For credibility's sake guys, let's be careful about the
"conspiracy" stuff. While it seems very unlikely this decision is
directed and intended to hurt football, it is entirely possible
Peters and Clark and playing a game of political oneupmanship with
Bainimarama (which incidentally he has won hands down this time)
and that football was the unfortunate sandwich in the middle. It is
also entirely possible these politicians would not have played the
same game (e.g. decided to use such a broad definition
of "family") if it had been a certain other code.
So, certainly no harm in us asking the hard questions:
- What discretion did Winston Peters exercise in making this
decision? (he has done his best to suggest this was very cut and
dry, but it actually seems there was room within the sanctions for
the Government to have given the goalkeeper a visa if it wanted
to)
- Was there a precedent for this definition of family? (is it
written down somewhere that the family of partners are to be
included in the sanctions?)
- What advice did Peters receive from his officials about the
consequences of this decision? Did they tell him Fifa would never
permit this bc of the precedent it would sit? (Peters is relying
heavily on the apparent Fifa U-turn to justify his decision. But,
is that just a red herring and argument of convenience?)
- Did the Sevens team and the women's basketball team get
scrutinised? (its hard to believe nobody in that Sevens squad had
not extended family link to the military)
- Will the netball team also be similarly scrutinised?
- Is the Government going to reimburse NZ football? (Whatever
peters says about the differences between the NZ cricket/zimbabwe
situation and this one, there are also many, many fundamental
similarities - ie a specific govt policy directed at a specific
country has cost NZ sport millions of dollars and there was nothing
at all the code could do about it)
- Is the sanction consistent with that of Australia? (Peters
keep saying our sanctions are in line with international
practice. In that case how can we possibly play the game in
Australia, who are also supposed to have sanctions against
Fiji?)
