The following email has been received today from Gary Francis, the new Swimming New Zealand Targeted Athlete and Coach Manager. I have copied it below.

Gary’s message makes good reading. With two reservations I agree with the principles he describes. For the most part his preliminary explanation is what Swimming New Zealand should have been doing for the last fifteen years. Gary accurately reflects the role of a national federation. Swimming New Zealand had no business being involved in delivering high performance training. They have a major role in assisting private enterprise clubs perform that role. Instead Swimming New Zealand chose to pour $25million into their own training program and worked assiduously to strip clubs of their best swimmers. The destruction caused by the national federation was catastrophic. It should never be forgotten that two generations of the county’s most talented swimmers were lost in Swimming New Zealand’s unfortunate experiment.

My first reservation arises from this quote taken from Gary’s email:

Mat Woofe will continue to coach the squad that currently swims out of that centre. The National Training Centre (NTC) will still be a good option for certain swimmers, depending on their individual needs and circumstances.

That decision will make a lie of everything Gary Francis will ever do. While that state sponsored competitive swim program exists in any form, all that Steve Johns has done, by employing Gary Francis, is put a smile on the face of the assassin. Behind all the words Gary uses to describe his national focus on all New Zealand clubs, there lurks the spectre of a federation run and sponsored training program offering free coaching. Already Gary is calling it a “good option”. He has written his first advertisement for a Swimming New Zealand swim program that competes unfairly with North Shore, Waterhole, United and every other club in the country. The potential for Swimming New Zealand to rape clubs of their best swimmers remains. Gary’s words mean nothing while the Swimming New Zealand program exists. It needs to be closed and the swimmers and the coach absorbed into a normal North Shore or United club swim program. I think it is a fair to say that while Swimming New Zealand attempts to have a foot in both camps Gary Francis should receive no cooperation from any club in New Zealand. Gary is either promoting the national club program or he is a front for the Swimming New Zealand’s squad. He cannot be both.   

My second reservation stems from the history of Swimwatch. The early motivation for Swimwatch was to highlight the dangerous futility of Swimming New Zealand’s centralized training program. For twelve years Swimwatch asked Swimming New Zealand to do what Gary describes in his email. In that time Swimming New Zealand staff worked strenuously to undermine me and my opinion. Clubs were ordered to remove Swimwatch from their link’s page. The Federation Chairman used his annual report to attack my credibility and the views expressed in Swimwatch. He said, “The credibility the opinions of these bloggers deserve is clear; absolutely none.” One “johnny-come-lately” OAP Facebook commentator said the views on Swimwatch were too negative. I have received lawyer’s letters demanding posts be removed. They never have been. Numerous swimming people have told me they never read Swimwatch and then quote posts word for word to explain why my views are wrong. Statcounter analytics tells me the average unique visits, since Swimwatch was first published in November 2006, is 131 per day from 28 countries.

I am sure readers will understand when I say that years of this abuse have an effect. When good things happen it is difficult to avoid being suspicious. So many times before, especially in 2011 reform has been promised. So many promises have come to nothing. So often the ambition of Swimming New Zealand bureaucrats has trumped doing what is right. So many people with little understanding of elite sport have had too much influence. The decision of Swimming New Zealand to keep its own training program open only adds to that suspicion. I do hope this is not another disappointment.

But let’s be positive and enjoy what Gary Francis is offering. Let’s take him at his word. The long night might be coming to an end. Or to quote Churchill, because that’s the way I feel just now, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

But Gary – get rid of that swim program.

Here is his email.

Hi Coaches

 Although I already know many of you I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself in my new role at Swimming New Zealand, as ‘Targeted Athlete and Coach Manager’.

It’s a position I’m very excited about, as I feel it can make a hugely positive difference for New Zealand swimmers and coaches, and help develop our sport overall.

 Firstly, let me say what the new role is not! I am not replacing the former Head Performance Coach, Jerry Olszweski. Swimming New Zealand are not looking to seek a replacement for Jerry, or anyone in a similar role for the present time. The HP centre at AUT Millennium will now become the National Training Centre, and Mat Woofe will continue to coach the squad that currently swims out of that centre. There will no longer be a drive to recruit swimmers to a centralised programme that receives all of the funding and support provision. The National Training Centre (NTC) will still be a good option for certain swimmers, depending on their individual needs and circumstances. The NTC will play a much bigger role as a training and testing centre for regional based swimmers and coaches and become the main hub for coach development, and I hope that coaches throughout the country will see the centre as a source of support.

My role is already evolving(!), but the action plan for how it will work will be finalised over the next few weeks. Steve Johns (CEO), and myself will then set up a series of presentations across the country to explain the revised HP strategy that includes the ‘Targeted Athlete and Coach’ programme. How this integral programme operates will be clearly laid out during those presentations.

What I can say now is that the role will help to develop better individual support for both the targeted swimmers and coaches, give more direction in what performance targets and standards are required to produce world class swimmers and coaches, help develop more integration and sharing of skills and knowledge, and I hope it will encourage our whole community to strive for better performance expectations at every level.

 As I said earlier, I’m very excited by the challenge ahead and look forward to working with you all. I know there will be a million plus questions that need to be asked and answered, and hopefully many of those can be when Steve and I meet with each regional group in the next few weeks.  

I imagine Swimming New Zealand knows what it’s doing. I hope Swimming New Zealand knows what it’s doing. It is just that, from the outside, it looks like the expression “Couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery” was invented for them. Unbelievably Steve Johns is paid about $150,000 a year and delivers a shambles.

The “piss-up” in this instance is the activity Swimming New Zealand jokingly refers to as High Performance. Remember this is the organization that could only qualify two swimmers for individual events at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Only one of the qualifiers trains in the Swimming New Zealand program. The other found refuge and good coaching 8000 miles away in Florida.

I can’t help but remember when Gary Hurring and I were responsible for the BGI Club in Wellington. Our club qualified two swimmers for the Auckland Commonwealth Games; Michelle Burke and Toni Jeffs. Now that number is all that the whole country can manage.

And so individually New Zealand currently has two senior international swimmers. Ten other swimmers are going to the Gold Coast to swim in relays. Now here is the part I don’t understand. Looking after the twelve swimmers, only one of whom they actually coach, Swimming New Zealand will shortly have an office staff of five; Steve Johns the CEO, Gary Francis the Targeted Athlete and Coach Manager, Amanda White the High Performance Logistics and Operations Manager, Mathew Woofe the High Performance Coach Intern and a new person, whose job has been advertised today, called the High Performance Logistics and Operations Coordinator.

I thought Swimming New Zealand was getting out of High Performance swimming. They tried it for fifteen years and failed. It seems that “getting out” has a novel meaning in Swimming New Zealand. Five employees to do what? To do administration for twelve swimmers! The same ratio of administrators to swimmers would require USA Swimming to employ a High Performance office staff of 23. USA Swimming actually employ little more than half that number; 13.

But there is something else that’s odd. The advertisement for the new High Performance Operations and Logistics Coordinator says that the position will report to the High Performance Manager. But, if you search the Swimming New Zealand staff profiles, there is no position called a High Performance Manager. The position does not exist. My guess is Swimming New Zealand probably mean Amanda White, the High Performance Logistics and Operations Manager. So either the job advertisement is wrong or the Swimming New Zealand website is in serious need of updating. Steve Johns get $150,000 a year to advertise a fictional reporting line. Brilliant.

Because right now, anyone interested in the position, who looks up the website to find out what their new boss looks like, will find their new boss does not exist. At that point, if it was me, I’d start looking for a job somewhere else.

But that is not the only turn-off in the Swimming New Zealand advertisement. The whole of New Zealand knows the management of swimming in the past six years has been appalling. With this in mind, exaggerated claims of inspirational swimmers, exciting the nation, exceptional results and promoting growth, make the sport look ridiculous. Padding your resume is never a good idea. A little humility would not be amiss. Besides which anyone who does not already realize the fraud of those claims will know, for sure, within five minutes of being employed.

I see the applicant is required to have a high level of computer literacy and an exceptional grasp of the English language. That will make him or her unique at 14 Antares Place. Even the last six sentences of the “Selection Criteria” in the advertisement have six typo errors – and that is not exceptional.

But I guess the thing that annoys me most is that Swimming New Zealand can employ someone who is effectively just a high performance secretary, doing the bidding of Johns and White and at the same time sack coal-face workers like Donna Bouzaid and Gary Hurring. It seems like there is plenty of money to keep 14 Antares Place in the manner to which it has become accustomed. But to hell with anything that costs money out on the pool deck. Johns and White should do some hard graft instead of employing additional staff.

And so if by some chance you are a Swimwatch reader and are looking for a new job. If you are interested in applying for this position my recommendation is that you continue your search somewhere else. Don’t touch this position with a ten foot barge pole.

Two previous Swimwatch posts have compared the performance of Swimming New Zealand in 2011 and 2017. The comparison also considered how Swimming New Zealand had performed in comparison to New Zealand Athletics, Rugby and Netball.

The results were stunning. In every performance measure Swimming New Zealand was seriously worse in 2017 than it was in 2011. In competitive results, in membership numbers and in income, swimming is poorer now than it was six years ago. Athletics, Rugby and Netball however grew and prospered through the same years.

The Swimwatch posts used these devastating figures to support three recommendations.

1. A change to the SNZ Board and management responsible for the poor performance.
2. A call on delegates at the Annual Meeting to vastly improve their oversight of the organization’s performance.
3. A call for a more democratic and transparent Constitution.

In this post I want to focus on the poor performance of Regional delegates. At each Annual Meeting these individuals have a key duty to monitor the performance of the Swimming New Zealand Board and management. Some delegates have been attending Annual Meetings from 2011 through to 2017. In my opinion these long term delegates; people like John Mace, Mark Berge, Simon Perry, Bronwen Radford, Keith Bone, Dianne Farmer, Stephen Fryer, Wayne Rollinson and Neville Sutton have fiddled while Rome has burned. Some of the delegates consider themselves to be pretty knowledgeable and important in the world of swimming. Some even accept awards for outstanding administration. And yet their service in swimming appears to have been a sham. For six years swimming piled failure upon failure. Their duty as delegates was to hold those responsible to account. And, in my opinion, they did nothing.

Let’s consider some of the things they should have done but didn’t.

1. The Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, and CEO, Steve Johns, reported the following to the Annual Meeting.

The 2016/17 year can be best described as a year of disruption. We have had a number of changes in our executive and management team including a new National Head Coach and CEO. We have also suffered a significant reduction in funding from High Performance Sport NZ which in turn led to the disestablishment of two senior roles within the High Performance team.

That is a pretty horrifying list. Swimming New Zealand’s entire coaching team leaves or is sacked. The CEO departs and the organizations main source of funds pulls the plug. But of more concern is the fact that Cotterill and Johns reported the disasters without providing any explanation as to why they happened or what they intended to do about it. The only thing worse than the list of disasters is that delegates never asked for an explanation of why and what solutions were being actioned. For events this serious Cotterill and Johns should have been asked to explain and ordered to publish the explanation.

2. The Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, and CEO, Steve Johns, reported the following to the Annual Meeting.

On the positive side, the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio saw New Zealand Swimming represented by a team of 9 swimmers, three swimmers achieved personal bests.

Since when is three PBs from nine swimmers, competing in sixteen races, at an Olympic Games been a “positive side”? Maybe to Johns and Cotterill that’s positive, but administrators like Sutton, Bone, Radford and Berge know that a 19% ratio of PBs at an Olympic Games is terrible. But did they tell Cotterill and Johns that this was not positive news? Did they demand an explanation? Did they ask why? No they did not. And that is why we have the sport we deserve.

3. The Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, and CEO, Steve Johns, reported the following to the Annual Meeting.

The reduction of charity gaming income remains a challenge and has put significant pressure on our business particularly our education business. We continue to search for new commercial income as a high priority going forward. We need to shore-up and secure new funding streams as a matter of priority.

Here again Cotteill and Johns announce a real disaster; commercial and government funding has been cut to ribbons. Wringing their hands in despair, they go on to state the obvious – Swimming New Zealand needs more money. They should have been asked, “money from where?” Telling the delegates the problem without providing a specific solution is not good enough. In my opinion the Cotterill and Johns’ report shows scant regard for the reporting process. They get away with it because they know the delegates will let them.      

4. The Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, and CEO, Steve Johns, reported the following to the Annual Meeting.

The aggregate remuneration of key management personnel and the number of individuals receiving remuneration is as follows. Total Remuneration 2017 – $311,000, 2016 – $275,000 Number of persons 2.

At a time when Cotterill admits that funding the business is a real problem. He said, SNZ is in desperate need of more money. At a time when membership numbers are falling. At a time when competitive results are of such concern that the government’s funding is seriously cut. With all that going on the wages of Johns and Carroll increased by 11%. Even if the split is 50/50 they are paid $135,500 each. Is that level of pay justified by the results? I don’t think so. Gary Hurring and Donna Bouzaid got sacked so that two office bureaucrats could be paid $36,000 more. That is an order of priorities that the delegates should have demanded that Cotterill and Johns explain – but didn’t.

5. The Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, and CEO, Steve Johns, reported the following to the Annual Meeting.

An astonishing 49 New Zealand swimming records were broken between July 2016 – June 2017, including six open records and forty three age group records.

Forty-nine records is far from astonishing. In fact as far back as I can go I am unable to find a year in which fewer national records were broken. This report by Cotterill and Johns is spin. In my opinion the claim is misleading the membership. Any executive that does that deserves to be seriously reprimanded. But the delegates representing the Regions let it slide. The deception of the claim is matched only by the delegate’s negligence.

6. And finally the Chairman, Bruce Cotterill, and CEO, Steve Johns, report to the the Annual Meeting contains the superlatives shown in the table below.

And it means nothing. How can Cotterill and Johns be looking for thriving clubs when their policy of centralization stripped New Zealand clubs and coaching bare? How can they be interested in international podium results when their coaching policies have made that impossible? Just ask Lauren Boyle. How can they be interested in a strong and sustainable organisation when they have governed over a decline in income, a decline in membership and poor international results? But did the delegates to the Annual Meeting ask Cotterill and Johns to explain this nonsense? No they did not.

At the beginning of this post there are three recommendations. It is fair to say that the Cotterill and Johns’ report to the Annual Meeting confirms the validity of the recommendations. I just wish we had delegates with the courage to do what is needed to fix this shambles.

 EKR – We had some adventures together

This February is the thirty-fourth anniversary of a pretty memorable day. In 1984 I was the Managing Director of the animal by-products trading company, Colyer Watsons. We traded in sheep skins, cattle hides, tallow, meat and bone meal and casings. The company had offices and factories in nine New Zealand towns and sales offices in Australia and Japan.

To get around our New Zealand locations I flew myself in a Piper Arrow, EKR. It was a lovely little airplane, fully IFR, fast and easy to fly. It could also land in minor airports such as Taumaranui, Stratford, Bridge Pa and Levin. In five years we flew a little over 500 hours together.

On 3 February I spent the morning in our Auckland office and was due to fly back to Wellington in order to attend a meeting with the management of the Stratford tannery. It was a lovely day. I filed a visual flight rules flight plan, completed the pre-flight inspection and called Auckland tower for permission to taxi. I was soon lined up on runway 23 and received clearance to take-off.

Flying has many enjoyable moments but the one that thrills me most is the instant that the airplane leaves the ground. Done well and the airplane seems to want to fly itself. Very little control input is required as the airplane searches for the freedom to fly. As I climbed up over Manukau Harbour and turned south I called Auckland air traffic control and requested clearance to climb to 9000 feet. I was aware there was a lot of low cloud in the centre of the North Island. At 9000 feet I would be above the cloud which seemed a much better option than dodging around below the cloud.

Auckland control approved my plan and soon I was comfortably settled in at 9000 feet, with the auto-pilot set to take me to the Ohura Beacon outside of Wanganui. It is a wonderful feeling, cruising along at a comfortable 140 knots, sitting above the clouds, clear blue sky all around; just you alone with your lovely little airplane.

An hour or so latter I crossed the Ohura Beacon and called Ohakea air traffic control to tell them where I was and when I expected to be in Wellington. That done I relaxed before planning my descent towards Wellington Airport.

But then I noticed something strange. The front window was all murky like we were flying through cloud and yet the side windows were nothing but clear blue sky. I checked the instruments. They were all fine. Why then was the windscreen clouding over?

I peered through the gloom and finally saw the problem. Oozing out of the constant speed unit that drives the propeller was a thick stream of oil. I looked back at the oil pressure gauge and sure enough, as I watched, the pressure steadily fell to zero. I pulled the power back in the hope of saving the engine and began a descent towards Wanganui Airport. I called Ohakea to explain the problem and my change of plan. I avoided using the emergency call, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” That would only serve to scare me. Besides which the Scottish accent at Ohakea Control seemed to be well aware that things were not going to plan.

I must have been descending toward the top of the clouds for only a minute or so before there was a loud bang and then silence; no engine, no comfortably turning propeller; EKR had become a glider. The real problem was I was still above the cloud and had no idea where the bottom of the cloud would end and the top of the hills would begin. Not much point in worrying about that. There was no option but to glide down through the clouds and hope I would still have enough height to find somewhere to land.

That part of the country, north of Wanganui, is called the Paraparas and is notoriously hilly. Even if I had plenty of height, finding a field big enough to land was going to take a lot of luck. The glide through the cloud took forever but finally we were in the clear with 3000 feet to find a place to put this thing down.

I turned the airplane gently to better inspect the ground. And there right below me was a flat field that looked big enough to get a Piper Arrow into. I told the Scottish accent that I had found a field and was going to attempt to land. The voice replied, “Roger echo kilo romeo, please call finals.” Please call finals, I thought! I’m landing in a field with no engine, not Auckland International Airport. It was only later that I appreciated the “normal” procedures he was insisting were followed.

As the field got closer I came in higher than a normal landing. The last thing I wanted was to hit the trees, the power lines or the fence around my paddock. I selected the landing gear down and was relieved to see three green lights. At least we had wheels. Everything looked good. Just stay alive, I thought; just stay alive. Speed was good at 65 knots, height was good, this might just work. “Echo kilo romeo, on finals,” I told the Scottish accent.

“Roger echo kilo romeo,” came the reply, “Good luck.” Ah, there was a heart there after all.

A minute later we were safely down. It was actually one of my better landings. Mind you I was trying pretty hard at that moment. The field was planted in ripe barley that helped stop the airplane without needing to use the brakes.

It is almost impossible to describe the feeling of peace in those first few moments sitting in the barley field. “Made it” doesn’t really get close to describing the feeling of quiet, personal, relief. All those hours of forced landing practice had worked. The satisfaction was huge.

Some of the barley that got into my shoes as I walked away from the airplane.

 Three hours later the owner of the barley field had driven me to Wanganui Airport and Associated Aviation had picked me up and flown me to Wellington. I arrived in my office fifteen minutes late for the Stratford meeting. One of my colleagues said, “What’s your excuse for being late, David?”

With some justification I said, “Arthur, if I told you, you’d never believe me.”

Oh, and after the barley was cut, the Piper Arrow was fitted with a new engine and was flown out of the paddock. Evidently an oil pipe, that takes oil from the engine to the propeller constant speed unit, had fractured. A month later echo kilo romeo and I were again wandering around New Zealand. Happy anniversary.

The previous Swimwatch post compared the performance of Swimming New Zealand in 2011 and in 2017. In 2011 we all thought things at Swimming New Zealand were in pretty bad shape. However since then membership has gone down by a further 24.9% and income has dropped by 14.7%. That performance is made worse when one considers that in the same period the population of New Zealand has increased by 8.5%. There are 405,700 more New Zealanders that could have joined a swimming club, but didn’t.

The Swimwatch post used those devastating figures to support three recommendations.

1. A change to the SNZ Board and management responsible for the poor performance.
2. A call on delegates at the Annual Meeting to vastly improve their oversight of the organization’s performance.
3. A call for a more democratic and transparent Constitution.

After I published the post I began to wonder whether the rush to judge the Swimming New Zealand Board, the organization’s management and the Annual Meeting delegates had been hasty and harsh. Perhaps there were circumstances that meant losing 24.9% of the membership was a good result. Perhaps there were events that meant a drop in income of 14.7% was better than we had any right to expect. In difficult times perhaps Johns and Cotterill have done sterling work to hold swimming’s losses to these numbers. After all I had read a Steve Johns’ report where he explained that holding members and income was getting increasingly difficult. Young people had many more new activities to choose from. Swimming was no longer competing, he said, with other traditional sports, but today faced competition from a wide range of new activities. Did Johns’ opinion have validity or was it just an excuse to explain why membership numbers at his previous sport, tennis, and now at swimming were showing a steady decline?

One way of checking whether swimming was part of a problem affecting all traditional New Zealand sports was to prepare a comparison. The most obvious traditional sport to use was track and field athletics. Here was another well-established individual sport. Along with swimming, athletics is also a principal Olympic sport. The table below shows how swimming compares with track and field athletics in membership and income between the years 2011 and 2017. To improve the comparison I have also added the number of competitors who qualified for individual events at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

What the table shows is that membership in athletics rose very slightly. Income was up by a huge 56.5% probably because of the Olympic success of Walsh, McCartney, Adams and Willis. Individual qualifiers for the Commonwealth Games increased by 4, (36.4%). With the possible exception of static membership numbers things in New Zealand track and field look in pretty good shape. Athletics appears to have found an answer to Steve Johns’ new competing activities. Or perhaps athletics is a better managed business.

On the other hand, swimming is down, down, down. For the first time in history fewer New Zealanders now swim than take part in track and field athletics. In addition to the drop in membership and income, individual qualifiers for the Commonwealth Games have dropped from 12 in Delhi to 2 on the Gold Coast.

On the basis of this comparison with athletics it looks as though the last Swimwatch post was not too harsh. The swimming performance is dreadful. And Steve Johns’ other activities excuse is looking pretty hollow when athletics can more than hold its own in exactly the same environment. Steve Johns has been CEO of two sports, tennis and swimming, that have experienced falling membership numbers. He would do well to find out why and do something about it before he is the only one left at the National Training Centre.

New Zealand’s two premier and most traditional of sports are rugby and netball. Out of interest I thought I would prepare a comparison of membership numbers and income in these sports between 2011 and 2017. If the Steve Johns’ argument, that traditional sports were struggling because of computer games and skateboard parks, had any validity surely these two most traditional sports would be feeling the pinch. Here is the comparison.

But no, rugby and netball are doing just fine. Membership is up and the income of both sports has shown massive increases. Swimming, it seems, is way out-of-step with other New Zealand sports. And there can only be one excuse. In my opinion the Board of swimming, the management of swimming and the delegates to the Annual Meeting have performed badly. No other factor can explain why athletics, netball and rugby can grow and prosper and swimming cannot. I never thought the day would come when more people wanted to run, jump and throw than go for a swim. But that’s where we are at today. It’s a very sad state of affairs.

The recommendations made in the previous Swimwatch post have been tested against three traditional New Zealand sports. The shortcomings of swimming’s management have been exposed and are confirmed. The three recommendations stand.

1. A change to the SNZ Board and management responsible for the poor performance.
2. A call on delegates at the Annual Meeting to vastly improve their oversight of the organization’s performance.
3. A call for a more democratic and transparent Constitution.