By David
For a number of years New Zealand had a Director of high performance swimming called Clive Rushton. He will probably be horrified when he reads this but, I liked Clive. His ideas on coaching were more scientific than my “swim and when you are really tired – keep swimming” methods. But he was good to me and my swimmers. He had dinner at my home one night when that carried all sorts of political perils. It was one of those enjoyable evenings when the wine and stories flowed happily well into the small hours. When Toni Jeffs left me to swim on her own Clive provided her with good and important advice. He was also responsible for one of my favourite coaching quotes. When I called to let him know I was leaving New Zealand to coach in the US Virgin Islands he said, “That’s great David. Coaching is always best done under a palm tree.”
Clive has posted a comment on the Swimwatch story I wrote about calling a special general meeting. I felt his point of view was sufficiently important that it should be a Swimwatch story in its own right. After all Clive was there; right in the heart of Swimming New Zealand. He was there when a lot of the decisions that have ended up in the mess we are in today were being made by Cameron, Byrne, Coulter and his Board. Here is Clive’s point of view.
“OK, to put some perspective on the “we knew nothing”, “it’s not us” debate:
Way back in 2001 I had a High Performance Advisory Group (HPAG) which met periodically to discuss the various issues and which debated with gusto and passion. Although the makeup changed over the years it was comprised of combinations of the following: me as HP Director, Director of Coaching, whatever I was called at the time, the leader of the National Age Group programme (Clive Power), the leader of the National Youth programme (Trevor Nicholls), a coaching representative from NZSCAT (Mark Bone, Frank Tourelle), the immediate past National Coach (Brett Naylor), a High Performance director from another Olympic sport (Mark Elliot), two high performance coaches (Duncan Laing and Jan C), a former international swimmer (Trent Bray) and the swimming representative from SPARC (latterly Don Tricker). I was not obliged to take up the group’s recommendations (“advisory”) but they were included in my reports and many good suggestions found their way into the HP programmes.
The Board was fully aware of the group’s deliberations as, in the early days; I personally attended Board meetings for the HP-specific portions. Latterly this changed and the reports and proposals were presented to the Board by the CEO without my presence. The accuracy and comprehensiveness of these later presentations was always in question The idea of a HP Advisory panel is, therefore, not new and not revolutionary. It is, however, vital.
The dysfunctional nature of the MISH programme and Jan’s role in it was known to the Board as early as 2007 and had been intimated much earlier. Following the 2007 World University Games I instigated an extensive and comprehensive analysis of the lead-in preparation and the competition itself. Every team member (swimmers, coaches, team manager and support staff) as well as each swimmer’s ‘home’ coach completed a questionnaire. I say every team member but hey, guess what? Jan ‘forgot’ to complete hers. I won’t go into the very fine detail of the answers and comments but here is an illustrative example:
“The Head Coach did not fulfill her role as head coach. From day one of the trip, she made a clear division in the team between those swimmers who train at the Millennium Institute and those who did not. Everything from training times, transport arrangements, consulting swimmers about arrangements, uniform requirements, and even ‘team’ meetings were segregated, creating a distinct ‘them and us’ dynamic within the team. I was asked once during the entire 10 day period of the build up and competition by the head coach whether “everything is OK”, and even then it seemed to be a token attempt to offer assistance, as she barely stopped to hear my reply. There was a clear message of “if you’re not one of ‘my’ swimmers, then you don’t matter”. I believe that if New Zealand Swimming is to move forward then swimmers must feel that when they make the same qualifying standard as other swimmers, they are just as valuable as part of the national representative team as any other member. They should also feel that there is one team that is supportive of all its members, not two-tiers within the team, with the criteria for these tiers being whether or not your home programme is under the head coach or not.”
The rest of the feedback followed a similar line.
The SPARC representative was present at the HPAG meeting which examined the report and analysis, so SPARC were fully aware that everything was not rosy way back then. The report was then submitted to the CEO and subsequently to the SNZ Board.
That was four years ago, three years before the performances in New Delhi were deemed weak enough to trigger a review. There is a significant time-lag between a breakdown in culture and trust and the knock-on effect in the performance pool. In the meantime some of the best swimming talent in the world has been lost or misguided.
The President and, I guess by definition, the Board was made aware of Mike Byrne’s management style in mid-2008. Accusations of bullying, harassment and intimidation of staff were sent in writing to Murray Coulter who ‘investigated’ them and took no action. This was followed by a complete review of the SNZ staffing structure which put in place the current disastrous ‘team’.
Mark my words, if the swimming community in New Zealand wishes for change in Swimming New Zealand it will not get that change by waiting for it on a voluntary basis; turkeys, Christmas etc.”
That is a pretty damming document. The Regions of New Zealand swimming must not let this moment drift by.