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Kidwell you muppet

Iafeta

Referee
Messages
24,357
Yep. That would have an apocalyptic disaster. The Marae thing, the training HIIT methods that oppose all common training beliefs, what a headstrong, moronic goose. Staggered he wasn't instantly dismissed after Wellington. NZRL must be dirt poor if they kept him on because they couldn't afford a payout.
 

spear tackle

Juniors
Messages
1,176
Maybe that's why many of the players had an apparent couldn't care less attitude , they were just glad the whole nightmare had finished
 

BLN2

Juniors
Messages
383
I can't believe the boys slept in a Marae on sponge mattresses, with 30 other people leading up to the tournament. What are they, on a primary school camp?? Crazy stuff. And then old boys sleeping somewhere else, it just goes against the whole idea of being united. Also turning down the practice game is just losing the entire picture.

Maori culture is fine, but to focus so heavily on that is crazy when we are talking about top level sports. That manager sounds odd..
 

KeepingTheFaith

Referee
Messages
25,235
Not to mention the portion of the NZ team who weren't even Maori.

Surely team bonding and unity would involve all the different cultures and what they mean to the NZ team.

Or you know....just focus on winning games.
 
Messages
12,362
I'm not surprised, and I kind of expected that this Maorifying of the team was going on. Sure it makes for a good haka, but he's alienated our islanders who now don't want to play for us, as well as our pakeha boys (esp Mannering). Not good at all.

Kidwell could go down as one of the most important figures in International RL history, but not because of any good he's done. He may have caused irreparable damage to our jersey, and caused future generations of NZ islanders to play for the island nations.

I wouldn't want to spend 3 days at a marae on a mattress, and I'm Maori.

The question is, what do we do now? I'd be hiring Bluey McLennan back ASAP and giving him carte blanche.
 

ZEROMISSTACKLES

First Grade
Messages
8,666
He may have caused irreparable damage to our jersey, and caused future generations of NZ islanders to play for the island nations.
As soon as the news broke out that Taumalolo was leaving us to play for Tonga, I immediately posted on here about possible implications for others to follow suit. A few days later, Fusitua and the rest of them followed JT to Tonga. This an area of concern because of its potential to lessen the value of the kiwi jersey in the eyes of our P.Is people.
 

playdaball

Bench
Messages
3,525
To be fair, he's not the first Kiwi coach to take them to a Marae. Howie Tamati did it and the results in 1993 in England were terrible.
 

Iafeta

Referee
Messages
24,357
To be fair, he's not the first Kiwi coach to take them to a Marae. Howie Tamati did it and the results in 1993 in England were terrible.

Looking at some of the names in that Kiwis squad though, it did look more skewed to Maori footballers. Over the past 10-15 years there appears to be a real explosion of Polynesian talent in the NRL. Gut feel only, it feels like it's flipped on its head.

Interesting how many players in that squad were from the local comp and then into the Lion Red Cup. I really enjoyed the LRC as a young fella, loved Hitro Okesene in that comp. He absolutely blew my mind.
 

Iafeta

Referee
Messages
24,357
I'm not surprised, and I kind of expected that this Maorifying of the team was going on. Sure it makes for a good haka, but he's alienated our islanders who now don't want to play for us, as well as our pakeha boys (esp Mannering). Not good at all.

Kidwell could go down as one of the most important figures in International RL history, but not because of any good he's done. He may have caused irreparable damage to our jersey, and caused future generations of NZ islanders to play for the island nations.

I wouldn't want to spend 3 days at a marae on a mattress, and I'm Maori.

The question is, what do we do now? I'd be hiring Bluey McLennan back ASAP and giving him carte blanche.

Yep. I reckon he's potentially put NZRL back 10 years. Assuming Mau, Fusitua, Taumalolo, et all decided to go to Tonga because they felt ostracised by the camps Kidwell ran, and assuming they never return, fact is JT is absolutely a one in a generation player and a huge loss. SST is a star and Fusitua has a huge upside. Who knows as well how many potential Kiwis then join Tonga over the next generation.

Have to think there's something to it. Taumalolo was in the official advertising with the NZ flag. His decision was obviously very late. I wonder whether he threw the towel in once they found out what the plan was. It then would be a simple domino effect on the other blokes.

HIIT sounds bizarre in its timing. In the sense that HIIT you generally don't do before strength training because it depletes your energy. It's a workout that keeps burning post workout. All the sports teams I see generally adopt a captains run type mentality just before the match because your body needs to recover in time and mend prior to big physical impacts.

It doesn't surprise me to hear this. Just because of how often the Kiwis were dominated in the tackle. There was no real leg drive. The other teams seemed to be getting off the line much quicker than us and dominated momentum.

It just sounds like he is completely and utterly incompetent. I have to wonder how on earth there was no one reviewing what he was up to. Why was no one questioning the plan? I mean hell, staff slept off the marae floor because they couldn't sleep in that environment but they kept putting the players through it? That in itself is disgraceful. There's an old saying. Don't ask your team to do what you aren't willing to do.
 

ZEROMISSTACKLES

First Grade
Messages
8,666
Well this coaching guesswork from Kidwell explains why we lost to Fiji, Tonga and drew with Scotland. The only positive is that it wasn't entirely the players fault. Our kiwis was poorly prepared and poorly coached. Now we weren't great when Kidwell took over but we weren't third rate like we have been reduced to now. I don't care about the official rankings, I know exactly where Kidwells kiwis are and its not 2nd.
 

BLN2

Juniors
Messages
383
I can't believe the f*cker hasn't been sacked already.

It's clear certain players like Blair have really bought into the plan, which is fine. But the other 80% would be hating it.
 

Iafeta

Referee
Messages
24,357
It's almost criminal that he didn't resign on the spot, but it speaks either of the NZRL being risk adverse because of poor finance, or being completely incompetent. I understand that they wanted to do a holistic review to get as many learnings possible out of it, but in the immediacy you don't need a review to tell you Kidwell not only failed, but put in place a catastrophic environment and his sacking would be step one towards recovery.

Surely the likes of Taumalolo and co have no intention of rejoining an organisation that tolerates someone who is so blinkered to the other cultures inherent to their system. If Kidwell had have been axed immediately, at least then it may have allowed Taumalolo and the likes to have their say on the wrongs they saw, and perhaps begin to repair that relationship back to reuniting. It's been what, 3 or so months, and I dare say the likes of Kristian Woolf have absolutely used that time to keep polishing the spirit of the Tongan jersey.

It's all heresay at this point I guess but there's a lot of dots being connected it seems.
 

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