Alastair Campbell: Send off that 16th man

Alastair Campbell

I suppose I should be a bit hesitant about venturing into print on the nature of the New Zealand media's coverage of the Lions tour.

When last I did so, in what was in fact a rather affectionate piece in the Times of London about this country's passion for rugby, several commentators here upbraided me for daring to say this was a nation obsessed with the game.

Heaven knows why offence was taken. It's a compliment. Nobody in Britain would take offence at being told we were a nation obsessed with soccer. We are. But what has prompted me to have another go, and this time on away soil as it were, is the perpetuating myth that the Lions are hidden away behind a shield of security.

I read in a Christchurch paper that our hotels are "fenced off" and players surrounded by "cordons". I've read it practically everywhere we've been. I can only imagine those who write it have never been to the hotels or seen a player.

I have seen a few fenced off hotels and a few cordons in my time.

Having worked for a decade for Tony Blair, I was with him at many events also attended by kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, including Helen Clark.

I've seen cordons that involved whole towns virtually sealed off. I've seen traffic stopped from moving, and workers stopped from working and even people stopped from going into their homes.

I've been at Labour Party conferences which are usually launched by the "ring of steel" cliche in the press, a cliche which sadly happens to be true.

Hotels are indeed fenced off and the only people allowed in are vetted weeks in advance and even then have to go through scanners and searches to get to their bedrooms, their sleep often interrupted by police helicopters and the view of the sea spoiled by the sight of gunboats on patrol. And meanwhile the cordon around the Prime Minister, tight before September 11, is even tighter now.

So I look for the fence round our hotel here and I see, er, none. I watch the players popping out for a coffee or a drink, unaccompanied. I look around for the cordons, the rings of steel, any high profile security presence at all, and I see ... none.

I see kids meeting the players off the bus from training and getting their shirts signed. I see guests and staff coming and going as they please.

Occasionally, if the crowds get large, I see barriers go up as a way of marshalling them and ensuring the hotel can function normally. Then I see our players patiently signing autographs along the lines of fans.

Of course, any major high profile tour like this needs logistics and security personnel, and it is never sensible to go into detail, but to present our security as heavy, let alone heavy-handed, is an absurdity. So I ask myself, where did this myth spring from?

Here I think we have to go back to the old friend I introduced in my Times piece - the NZ media as a 16th man. There is no doubt that parts of your media see their job as supporting the New Zealand side rather than covering the tour objectively.

This does not go for everyone. Indeed the reason I chose to offer this article to the Herald is because, by and large, they have given rounded coverage of the tour. But in the modern media it is trends that set the agenda.

So the security myth is about presenting the Lions as aloof, distant and arrogant. Or take the community work being done by the Lions - more than any touring side in history - players and coaches happy to get out and about, engage, meet local people, visit their schools and hospitals and rugby clubs. They have been well received everywhere and, to be fair, have generated some positive coverage.

But the visits done have not had anything like the publicity of the visits not done.

We have even seen interviews with people the Lions never intended to visit, saying how disappointed they were that the Lions had decided not to visit them. Surely in a country as rugby-mad as this, a small number of changes to a busy programme to accommodate extra pressures on the players can pass without the sense the end of the world is nigh. When Lions' Chairman Bill Beaumont gave a 45-minute interview to a paper critical of our community work, explaining the situation, not a word of it appeared.

It was also fascinating to see how Bill's comments, at an after-match dinner, that the refusal of New Zealand to release international players for provincial matches might endanger future Lions tours, a big story back home, was barely covered here.

Of course it is in the coverage of the rugby that the 16th-man syndrome is most acute. As one of the players wryly observed on reading a local report of our victory against Otago, "such a shame we lost, isn't it?"

"I know," I replied, "and such a shame that there are too many of you, you're all absolutely useless, and not one of you would get in the Bay of Plenty seconds."

In my political life, I spend a lot of time raging at the British media's fusion of news and comment in their coverage of current affairs.

Your news media is positively straight by comparison. But when it comes to the tour, in parts of your media I see a similar trend towards fused news and comment. "Lions bad, All Blacks good," and here's another "story" to show it.

But I wonder if the 16th-man approach helps New Zealand. Might it not just be a reflection of a nation's desire for the Lions to be beaten and so simply serves to compound the already enormous pressures on Graham Henry and his players?

The player quoted above is an exception in that he was reading the papers. Most of the Lions don't. We put up a selection of cuttings, good and bad, on the team board.

Some of the players take a look. Many do not. But I would imagine that to be a New Zealand player, it is virtually impossible to be unaware of the scale and nature of the coverage.

Coverage of rugby here is like coverage of soccer at home. But at least Manchester United have to share the space with Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and the rest.

Here the New Zealand side is the overwhelmingly dominant focus, the brilliant Michael Campbell (no relation) notwithstanding.

So while our non-cordoned players can easily escape the media pressure, provided they do the odd interview now and then, I don't think it can be so easy for the New Zealanders. And, of course, it is in many ways a wholly legitimate expression of the desire of a nation for a win in the tests.

But once a paper takes an editorial line that drives every story selection, headline, editorial and photo, right down to the cut-out-and-keep dartboard of caricature Clive, then it could be such papers see only Lions' weaknesses and fail to see strengths, which is to blind themselves to reality.

It is not a mistake the New Zealand coaches will be making. But having weighed the negative against the positive in the media here, I can't help wondering, if the Lions are so crap, why the 16th man thinks he needs to hammer us so hard.

I can't help thinking, too, that if, heaven forbid, the Lions win the first test on Saturday, some of the negativity that has been our sole prerogative up to now, might suddenly find a new target.

That is pressure, and it's not the Lions who are under it.

* The NZ Herald made a donation to the British Charity Leukaemia Research, of which Campbell is chairman of fundraising, for this article.