A capital waste of time and money

Sports talk
By Gary Caffell

They while away the hours sitting on their bums in big, plush offices, drinking coffee and boring each other senseless with their constant drivel about nothing in particular. ABSOLUTELY positively unbelievable.
That's my reaction to news that Wellington's bigwigs are miffed at the capital's under-performing sports teams and have set up some sort of committee to rectify this terrible situation.
Frankly, they are wasting their time and whoever's money is being used to fund this mission impossible.
The plain facts are Wellington is the pits when it comes to sport. Always has been and always will be.
You name it and the odds are they play it poorly. Netball, rugby, league, football ... the list goes on. Yes, they do achieve a certain level of success at the likes of softball and hockey, but they hardly count in the larger scheme of things, do they?
Wellingtonians are soft in body and mind.
They while away the hours sitting on their bums in big, plush offices, drinking coffee and boring each other senseless with their constant drivel about nothing in particular.
They don't run the roads to get fit - for them, it's pretty much what they are wearing and how cool they look.
Going to the gym is all about being seen there.
Sweat is a dirty five-letter word.
Ask them the importance of team culture and they will identify themselves as Maori or Pakeha.
Talk about doing the hard yards and they will ask you to convert that into metres.
The Wellington psyche is that losing teaches you valuable life skills.
Like making your opposition feel good about themselves.
Like proving that big doesn't always necessarily mean better.
For them, there is no disgrace in coming second ... again and again.
They thrive on defeat, they relish it.
So why try and change the habits of a lifetime? It just doesn't make sense.
I fancy Norma Plummer.
No, I don't mean that way ... I mean because the Aussie netball coach is a breath of fresh air for us media hacks always looking for a prize quote or two.
The recent two-test series with the Silver Ferns was a case in point.
Plummer had this country screaming blue murder with her contention that the Kiwis had won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi only because the Aussies were a depleted unit.
And she probably felt justified in saying so when the Aussies pulled away late in that first test for a comfortable win, aided and abetted as they were by some unfathomable personnel changes made to the Silver Ferns line-up going into the second half.
The second test saw Plummer take a different tack. Rather than stick with those who had done the business a few days earlier, she benched more than half of them and talked about wanting to give the new faces valuable experience for the forthcoming World Cup.
She didn't actually say it in as many words, but the impression clearly was that Plummer wasn't going to be losing any sleep if the Silvers Fern made it 1-1, which of course they did.
Come that World Cup, of course, and Plummer won't spare the horses. A final against New Zealand is practically guaranteed, and much as I hate to say it, the feeling is she just may have enough guns to win.