The Maori All Whites

Fallon is half isn't he?

The bottom line is- does it matter?

Vaughan Coveney is also part Maori

i'm glad you responded before i did News

I was worried that that kind of Martin Crowe 'analysis' from Oldys#1 would come out

your explanation makes a lot more sense

Vaughan Coveney is also part Maori

Does anyone know where he was born? I know he and Harry Ngata played football for Porirua-Viard before they became Wests, but is he from Porirua or somewhere else?

Why aren't there many Maori cricketers? Probably for the same reasons of technical and mental ability to be profficient at international level as you need to make it in football. Why do Maori lack this in both cricket and football? Noone really knows or has bothered to fully understand it. If there was a report on this it would make something to talk about but its all pretty redundant and not very interesting.

The simple fact is that sports are cultural phenomena. In other words, the cultures you live in and come from are more likely to dictate the sports activities you love and engage in, rather than your particular physical attributes and abilities. While there may be certain physical characteristics prevalent in certain racial makeups (some populations may have more height, greater muscle mass percentages, larger lung capacities etc), these are in fact apparent in certain individuals from every group, but most importantly, are not indicators of sporting ability in themselves - they need to be harnessed, channelled, refined and developed in order to translate into sporting output.

This idea that certain groups are "naturally better" at certain sports is getting into very dangerous territory... and the very best counter to this is football... it is a sport where no one particular body shape, size, race or background has ever given anyone an advantage... if you took, for argument's sake, Maradona, Di Stefano, Pele, Cruyff and Puskas as five of the top players in history, you would see a really wide spectrum...

During my lifetime, at different eras, the best cricket team on earth has been the West Indies, then Pakistan, then Australia... three groups of players with incredibly different physical makeups - but each group came from a culture that was OBSESSED with cricket at the time...

The real reason why Island and Maori kids play rugby and league so much (as far as I could tell when I was teaching in South Auckland) was that they absolutely loved it... they loved playing it, watching it, they talked about it constantly, and they aspired to play it professionally... and I'm talking kids of all shapes and sizes - some you could see were great athletes, and some who really, really weren't... because like ANY population group, they have short, tall, fat, thin, athletic and sedentary people...

None of them said, "Oh well, being Polynesian, I'm naturally disposed to playing rugby so I will..." ... yes, many did say they enjoyed the physicality, the "smashing the other guy"... but a lot of this was down to teenage bravado and their own definitions of being a "hard man" etc.

If you want to get more of ANY group playing any sport in NZ, it's about changing the sporting culture... when people love a sport and are interested in it, more get involved and the cream rises to the top... China for example, has a massive population who love football, but it is only played by the elite sports groups who are selected as little kids - hence their lack of progress... whereas very small countries like Uruguay, where culturally they love football, punch well above their weight...

There are no valid genetic/physical/ethnic reasons why Croatians are good at basketball, Malaysians are good at badminton, Hungarians are good waterpolo players, or why Pakistan used to dominate world squash... the simple fact is, when a sport is popular, you have more chance of getting participants who have certain physical skills/attributes that may suit that sport, if they are developed with a lot of hard work.

Look at it this way - if Jeff Wilson, Dan Carter, Doug Howlett, Anthony Tuitavake had all played football from when they were little kids, they could well have been professional football players... just as Nelsen, Bannatyne, Killen may have been pros in another sport if that's what they had always loved...

Apologies for the long rant, but like I said the idea that certain groups are "naturally better" at sport simply doesn't hold up... yes, some groups have more individuals with certain physical attributes, but this is different from sport... the key in most cases people, with a few obvious exceptions, is culture, not genetics.

Sport is a cultural expression.

The simple fact is that sports are cultural phenomena. In other words, the cultures you live in and come from are more likely to dictate the sports activities you love and engage in, rather than your particular physical attributes and abilities. While there may be certain physical characteristics prevalent in certain racial makeups (some populations may have more height, greater muscle mass percentages, larger lung capacities etc), these are in fact apparent in certain individuals from every group, but most importantly, are not indicators of sporting ability in themselves - they need to be harnessed, channelled, refined and developed in order to translate into sporting output.

This idea that certain groups are "naturally better" at certain sports is getting into very dangerous territory... and the very best counter to this is football... it is a sport where no one particular body shape, size, race or background has ever given anyone an advantage... if you took, for argument's sake, Maradona, Di Stefano, Pele, Cruyff and Puskas as five of the top players in history, you would see a really wide spectrum...

During my lifetime, at different eras, the best cricket team on earth has been the West Indies, then Pakistan, then Australia... three groups of players with incredibly different physical makeups - but each group came from a culture that was OBSESSED with cricket at the time...

The real reason why Island and Maori kids play rugby and league so much (as far as I could tell when I was teaching in South Auckland) was that they absolutely loved it... they loved playing it, watching it, they talked about it constantly, and they aspired to play it professionally... and I'm talking kids of all shapes and sizes - some you could see were great athletes, and some who really, really weren't... because like ANY population group, they have short, tall, fat, thin, athletic and sedentary people...

None of them said, "Oh well, being Polynesian, I'm naturally disposed to playing rugby so I will..." ... yes, many did say they enjoyed the physicality, the "smashing the other guy"... but a lot of this was down to teenage bravado and their own definitions of being a "hard man" etc.

If you want to get more of ANY group playing any sport in NZ, it's about changing the sporting culture... when people love a sport and are interested in it, more get involved and the cream rises to the top... China for example, has a massive population who love football, but it is only played by the elite sports groups who are selected as little kids - hence their lack of progress... whereas very small countries like Uruguay, where culturally they love football, punch well above their weight...

There are no valid genetic/physical/ethnic reasons why Croatians are good at basketball, Malaysians are good at badminton, Hungarians are good waterpolo players, or why Pakistan used to dominate world squash... the simple fact is, when a sport is popular, you have more chance of getting participants who have certain physical skills/attributes that may suit that sport, if they are developed with a lot of hard work.

Look at it this way - if Jeff Wilson, Dan Carter, Doug Howlett, Anthony Tuitavake had all played football from when they were little kids, they could well have been professional football players... just as Nelsen, Bannatyne, Killen may have been pros in another sport if that's what they had always loved...

Apologies for the long rant, but like I said the idea that certain groups are "naturally better" at sport simply doesn't hold up... yes, some groups have more individuals with certain physical attributes, but this is different from sport... the key in most cases people, with a few obvious exceptions, is culture, not genetics.

Sport is a cultural expression.

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