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.