songs he brought to the studio, they were going to be rejected, all while his clipboard gently wept1.
Enough.
Yes, it’s a surprise how early the split happened but the corporate world these days prefers a fast-fail to the slow, review-driven split that we saw with the likes of Brad Mooar and John Plumtree.
The show, which moves to South Africa this week, must go on.
The Bounce is proud to have K3 Legal on board as a partner for 2024. Click on the link to learn more about their legal services.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
This first item probably belongs in the Weekend That Will Be, but Shaun Johnson deserves a higher placing so here he is on the day of his final NRL match at his spiritual Mt Smart home.
I’ve heard it mentioned more than once, and possibly even in the Bounce’s always whip-smart comments section, that Johnson leaves a complicated legacy. I hope I’m not being a contrarian for the sake of it, but I tend to view his career in very simple terms: when he was fully fit, he was one of the most exciting halfbacks to ever strap them on; when he was not, he was a decent, slightly-above-replacement-level No 7.
I never viewed him as an elite game manager. He had most of the traits needed to be one — an accurate long- and short-kicking game and lovely catch-and-pass hands — but at times he appeared to apply those skills by rote.
But man, when both legs and both shoulders allowed him to move freely and absorb contact, his running game made him a classic dual-threat attacker who could make defenders look silly. More than that, in full flight, he was just so much fun to watch. Stuff’s Mat Kermeen this week described him as the Prince of Penrose and as hard as it is to conjure up images of aristocracy in a corner of Auckland’s industrial triangle, Johnson had something about him.
The Johnson I want to remember is not the one who slogged through Achilles-heeled seasons, but the one who played with his head up and saw that the tiniest shafts of light between defenders could be turned into chasms with a step here or an acceleration there.
I won’t miss the football the Warriors played this season with Johnson at the helm — their attacking game turned into a debacle as the season progressed — but I will miss the player.
Radio NZ has put together a nice Memory Lane of 10 Johnson moments. That first one, where he sets up a match-winning try for Lewis Brown to help take the Warriors to the 2011 Grand Final is exactly what I’m talking about above.
You should be warned: opening that link will cost you at least half an hour out of your day.
NZ Warriors v Canterbury-Bankstown, Auckland, tonight 8pm, SS 4
Haven’t had time to fully digest the implications of this, but it is certainly not good news for contact sport.
In short, Zurich Insurance has decided to no longer include concussion injury claims under its active policy in high-contact professional sports.
From The Conversation:
What message does this decision send to the wider sporting community?
Concerns from players’ agents, football commentators and others suggest this decision could have far-reaching impacts, sounding alarm bells that professional players are now left with even fewer options for compensation and support if they are impacted by concussion…
Perhaps the most concerning voice of all comes from the insurance industry itself.
The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) submitted to the 2023 Senate Inquiry that, “the availability of insurance, particularly public liability insurance, is critical to ongoing sports participation at all levels”.
The ICA cautioned that for the vast majority of sporting clubs and organisations the “absence of the financial protection provided through insurance would mean they could no longer continue to operate”.
In sum, this means “no insurance, no sport”.
Granted, the workplace insurance landscape in New Zealand differs due to ACC, but you don’t have to scratch hard to get below the surface to find stories about concussion sufferers finding that Government agency close to impossible to deal with.
This is a story that is not going to go away and global sports organisations for contact sports are going to have to comprehensively deal with it sooner rather than later.
I’m not alone in finding the hypocrisy surrounding the Jannik Sinner drugs story troubling. This week the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) and Sinner’s management team revealed jointly that the 23 year old had been found to bear no fault or negligence for the presence of Clostebol in two anti-doping test samples taken in March.
Wait… what?! How did we get to this no-fault point before we even knew of the positive return?
From the Guardian:
For some, the lack of transparency throughout his case has been troubling...
Sinner has been a popular player on the tour but since the announcement, some players have publicly taken significant issue with this case and what they perceive as favouritism towards the No 1 player, particularly considering the lengthy provisional bans that other players have been subjected to before a resolution was found in their cases. It is a sentiment that was summed up by the world No 54 Roberto Carballés Baena in a comment on his Instagram story: “One more time. Different rules for different players.”
For context, Clostebol is considered a performance-enhancing steroid. It assists in building muscle and injury recovery and is the substance that baseball star Fernando Tatis Jr was suspended 80 games for taking.
For further context, this is how Sinner claimed the drug got in his system:
He argued that one member of his team purchased a spray that contained Clostebol in Italy, then gave it to another team member — a physiotherapist — who cut a finger. Sinner said the physiotherapist then gave him a massage, which transmitted the substance to Sinner.
It sounds fair enough, but now play a little thought-game with yourself. Replace the name Jannik Sinner with Pan Zhanle and think of him not as a No 1-ranked tennis player, but a gold-medal freestyle swimmer from China. Are you as happy to buy that explanation now?
US Open, New York, from Tuesday, TVNZ+
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
A couple of tasty morsels, and the odd bite-sized offering.
As a landlubber, I can’t claim to have any technical knowledge of sailing other than the obvious points of reference, such as it’s easier to do on water and waka tend to travel quicker downwind than up.
Yet once every few years I become captivated by every aspect of the America’s Cup. It is such a heady saltwater cocktail of personalities, technology, gratuitous wealth, heroes and villains, danger, history, shithousery and jingoism.
This time, and there’s no way of sugarcoating it, I’m really struggling to muster even the smallest windshift of interest. This will likely change once the racing starts proper, but first I have to understand how this regatta works and where to watch it.
Let me check, it’s on… Three, Three Now and Stuff.
Interesting.
At least there are options, though I have to say I’ve found the Three Now app to be the opposite of user-friendly when following Shane van Gisbergen’s Xfinity Series campaign, and I don’t think I’ve attempted to watch anything on Stuff, ever.
Always keen to try new things though.
Am Cup prelims, day 2, tomorrow 12.15am, Three/ Stuff
Tried to keep my peepers open last night to watch Our Lyds tee it up at St Andrews. They lasted through three holes, which Ko navigated to par with crazy-good short-game mastery in brutal conditions. Holes one and two were witness to exquisite greenside chips, while three required two putts from a different postcode on the first of the famous double-greens.
That was it for me, but a -1 total leaves the Olympic champion in the thick of it, with Big Tobacco’s favourite player Charley Hull leading at -5.
Women’s Open, rounds 2-4, tonight-Sunday from 11pm, SS1
The AFL enters the final week of its round-robin season with sixth-placed Western Bulldogs (they’ll always be Footscray to me) down to defending champions Collingwood in 10th hoping to muscle their way into the top eight. Tonight’s match between hated rivals Melbourne and Collingwood (Sky) could be a doozy as the Demons, who can’t make the eight, try to ruin the Pies year. There is a full round of NPC and FPC games (Sky) from which to get your rugby fix, or the Pacific Nations Cup that starts with a Fiji v Samoa clash tonight.
The F1 roadshow (Sky) begins again at Zandvoort, the Netherlands, with most of the intrigue seemingly surrounding the pecking order of the four seated Red Bull drivers — Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo — and the car-less Kiwi Liam Lawson ahead of next season. SvG drives in the Xfinity Series at Daytona tomorrow morning (Three Now).
A reminder that the Paralympics starts next week from Paris, with TVNZ+ carrying the coverage.
A small reminder, also, that the Bounce will remain on a reduced output for the next couple of weeks. Thanks for your continued support. It is never taken for granted.
Attention journalism students: This is a textbook example of a gratuitous analogy being stretched past breaking point for the amusement of the author only.
ABs coaching debacle: Imagine you are the CEO of a large public company. Your recent and most senior hire is, at your instruction, fired after less time than it takes to attend and report to just a few board meetings. The first question you will be asked by the board is why? The second will likely be why was he hired? The third will be what unforeseen circumstances occurred between his hiring and the very short time to firing? The second question will then be asked again – so, why was he hired?
And that is where the onus comes right back to Head Coach Robertson. This is a failure of performance in management – a key part of his job.
Selection is the number one job of the head coach. It includes his direct reports, not just the team for the day. Selection was Foster’s biggest failure, both team and assistants. Let us hope the same weakness does not rule over the Robertson era. The early signs are not good!
AFL: Unfortunately the maths doesn't work for Collingwood - too many genuine miracles required for them to make finals. Whatever happens against Melbourne, they'll be done for the season. But should still be a good game