Two previous posts have discussed the missed opportunity to change the sport of swimming. Instead of a revolution Swimming New Zealand (SNZ) delivered more of the same old, same old. Instead of Vladimir Lenin we got Mary Francis Poppins. It is fine for me to be critical but legitimate criticism requires the critic to put forward an alternative; to say this is what was wrong and this is what should have been done instead. This post will attempt to address the question of what Gary Francis didn’t do but should have done.

Several years ago SNZ had a brilliant motto. It said, “Excellence in every pool”. I can already hear the laughter from Antares Place. “You can’t have excellence in every pool,” I hear them say. “Of course you have to be selective. Of course you have to be targeted,” they chortle away to themselves. And their belief in the policy of exclusion led SNZ to the formation of the famous Francis Points Table – invented by a Francis’ university friend at a cost of how much to Swimming New Zealand? I’d love to find out.

But of course, a policy of inclusion is needed, not a policy of exclusion as is common to both the old SNZ Centralised Training program and the new Francis Plan. “Excellence in every pool” is both possible and essential to the success of SNZ. Let’s deal with those two words separately – possible and essential.

It is possible because the business of SNZ is not all that big. Especially after the most recent eight years, the business is, at best, a medium size corporation. The table below shows a comparison of the size of SNZ with the size of some well-known New Zealand corporations.

So what are we to make of those figures? As you can see SNZ is a lot smaller than the supermarket owner, Progressive Enterprises. Smaller that Air New Zealand, McDonald’s, Fonterra and about the same employee base as Spark, BNZ and the Alliance meat company. It seems to me to be pretty obvious that if McDonald’s, the BNZ and Progressive can expect the same standard of service from all their outlets SNZ should be able to do the same. I’m sure the Countdown Store on Waiheke Island is expected to deliver the same customer service as their Remuera Branch. If they can do it why can’t SNZ? I’m certain the bank teller in BNZ Wairoa is as well trained and customer friendly as the one in BNZ North Shore. If the BNZ can do it why can’t SNZ? I had a Big Mac in Huntly a week ago and it was just as good, just as promptly delivered as in Queen Street, Auckland or in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia or even the leisurely US Virgin Islands. If McDonald’s can deliver their best around the world SNZ should be able to do the same thing in New Zealand. “Excellence in every pool” is possible. Dozens of organizations are doing it, or its equivalent, in businesses throughout the country every day. They don’t need some mathematical genius to calculate a table of which branch should perform well and which should be left to waste away. Only Gary Francis would do that. But then McDonald’s, BNZ and Progressive are well managed. The same cannot be said for SNZ.

Therein lies the rub. “Excellence in every pool” is possible but it requires good management. What Francis wants is the easy and lazy option – identify early talent and to hell with the “flowers, born to blush unseen”. Late developers may be hard work but are often the most rewarding. Remember the US study that found that all but four of the US Olympic swim team were late developers. The Francis’ tables would, most likely, have missed most of that team.

And so while dozens of New Zealand companies implement principles of “Excellence in every pool” everyday it is a strategy probably beyond SNZ. Fault for that lies in the inadequacy of Franicis, Johns and Cotterill. However, having established that “Excellence in every pool” is possible, why is it important? Why is it a hundred times more important than the Francis’ elitist policy of exclusion?

Well the first very practical reason is the vast number of New Zealand’s best athletes who come from small towns. Lydiard believed that the reason was because of their healthier, tougher lifestyle. Whatever the reason, the facts do seem to support the small-town theory. There is Jack Lovelock from Reefton, Peter Snell from Opunake, Murray Halberg from Eketahuna,  Toni Jeffs from Whakatane, Moss Burmester from Hastings, Lisa Carrington from Ohope Beach and Peter Burling from Tauranga. Representatives from small town New Zealand are simply not common in swimming. I hate to imagine the waste of talent that has occurred by the SNZ neglect of small towns. When was the last time anyone from Antares Place paid any attention to what was happening in the pool at Wairoa or Taumaranui or Waiouru. The problem with the Francis Plan is that the ridiculously academic points table is going to do nothing to capture the talent that abounds in rural New Zealand.

And finally the hard work required to ensure every New Zealander is offered the chance to excel is good in its own right. New Zealanders born outside the boundaries of the Capital or United Clubs are no less deserving of the chance to shine. SNZ has a duty to the least of these – not just the Wholefood’s Coffee Shop set. The arrogance of the SNZ Francis plan is nauseating in the extreme and it is bound to fail. “Excellence in every pool” is the future. Francis needs to wake up and then catch up.