I'm beginning to wonder - in the sense of bizarre coaching and selection decisions and a general air of cluelessness - that both the Football Ferns and the White Ferns are basket cases. Are our other national women's teams in similar conditions?
Black Ferns had similar issues prior to the world cup, Wayne Smith ended up taking over. Seems to be a common issue for some reason.
I've said this to many people before, but it's worth repeating. This isnt NZ female sports thing in any way. It's happening globally, the US womens football team for one. Recently it seem to be big in women's sports, as they transition from the semi-pro to actual pro (full time) players. I'm not sure whether its just players becoming bolder and their expectations of environment and training/coaching not being met, or just simply a bunch of older (male) coaches being too pushy and bossy/mean with players who they see as just young girls. Eitherway it has coincided with the push for equal pay for female athletes and therefore increased attention being paid to their sports as sponsors and fans are paying more attention. It's probably a combo of all of the above, but at the ends of the day I think we have a lot of young-ish female sports stars who are finding their voices and some are taking it too far and forming clicks within squads to get what they want. The management of these kinds of things has been poorly handled by clubs/franchises and international organisations.
I'm not sure if this kind of thing occurred when professionalism hit male sprts teams, but maybe i wasnt aware of it happening?
It is true that it's very much a global thing but the Ferns seem to have some deep cultural issues. Someone I know played with someone who has been in the Ferns camp relatively recently (obviously not gonna name names) and their experience was that it was full of cliques and there was a lot of outright bullying, especially towards new players. By this account Satchell copped a lot of it (she's not the source of this story though).
There does seem to be some unique cultural rot in this team and anyone who's experienced this in their own workplace knows how hard this is to change.
Asolutely agree there are definately some "cool kid" cliques in that group, who are clearly trying to run the joint. Whilst i dont think Klimkova was the right person for the job, I dont think it would be an easy environment to find success in with all those personalities already running things. You'd hope that as the older players move on that this might change a bit?
Typically, in international football you'll be numbered 1-23 (or however many are in the squad), however you'll see fringe Ferns players wearing 29 or whatever (eg Fraser wearing 28 or Kitching wearing 29). This makes it quite clear who is 'fringe' versus 'core' and shows a bit of 'us' versus 'them' - to me at least - where senior players don't appear to want newer players wearing 'their' number, even when not there, so they remain unused.
This isn't something you see in the All Whites, for example, if Wood isn't there you'll have Ben Waine/Max Mata etc. wearing number 9; if anyone would have 'their' shirt number reserved when away it would be Wood, yet it doesn't happen.
It's not cost, as it costs just as much to print name and number either way, so it has to be conscious decision to make them explicitly stand out as not 'among the regulars'.