I thought it might be worthwhile trying to summarise in one post why I am so dead set against Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) getting involved in the management of competitive coaching and learn to swim. After all I did fight against SNZ’s competitive coaching ambitions for 25 years. I went to “Court” twice directly and/or indirectly contesting SNZ’s power grab. On Swimwatch I wrote more than one million words explaining why the Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, was bad for the sport. There must have been a reason for all that. So, what was it?

First, SNZ’s centralised coaching did not work. Remember Bruce Cotterill spent $26 million chasing his elusive dream and what happened? Nothing at the Olympic Games. No medals of any color. And the Commonwealth Games were not much better. Here is a table that explains those results during SNZ’s excursion into competitive coaching.

Games	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Comment
2002	0	1	1	Neither swimmer trained with SNZ
2006	1	0	4	1 x gold and 3 x bronze from SNZ
2010	0	4	2	2 x silver 1 x bronze from SNZ
2014	1	1		1 x gold 1 x silver from SNZ (Boyle who soon left)
2018	0	0	1	Swimmer not trained by SNZ

There it is, $26 million, 25 years and 5 Commonwealth Games for SNZ to deliver 2xgold medals, 1xsilver medal and 4xbronze medals. Seven medals for $26 million. That’s $3.7 million per medal. And that is what failure looks like.

Second, the standard of New Zealand coaching went down. It should have been obvious that if every good swimmer was going to be lured to SNZ’s lair in Auckland, what incentive was there for regional coaches to compete? You are right, none.

Third, the membership of SNZ collapsed. In 2002 competitive membership was 7598. In 2021 it is 4,553, a decline of 3045 members, 40%. SNZ’s obsession with coaching elite swimmers and the neglect of its core business was the cause of the decline.

 Fourth, the SNZ high performance programme was badly managed. In 25 years SNZ employed 12 Head Coaches. No competitive programme is going to produce results when the Head Coach changes, on average, every two years. Especially when most of the coaches chosen were foreign.

In summary the SNZ programme was a mess internally and an even worse disaster in legitimate activities that were neglected. And that is why for 25 years I wrote one million words in protest. It is also the reason I will write another million words if SNZ stray again, this time into learn to swim.

And so, what should SNZ have been doing? Looking after its core business is the answer. They are the sport’s GOVERNING body. They are the government. They are not executives running every corner shop and dairy in the country. We would think it very strange if Jacinda Ardern was up at six o’clock attaching cups to 120 Matamata cows. The first thing we’d say is, “That’s not her job.” Her job is to create the environment in which good farmers in Matamata can successfully milk 120 cows every day. Jacinda must build the roads, pass the laws, ensure the honesty, decide on the presence or absence of subsidies and order the priorities that make it worthwhile for every businessperson, whether he or she manages a farm in Matamata or a dairy on Lincoln Road, to go to work in the morning.

The problem with SNZ’s 25-year incursion into competitive coaching is it forced Steve Johns and others to spend time on the yield of dairy-fat from Glen Ashby rather than creating an environment where specialists like Jon Winter, Gary Hollywood, William Benson and Andy McMillian could do that job better.

In the meantime, infrastructure was neglected. We have already seen how membership fell by 40%. Imagine if SNZ had done its job and had created an exciting environment that resulted in membership growing by 40%. Revenue from Exchange Transactions would be up by $1,037,294. That’s as much as SNZ’s total Sport NZ handout. SNZ would be financially free of the government begging bowl.

SNZ could and should have done more about the number of pools in the country. In the past five years, about 165 school pools have closed and about 135 are at risk of closing because of health and safety or maintenance costs. What did SNZ do to stop that eroding infrastructure. Nothing is the answer. But it was their job. Imagine what we would all be saying if Jacinda closed 165 roads because she wouldn’t pay to have them repaired. We would sack her at the next election. What happened at SNZ? It spent another million dollars a year on bad coaching and ignored the crumbling infrastructure.

And so SNZ has a responsibility to focus on its core business. But not only a responsibility. Core business is where their money is as well. Excitement, infrastructure, rules and competitions, that’s their job. SNZ does not and should not run a Lincoln Road dairy, or a Mairangi Bay learn to swim school. It is not their job to milk 150 dairy cows or coach 150 Glen Ashbys. Every Board meeting should start with one question. Do SNZ’s plans focus on its core business? Or is SNZ straying into activities like learn to swim and competitive coaching? Is SNZ encouraging expert businesspeople like Judith Wright, Gwen Ryan, Paul Kent and Dave Pratley to do a better job, to make more money? Or is SNZ milking the cows like it did for 25 years and in the process destroying the sport they were charged with protecting? I do not want them to repeat that error by standing by while SNZ strays into learn to swim.

Another million words beating up on a badly run Board is not something anyone wants.