Kate Hawkesby: I feel for Ian Foster

Imagine being Ian Foster right now. Worse than being the most hated politician, is being an under fire AB’s coach surely. We seem to be more aggressively passionate about rugby in this country than anything else. Not even the way the country is run, apparently compares to how the AB’s perform, in our eyes. So why are we so harsh? Why are we so invested in how a sports team performs? Is it because for so long our identity as a nation was wrapped up in having a strong rugby team? Did we idolise them and put them on a platform so early on that they became too high on the pedestal. You know how the saying goes – the higher up you are, the further you have to fall. It’s who gets the bulk of the blame I’m interested in though. Everything seems to be falling squarely on the coach’s shoulders. NZRU management and culture took a bit of heat for a while there with a spotlight on how things are being run top down. Players always take a bit of heat if they’ve committed some egregious sin like not kicking or passing the ball properly. But the weight of the country’s anger and disappointment seems to be largely sheeted towards coach Ian Foster. Former coach Steven Hansen recently spoke out about the attacks on Foster, he described social media reactions to him as, "cruel, nasty, malicious, spiteful, vicious, straight out bullying..". And he wasn’t just referring to social media but mainstream media journalists too. The treatment has been savage, so what’s going on with us that there’s such a pile on when we lose rugby games? We tolerate a lot of stuff in this country, but not losing rugby obviously. Which makes the job of coach surely unappealing at this stage, at a time when there’re so many questions about how rugby’s being run. Questions over culture, questions over the structure and support offered by the NZRU. If I was Scott Robertson I’d be having a good long hard think about whether this is something you really want to take on right now. And for the players, it must be so tough for them to feel confident right now, or mentally robust, in the face of such heat. We surely don’t do ourselves any favours as a country when we turn on them and want them lynched. How is that supposed to make them able to perform any better when all of their fan base and supporters suddenly ditch them? I can’t work out if this is just New Zealand’s ugly tall poppy syndrome at play, or whether this level of vitriol is unique to rugby because we feel we have some kind of ownership of the game. Like we all know better or could do better? The armchair pundit is surely the worst kind; it’s pretty easy to sit at home and criticise when you’re not the one in the public eye, in the arena, slugging it out in real time. Yet our collective outrage seems to fuel a truck load of pressure right to the athletes and coach’s feet. Pressure that many of us may not be able to withstand, so why are we so quick to dish it out?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.