Some thoughts on New Zealand
2011 October 20
36000 feet, somewhere over Australia.
I’m still a bit yet lagged, so if all this seems crazy, then put it down to lack of sleep.
We are blessed in New Zealand, that we have everything around us required to succeed. Intelligence, money and technology, and yet something is missing. Innovation is much talked about, but there is something missing that means us Kiwis aren’t able to compete on the world stage. I’m not sure what exactly that is, but Kiwis aren’t good winners (we aren’t good losers either).
In three days time the All Blacks will play int the 2011 world cup final against France. The All blacks have become somewhat representative of New Zealanders, and our attitudes to success, the personify our beliefs. Their inability to win every world cup since 1987 despite being the favourite in every world cup has earned them the title ‘chokers’. Is this fair? Asolul-bloody-lutely.
Side note – the Auto correct on my iPad has a hard time with the word Asolul-bloody-lutely. The iPad doesn’t know kiwi-isms.
What represents us more than loosing is our response to it. We are bad losers. In 95 we blamed the loss on food poisioning, 99 it was the coach. 2007 was the refs fault.
Why can’t we just admit that sometimes we were beaten by a better team. In 2007, France was just better than us, even if we had an off day, why take anything away from the other team? And yet that’s exactly what we do. We say, the ref was rubbish, and we were rubbish. No thought that perhaps they were just better, and if they were why send death threats to John hart, and why spit on him.
I have no idea weather we will win on Sunday, I just hope that we we have matured as a nation – that we don’t project our hopes and dreams onto a team of men in black whom we have never met, and will probably never meet. Yes get excited about winning, but let’s also get excited about the game, the spectacle, the fact that the All Blacks are one of the most successful sports teams in history, with a win ratio of something like 85%.
When have we celebrated that? When was the last time that we looked at the past and said, damn, the all blacks are one of the most successful teams ever? instead we look to the future, we expect a win and only a win. And without a win that equals failure, and failure is miserable, and we should beat up on ourselves, self flagellation, our self image is smashed up by failure.
Other countries don’t think this way. I should know, im on my way home after visiting 9 countries. One of the defining features of a place like San Francisco is that failure is not celebrated, but it is accepted as part of life. Some time despite your best intentions the competition steals your idea and executes it better. Shit happens, reflect on it, figure out what you could do better and move on.
And move on they do, some of the most successful businesses in the USA came out of failure. Just today I was reading about Richard Kinder.
Richard Kinder is today the 36th richest person in the USA, worth 4.6bn as of September, according to the WSJ. Yet, he previously filed for bankruptcy protection after a failed business venture. Yet, he was able to come back, and make a success of himself.
How someone deals with failure is how you learn the most about them. So what does, how we, as a nation deal with sporting failure, say about us? What does how we dealt with the All Blacks world cup failures say about us, or how we dealt with losing the Americas cup?
But what says the most to me,about our national ego, and our physce is how, we as a nation responded to Russell Coutts, and Brad Butterworth leaving to apply their skills for Alinghi.
Most of the nation had some misguided hate towards them, and their opposition theme song was the over played loyal by Dave Dobbin. These were just a few guys going to work for someone who was willing to pay them a lot of money. And now they’re traitors.
Its widely acknowledge that New Zealand has something called the tall poppy syndrome. That winners are pulled down to the level of the average Joe. This makes the average Joe happier to know that whilst someone is successful, they have problems too. Look at the recent celebrations of the falls of Terry Serepisous, Andrew Krukziner and David Henderson. These recent high fliers who Had achieved success are all now facing serious financial problems and the attitude amongst the media and the public is one of celebration, that these successful people are now broke.
Why is that something to celebrate?
But that’s not the worst part of it. It’s what happens next that is the saddest part.
It’s that New Zealanders will never let these men forget their pasts that is so sad. You could argue that they deserve it, that you have to take the bad with the good, and you would be right, but why beat up on someone when they are down? There are no garuntees in the world, that you’re always going to win. There are no promises that your plans will always succeed. No one has a 100% hit rate.
The greatest baseball player of all time, Babe Ruth, also held the record for the greatest number of strike outs of all time. But if the scores were tied and it was the bottom of the 9th inning, who would you want coming in to bat? Someone who had never failed? Or the man who held the record for the most strike outs of all time – Babe Ruth?
I think most Kiwi’s faced with that choice without the benefit of knowing who Babe Ruth was, would chose the first guy, the guy who never made a mistake, the guy whos never been in this situation before?
And that’s where the problem lies.
Perspective.
Americans and those living in Silicon Valley would focus on the number of home runs, that’s their success metric.
New Zealanders focus on the latter percentage, the number of strike outs whilst at bat.
Think about it. We’ve lost five world cups, and won one. We always focus on the five we lost. Rugby nations like France and Wales would give their left arm to win a world cup. I’m not talking about living in the past, I’m talking about changing our perspective to say, let’s celebrate the 85% win ratio, rather than five games, five one off games which we have lost.
Last year I became a big fan of ice hockey, and my favourite team is the Boston Bruins. They hadn’t won the Stanley cup for forty years. Boston is one of the most successful sports cities in America. They have the Boston Celtics, the Boston Red Socks, and the New England Patriots. Within the last few years all three teams won national titles, so the pressure was really on the Bruins win the Stanley Cup. In getting to the Stanley cup final the Bruins had to win three best of seven game series. Two of these series went to seven games. In the final series against the Vancouver Canucks, the series went back and forth and ended up going to a game seven decider.
In game seven the Bruins played their natural game, and won that game 4-0.
Canadians are ice hockey mad, especially people from Vancouver. After the Canucks lost, riots broke out in downtown Vancouver where millions of dollars of property was damaged, and people were injured. While watching this play out, I couldnt help but think to myself what might happen, if the All Blacks were in the world cup final and lost. Would New Zealanders break out in Riots too?
The good folks of Canada, like us Kiwis missed the point, this was a great series, as close as it could be, but on that day, that one day when it mattered, another team was better. The Canucks didn’t suck, the Bruins simply played better on that one day.
Instead of praising their team for being the highest scoring team all year, having the best offense, and some of the most exciting plays, they rioted. There are fans of hockey teams which haven’t made the final for decades, long suffering fans, just like the Bruins fans had been for 40 years. They Didn’t riot, they accepted sucking gracefully, and when they lost Stanley cups final series, they accepted defeat gracefully.
And that’s what we need to do.
On Sunday night, whether we win or lose, let’s accept it gracefully. If we win, let’s remain humble in victory, and should we lose, let us praise the other team for their hard work.
And let’s not think this analogy only applies to sport.
Chris
PS last week I watched the All Blacks win against Australia in Morroco. Watching the game were 4 Englishmen, two Frenchmen and a couple of others. Without exception. all of them were cheering for Australia to win. After the game I asked them why, as neutral supporters they would cheer for Australia. The answer came back, New Zealanders are bad losers and bad winners. Bad winners because when the All Blacks win, the nation says – phewf, we knew we were going to win, and we did. Yay. And when we lose we say, damn, we played bad, we were better, but we just couldn’t pull it together on the day. The ref was bad, the pitch was bad – any excuse not to give credit to the opposition. This was obviously so etched into their brains that it turned them off supporting the All Blacks.
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