From early on professional preparation in an amateur sport gave New Zealand an edge. As All Blacks have often said the motivation was the avoidance of failure. Unlike the Aussie’s who, when they lose, move on, Kiwi’s become recriminating, they look on it as a personal affront and the country has a period of universal depression. While being an All Black didn’t give income it gave great status that still lasts forever. To have fluked a game in that jersey would have made a career in rugby coaching so much easier.

It was based on many hours of mucking around with a ball. I was stopped from playing during the breaks in the school day because I had 2 school shirts and they were fast becoming unwearable due to the frequency with which they were torn off my back. I should add we did wear short trousers to school.

Deodorant wasn’t big in those days and I sympathise with the classroom teachers who, after lunch, had to put up with the odour of 30+ sweaty bodies for the next hour on a Dunedin summers day. This applied also to the poor girls from Queens High who came over for senior science subjects.

Winning the competition was a must but even more important were the inter schools against other single sex rugby schools from Invercargill, Oamaru, Christchurch and our nemesis the old mental hospital and middle class school up on the hill looking over Dunedin City, Otago Boys High School.

The ups and downs of these games are still recalled such as the “What kick?” reply by our kicker having missed a conversion from out front in the 79 minute for us to lose 13-12 to OBHS.

This is now so much part of the mythologythat the opposition toasted the kicker at their 50^th reunion.

The pressure to play rugby and the status it gave you was enough for some quite dumb creatures to get accredited University Entrance.

There were about 23 rugby teams at the school, a handful of soccer teams and a very small number of hockey teams all in a school of about 650 boys. Winter sport was compulsory. While at school basketball took my fancy and this plus St Kilda to St Clair back to Lawyers Head and return to St Kilda Beach kicking and passing a rugby ball gave me decent hands.

 Apart from this things were pretty average, full of endeavour but average.

I am never sure whether it is more satisfying to be good at a lot of things or really good at one. Both have their frustrations. The first gives you longevity as you have spread your risks while the extreme cases of putting all your options in one sport can lead to sports jocks and dead end kids.

In the professional era we may have these casualties already but never doubt that, while they may not be there now, the attempts at planning for life after rugby are thwarted by the cash in the hand in the here and now. More Peter Pans will emerge in the future. From the amateur days these were there but not in the potentially large numbers that will emerge from the professional game. There is a small proportion who have had to trade on their playing status and they find their way into the media. The fact that they don’t have alternatives can make them desperate and to insulate themselves from being picked off they form a clique that is self-indulging and forces conformity to the group. You can’t agree with everyone all the time, can you?

Future difficulties are reflected in the relatively rapid turnover of those appointed to the franchises to help the players prepare for life after rugby. Job satisfaction is low and efforts to take up the options offered to the players are in inverse proportion to their status as the player. Those at the top somehow think it is never going to end. Those at ITM Cup level take full advantage.

Once again the USA model should alert us to the problem. James Michener identified the problems long ago in his incisive book “Sports In America” written in the 1950’s.

One way we can prevent this from happening is to retain the model that unifies capital and labour. The moment these are separated the game and its players become commodities. The market has no ethical values only profit. It leads to self interest and it leads to the less talented being exploited as there are more “doing well at own level” than super stars. At present there are 2 other casualties of the model, the coaches and the amateur game.

Naively I thought the justification of becoming a professional game in 1995 was the degree to which it could enhance the amateur game. New Zealand’s population is so small that true excellence can only occur if there are few competing sports and if all are recruited and retained in the game of Rugby. The movement of the game away from club rugby where, even if participation numbers are OK, attendance at practice is erratic and the intensity at practice limited. It is dangerous for the other players should professional player play club rugby during a down weekend. The quantity and the quality of mass participation rugby is being eroded.

 The coaches on the other hand are the sole traders of the game. No job security and deliberately exploited by the decision makers because of their passion for the game. I remember Vernon Pugh saying about a Welsh appointee

“Offer him half that. He is one of those rugby nuts, he will probably accept it.”

I should add that Vernon did coach Welsh Universities.

This identifies a very harsh reality. Sure we are all coaches together but if you want a job you should watch your back “mate.” Fellowship and group loyalty go by the board. And this happens again and again. These foolish sole traders, great blokes in normal circumstances, are not as unified as the players to put together their own association to give a smidgen of security. If they did would the owners allow it. The power of the superstar players is putting the owners over a barrel, or at least the players’ union boss and the agents are. Have a look at the Brumbies in recent times, could it happen elsewhere? Does a crafty coach have his players on one-year contracts with a diluted right of renewal? The other players ride on the super star’s coat tails.

Would the owners want the coaches doing the same? Given the number of coaches who would want the job they are probably going to be played off against each other unless there is a form of unity and, I should add, qualifications.

This is the case in Europe if the sport wants government assistance and Olympic support. When John Connolly was appointed to Stade Francais I had a call from Pierre Villepreux wanting an Australian contact to verify his qualifications. The FFR needed these for player insurance. He had none. Like Vern Cotter who, until recently, had to sit in the grandstand and couldn’t be named as team coach when he coached Clermont Ferrand.

Some years ago, when I asked asked Wayne Smith if he was still living in South Brighton said:

“Hell no, in this job housing needs to be temporary you don’t unpack. We are a bit nomadic”

In this regard rugby is an immature sport because a sacked coach goes back to his old job presuming it is still there. The rugby union and the coach will have invested time and money in his development and for each one that drops out there is not one of similar quality to replace him. This environment is a deterrent for any others to commit themselves to coaching.

Rugby does not value the limited talent available. The mature sports may sack a coach but the coach’s expertise is not lost to the game. More sooner than later another position emerges. Experience is kept in the sport often to a very old age as those who have seen it all before and who are past having an ego recycle themselves. The trend in rugby is to appoint ever increasingly young coaches more often than not a player of recent vintage. Maybe it is a plot to expose them to an overseas experience in the hope that they will return better than when they left?

 I refuse to believe that the game of rugby is something in which coaching is innate to those who have played to a high level. The ex-internationals get these jobs because they retain those qualities that make for a great player – self-interest and iron determination to succeed. It is like saying that the school dux will be the best teacher or that the glutton will make a good chef. The last is a bit extreme.

And then you have those who make the appointments. These are political appointments and the CEO and executive get their rocks off by association and reflected glory with the ex-super star. When the appointee is found out, those cunning enough to get the best team have less of a problem, the very people who appointed him melt away and the condemnation that justifies the dismissal is unprincipled and hypocritical.

It may not be the performance of the team that does this. The viability of the union is currently a factor dropping the coaches, development officers, high performance managers right in it while the CEO, finance manager, PR specialist, commercial manager and a cadre of office staff keep their jobs. You can have rugby without coaches but what of the quality.

What could save the coach from self-destruction is demanding that they complete a prescribed course of practical and theoretical study of the core processes of the game. You are saving the coach from himself and a nomadic existence that is becoming common in the game. The extreme model is that of the opportunist who stays for ever decreasing amounts of time in the current job. Heaven help the families who follow along behind.

The Southern Rugby club.

My father joined Southern from school in 1933. His cousin played for them at Bathgate Park, in the shadow of the Hillside Railway workshops.

In his first senior game, as usual, his brother was running late to collect him and he was in such a rush and was so nervous he took the field with his false teeth still in.

In the South end of Dunedin there were four clubs, all excessively parochial. You knew you never left one and played for the other.

“Leave town before we play you.”

Equally you could do anything, you never got sent off.

Zingari – Richmond were at Montecillo behind the Southern cemetery, at one stage run by the Proctor’s dynasty, and later the Watsons. Alby was okay but Eric, a future All Black coach, liked winning as much as my Dad so they didn’t get on.

At the Caledonian ground, ironically, was Dunedin, the exclusive catholic club. They were later to move to Kettle Park. Despite my Dad’s political leanings, it was here that he got the greatest friendship especially from L.D. Lawrence known as “Bill”. I think it was the Irishness. They coached Otago together, successfully but only for a short period of time, such is false modesty. The Todd’s ran Dunedin.

Charlie Saxton’s club was Pirates. On leaving Otago Boys High School you were advised to join this club, the old boys club, suitably ensconced in Carisbrook, but later to move to Hancock Park.

The only other clubs of regular strength were the Taieri club, the farmers club, built around Peter Johnston the All Black captain; and the University of Otago, still the top club in New Zealand based on the number of All Blacks.

You couldn’t really call players from other clubs, friends, maybe teammates at a higher level, or acquaintances. Those you spied at the movies on Saturday night with their girlfriends led to the unspoken

“I hope you are as sore as I am you prick, just wait until next time.”

Pirates were soft, apart from Kevin Skinner.

Varsity engendered mutual respect with Southern. This arose out of V.G. Cavanagh Senior coaching Varsity “A” and V.G.Junior coaching Southern in the 1930’s and 40’s. The camaraderie was strong even though it was working class and the intelligentsia.

I joined Southern from school.

 Rain, hail or snow it was Tuesday and Thursday night practice, ruck and run for 2 hours, game on Saturday, usually at Carisbrook. Southern was so good that Carisbrook was virtually their home ground. Then practice on Sunday morning to get rid of the after effect of the game and a night on the booze by some but not all.

 Sunday morning practice was contrary to all sport science. It was a punishment and involved tackling as punishment for losing, which was infrequent. It started with those who hadn’t made it home resurrecting their gear from under the bench at their spot in the changing and donning it for practice.

I talked about this earlier pre-war but by the 60’s nothing much had changed.

After practice some went home to sleep, some emptied the keg that was prematurely opened around 2am and which had gone flat. Not to be wasted.

To be fair this was the worse case scenario and the fact that most of the team played for Otago, some for the South Island and a couple for the All Blacks reflects that preparation was significant and also that there were some cunning buggers who didn’t drink very much and looked after themselves.

These were the days, and they lasted until 1970, when a committee meeting was necessary to get a second ball at training. You trained with the match ball, leather and heavy when it got wet. It was looked after by Laurie Mains our fullback, our goal kicker and when he wasn’t voted captain he left taking his ball with him. Practice ended early that night. His father demanded a team apology, which was not forthcoming.

One anecdote learned by a friend who played in the “‘Naki”, Kiwi for Taranaki. Play with the wind in the first half and at half time use the ball pump to slip a millilitre or two of water through the valve into the bladder. It was funny how their kicks with the wind weren’t quite as effective.

Training was ruck and run preceded by eight times around the ground to warm up. As a suburban club, but with growing numbers going to university, the tough manual work most of the team did day in and day out in the previous era was gone. Weight training started to take on if only for me all 12stone 7 pounds. Up to 13stone by drinking milk and Vita Stout and, once training really got underway, back to 12stone 2lbs. The weights came from the foundry in Hillside Workshop where “foreigners” were one of the perks.

.You trained in boots, socks. Athletic supports or closer fitting undies, shorts and jersey, that’s all no matter what the weather. Coaches in boots and socks, old trousers tucked into the socks, rugby jerseys and a woollen jersey on top.

Once Bathgate Park was wet, that was it for the season. The ball was difficult to handle. So it wasn’t handled. It was a forward battle down the touch lines with the backs being intimidated into getting the ball in front of the forwards so they could take it on again. VG Cavanagh Jnr and Charlie Saxton instigated the code of ethics, which included law modifications similar to today’s game. It was used to break the mould but laid the rep team open to pressure as other provinces saw no need to adopt it. Strangely, what it aimed to create was the open game we now have.

I remember talking to John Graham about his playing days and how he loved coming to Dunedin where he was able to exploit this situation as the provincial game was played to the letter of the law not to the code.

 The game was stitched up and down the touchline as the real battle occurred in the scrum, lineout and ruck.

You could kick to touch on the full and, if you were forced into touch as the ball carrier your team got the throw in. The ball was the offside line. The flankers could follow it around the scrum and the defence line could move up with the movement of the ball. The same at lineout and there was no 15metre line. The lineout could stretch right across the field. No matter how long the #9’s pass the defending #7 could stand in direct line with the receiver and tackle him ball and all.

Winning possession and kicking it down there, usually into touch to have another lineout, solved any confusion. With no lifting these were a bar room brawl but who won the ball was much more uncertain. Ruck and run took place where it counted and, as all the forwards chased the ball, it paid dividends towards the end of the game when you still had some gas in the tank and they didn’t.

Rucking is a lost art. It arose because the ball had to be played with a foot following a tackle; it couldn’t be played immediately by the hand. So no “jackalling”.

As a result after a tackle two loose scrums formed dynamically and, bound in good body position, tried to push their opponents off the ball by driving past it. The ball, and anything else on the ground, was rolled back to the waiting halfback using a rolling motion with the sole of the boot. The sole had certain appendages that accelerated their movement while at the same time using corporal punishment so they didn’t go there again. It was self-policing. The halfback could handle the ball because those in front had met the requirements in Law, giving him options because of the protection the ruck afforded. Because the defending team had a fair crack at winning the ball the numbers in the forward contest took numbers out of the defensive screen so that the team good enough to win the ball was rewarded with space to attack. But still the ball was the offside line so the rewards led to more of the same.

Realise that then as now attack is more difficult than defence, gets less time because they have to wait on the ball to really move forward, catch the ball, retained vision to perform the next best option and perform it. The defence has to keep in alignment but the job is to decide who is to tackle who and, if you arrive and he has the ball.

“Crunch him Bro.”

No one collapsed over the ball as the opposition were pushing against you and, if you were on the ground you were fair game. Reputedly Eion Sheath, the Otago Country coach and a fellow Otago coach and selector practiced “good” body position by having the forwards go under a plank about a metre off the ground. No one seemed to hit his or her head.

The other things on the ground that were also healed back tended to get torn and bruised as they came out the back in little pieces. Southern forwards were the best at it. They called it the mincing machine. Keep away from the head.

 The Cavanagh play was ruck and run, so they practiced as they played keeping going from the start to the finish along with sound skills and unrelenting ferocity. Whatever the opposition did, the Southern forwards just kept coming like a machine taking the game to the opposition on all fronts as a unit, low and hard. This was close to a professional approach although you were expected to do more by yourself and you could make decisions on the hoof.

Re decision-making there was an interesting news clip about player decision-making or lack of it. Sir Brian Lochore put this down to the by-gone players making decisions about their lives, their families, their jobs, and their time management. Professional players are having so many of these decisions made for them there is little wonder their ability to do so on the field has diminished and is less accurate. I just hope it isn’t those insecure, dominant coaches seeking to keep their job. I guess if they do lose their jobs they can at least say it that they did it their way.

It was called boring by the wings, but the wings were the top try scorers in the competition. They were proud of giving the forwards something to go forward to, but once “down there”, it was ruck and run, passing to space on the fringes and reversing the attack until the team working as a unit caused division and a lack of discipline in the opposition. All the forwards went to the ball

“Their rightful place in the game”.

This created space for the backs especially if the gain line had been breached. The opposition knew it was coming but could do little about it.

All teams in the club did it. It wasn’t always successful in the junior grades, but the pattern was such that, when players were promoted, they didn’t need to be re-educated, they knew their job well.

Dave was a forwards’ coach who only wanted to be the Southern forward coach, the focus was singular. Many were the times when he was asked to coach at a higher level. His false excuse was that he wasn’t good enough. It was false modesty and fear of the unknown. He wouldn’t do the job, but, in his opinion, no one else was any good and they shouldn’t get the job.

Only when Billy Lawrence took on Otago did Dave take the next step.

Maybe the next step has been taken, as he is the basis of the IRB bibles that I have scribed. He learned them from Vic Cavanagh Jnr.

Belonging to Southern was not without conflict and anyone who interfered with the forwards was taking their lives in their hands. What would they know? Coaches of the other clubs knew nothing and anyone from more distant parts was an impostor.

Motivation was proving the negative wrong. Negativity was the basis of team talks and full of what would happen to you if you didn’t win.

Conflict, the selectors versus clubmen who are pushing their offspring only resulted in Dave getting his own way. It was bloody hard for his offspring, as you had to be well ahead of the pack.

The club, like all clubs, had its fixtures. The Southern club was run by the Ingles family Bill, Bob, Cybil and Stan. Bob was a fiery wing forward, painter and paperhanger, aggressive in getting has own way and working for Southern tirelessly to a fault. His commitment to the club’s appearance and maintenance, to fund raising, to getting his own way, in dominating the committee was dedication plus. He didn’t really know what he wanted only that he wanted his way, a characteristic of power driven sports administrators at the most lofty heights.

Bill was a quiet club secretary; control of the minutes is of great value. Cybil and Jack Garbutt, a relation, rose to high places in the club, largely because their long noses gave them three beer intakes doubling their consumption to unassailable volumes. Ron Reggitt was another whose want it was to fill their “peters”, into their Dr Jim bags before departing on Saturday night so they had a few available for Sunday.

Another trick of Ron’s was to arrive in a group with an empty jug, fill his with someone’s full one and depart with the full one. He was good at getting any Southern men off traffic tickets as he was the top traffic cop in Dunedin.

This conspicuous consumption got bad when the Treasurer at the AGM was asked why soft drinks made more profit than the beer sales.

Dave started coaching in 1956 and stopped in 1973 just four years before he died still reinforcing the same commandments, the same technique in the same method reinforced, reinforced, reinforced by Cavanagh who, until his death, watched all games conducting an immediate post-mortem after each attended by Dave and either Sam Simpson or Alan Stevens. They were then free to mingle.

Cavanagh should have taken the All Blacks to South Africa in 1949 but he was undermined by politics and the disappointment resulted in him never coaching formally again. Rumour has it that the team agreed with Cavanagh and, when Canterbury lifted the shield it was a protest vote by the Otago team and its 11 All Blacks.

Who could work for a treasurer who was in the office counting the cash during the game. In came the masseur with an injured player.

“What happened?” says the treasurer.

“Laurie Haig just kicked a penalty?”

“Who does he play for?” was the reply.

Laurie Haig was the long standing Otago and All Black first five-eight and All Black vice captain.

 Successful coaches fall into two categories those who fluke a winning formula with a team that just happens to click. When this is achieved it is unique and can’t be repeated. It happens by accident.

Secondly, there are those who can adapt to any given situation, adapting to meet change, but able to retain the principles and the framework as a sound platform for many years. Cavanagh was of the latter, his example and foresight was just as relevant on the day he died, as it was when he was in full flight.

When I was appointed to coach Otago I spent sessions with him and this only served to prove this point.

As time went on the club’s colours didn’t change but the character of the players did as mortarboards became more common. The sons used equal opportunity at school to seek tertiary education. The University grew and it was difficult to play for Varsity, even when they had four teams in the senior competition, there was so much talent. A few out-of-towners went to the suburban clubs and the local students played for them also and not University.

Another anecdote the #10 for the “A’s” was Earle Kirton, the “B’s” Graeme Ahern, the “C’s” Barry Tietjens and the “D’s” Sir Graeme Henry.

Varsity has the greatest number of All Blacks because the best talent gained great prestige playing for such a strong club. Even in the professional era two of the All Blacks from Otago are from Varsity. In those days the entire “A” team was made up of provincial players, many South Island reps and a handful of All Blacks. At the time the southern end of Dunedin had local teams and yet it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Varsity would win the competition.

The Southern club’s stakes went down in the early 60s when the senior team was made up of a group in which rugby was a brief interlude between drinking and wenching. After helping out with the King’s High first fifteen Dave returned to senior coaching with Sam Simpson and Alan Stevens and slowly they were able to get the team back on track.

 Nepotism did exist but usually got the “heave ho.”Parental support fell into 2 groups, those who could see no wrong in their offspring and those who could see no right. Being of the later group one thing I knew I did have and which got me into teams was the stupidity to put my head close to the ball on the ground. Dad used to call this player the “Donkey Man” and it is still the most prized trophy at the Southern Club Prize Giving, “The D.E.Smith Donkey Man Trophy”. Few would know its true meaning in today’s game but the “jackallers” fall into this category, the ones who do the graft.

I could do this and long exposure to D.E. Smith gave me an understanding of the game. It wasn’t being a hard man but the player the hard men dealt to on the ground. As is the reputation of many of the games’ hard men, they were careful never to go there themselves.

This is what really annoys me in reminiscent conversation with mates, team-mates and old foes – what the renowned hard man did, not what was done to the renown hard man from which he bounced back. I guess 112 cameras have seen this off, thank goodness.

Maybe it was inevitable that I had a premonition that concussion and stitches in the head were going to play a big part in my game. It didn’t effect club selection only an accumulation of symptoms that meant I didn’t last long. The self enforcement of Southern men rucking is gone, the “ethic” that as a referee you have lost control if you have to revert to sending someone off and tackling a ball carrier who is off the ground are all thankfully in the past. Padding around the goalposts is better also. Yes I had my collisions with them, the number 8 going for the line, hitting him hard enough to bash his head against them at head height while my head wedged where the pole reaches the ground.

Towards the end games were followed by home to bed followed by a splitting head ache and dry reaching. I knew my time was limited. Cancelled dates were relationship threatening but the one that really counted has lasted over 40 years.

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