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Kahn Fotuali'i for the Crusaders during the match between The Western Force and the Crusaders in Perth on Friday, April 23, 2010. (AAP Image/Tony McDonough)
Andy Haden, the great All Blacks secondrower and general stirrer in rugby matters for a couple of decades, has created a firestorm controversy in New Zealand by claiming that the Crusaders, New Zealand’s most successful Super Rugby franchise, have a policy of imposing a quota on players with a Pacific Island background.
Last week Haden was on a panel with other former All Blacks Chris Laidlaw and Kevin Putt discussing the issue of the ‘browning of the All Blacks.’
Haden claimed the Crusaders had a deliberate policy of restricting the number of Polynesian and Maori players imported into their ranks: ‘Once they’ve recruited three, that’s it. That’s their ceiling. Three darkies … no more … And it’s worked.’
Is this correct?
We’ll pass over the unfortunate use of the word ‘darkies’ and concentrate on the issue of a quota on Maori and Pacific Islander players. The first thing is that there has clearly been no quota on Maori players. In some years there have been more than 10 Maori players in the Crusaders squad. This season there are six Maori players (Tim Bateman, Thomas Waldrom, Kade Poki, Jonathan Poff, Zac Guilford and Isaac Ross), and – what do you know? – three players with a Pacific Islanders background (Kahn Fotuali’i, Robert Fruen and Ti’i Paulo).
The list of Crusaders since 1996 does show that there has never been more than three players with a Pacific Island background in the Crusaders squad.
What does this prove? Nothing in fact. The majority of players in New Zealand with a Pacific Island background, with most of them born in New Zealand, come from Auckland and Wellington. As a consequence the Blues and the Hurricanes have many players, far more than three a season, who have a Pacific Island background.
Let’s probe a bit deeper, though, into this issue. The topic that created the controversy arose out of some comments in a recently published book, Someone Stole My Game (Hodder Moa) written by Chris Laidlaw.
In a chapter entitled, ‘Is Brown the New Black?’ Laidlaw wrote about taking an American friend to see a Hurricanes-Crusaders match.
The friend knew nothing about rugby but he was observant enough to notice, as he told Laidlaw, ‘the smart guys in red beat the dumb guysin yellow.’ The friend went onto observe that the Hurricanes were predominantly Polynesian and the Crusaders were overwhelmingly white. ‘The two things are obviously connected,’ he concluded.
Laidlaw’s comment on this in his book was that it wasn’t a matter of race but of the culture of the Crusaders who ‘so often have a habit of making everybody they play look dumb.’
He then went on to observe that when John Mitchell, a notoriously dictatorial coach, became coach of the All Blacks, he selected an almost Polynesian-free starting lineup, playing 13 Crusaders in one early All Blacks side.
Laidlaw argued that this was not a ‘racist’ selection policy but a calculated attempt ‘to eliminate the instinctive and potentially wayard element from his All Blacks team … Mitchell appeared to be opting for reliability over instinctive brilliance.’
Laidlaw, besides being one of rugby’s great halfbacks, was a Rhodes Scholar, a diplomat as Ambassador to Zimbabwe, MP, head of the NZ WWF and Race Relations Conciliator and now a host of a Philip Adams-type radio program on Sundays.
He coached Fiji to nearly defeat an All Blacks side, and Oxford University to defeat the Springboks. He has studied issues of race since his days at Otago University where he did a M.A. in geography on land issues in Fiji.
He is a renaissance man on rugby and politics. His take on the issue race and rugby, which his book and Haden’s comments have revived, is that notions of prejudice are too easily and often raised when objectivity on the matter is needed. He is totally opposed, he writes, to the notion from ‘a chorus of moronic voices shouting “discrimination!” when the issue of Polynesian players might in some way be different from European.’
Laidlaw argues that it is New Zealand’s ‘point of difference … and the single most important reason why we win more than other countries .. We have the best of both worlds and it is an advantage we should be rather more grateful for.’
I would argue from all of this, therefore, that Haden is probably right when he claims that the Crusaders have a quota on recruiting players of a Pacific Islander background. He is wrong about a Maori quota.
But his critics, which extend up to the Prime Minister, John Key, are also wrong when they accuse him of racism.
The reasoning behind the Crusaders quota (?) has nothing to do with racism or discrimination. It has everything to do with getting the balance of the side right. In Laidlaw’s words, this balance has been created by joining into a team ‘a bunch of white, hardened, pragmatic Pakeha forwards … marshalled by a dictatorial Pakeha halfback or first five-eights and a backline of lightning fast, side-stepping Polynesians …’
When Haden’s critics come to their senses and see that the general thrust of what he says is correct (I’ve been told this same quota story many times in the past from reliable sources), they might like to discuss something else he said on the panel which, in my view, is far more explosive and interesting but has been somehow overlooked.
The problem with the Blues franchise, Haden insists, is that it is ‘divided along religious lines.’ If this is so, why aren’t the relevant authorities getting to grips with this?