Jim Hopkins: Coach Key needs change of game plan

When all's Seddon done, prime ministers and coaches have much in common.

Each leads a team. Each needs a game plan. Each must have administrative skills - a Prime Minister, for example, should be able to ensure there are never any microphones around when Tau Henare is talking.

But, above all else, if they want to succeed (and which Prime Minister or sports coach doesn't), each needs a rarer skill. They must know how to inspire the team, get 'em to dig deep, do the business, put it all on the park.

To be fair, it is easier for coaches to do that. A coach only has one team to look after (and that's invariably a team they've chosen) but a Prime Minister's got two. There's the parliamentary players, of course, some chosen, some who just arrive, welcome or not, the human consequences of coalition.

Then there's that larger and more polyglot lot, us; Team New Zealand - at least in name, if not in essence - a quarrelsome collage of fractious factions, eager to demand that others donate blood, sweat and tears but never as keen to shed their own.

So, like every Prime Minister before him, Coach Key must walk a fine line - not a sideline, though politicians often consider that a very fine line. He must tread carefully and tiptoe through the two lips as he seeks to motivate his disparate bunch of players.

Some want more First 15 biffo, others want none. Some want tough love, others regard an eyebrow raised in disapproval as trauma unbearable. Some insist we must emit only piety, others (quite rightly) switch supermarkets to get a free plastic bag. Some want guaranteed bums on seats, others think we're guaranteed to get them anyway. Some want balls, others just bawl.

All available evidence suggests ours as a team that can't agree on the game, let alone what plan we should employ to play it.

Which may explain why today's Churchills so often seem so equivocal, their inspirations hedged, qualified, moderated and crafted, it would seem, to placate the focus group and appease the swinging voter: "We shall fight on the beaches (with the consent of the tangata whenua), we shall fight on the landing grounds (provided no ecosystems are disturbed), we shall fight in the fields and in the streets (once we've got resource consent), we shall fight in the hills (biodegradably, of course); we shall never surrender (unless we have to) ..."

Which is all well and good when all's well and good. But all is never as well or as good as it seems. There are battles to wage. Attacks, invasions and conquests come in many forms, most obviously in times of war, but also when we are at peace. There's always an appetite for inspiration and time for a Churchill.

Great leaders, coaches and politicians, know this. They know what makes their team tick, they understand its essence. They can sense mood swings. They feel the rumbles of mutiny. And they know what to say!

Coach Key was given that sort of chance last month. He may not have wanted it (in fact he said he didn't) but he got it anyway. There's no doubt our recent referendum should have happened last November. There's no doubt its deferral was a corrupt attempt to keep smacking off the general election agenda. And even less doubt what the team thinks.

And 87 per cent of those who played want the game plan and the law changed. Coach Key should have seen this as a defining moment, his chance to build a grand coalition - not with his political rivals to enact an ETS that'll cost heaps and achieve sod all - but with the people.

And he put it in the too hard basket.

We can't change the law, he said. It would be a divisive distraction. It would take our eyes off the ball. It would give all the MPs (poor things) a headache and keep them up late. He turned an issue of principle into a matter of administrative convenience.

But, John, you're missing the point. The thing is, Coach, the game's changed. The team wants the rules changed. We don't want Parliament behaving like the IRB and ignoring our clamour.

The boffins may call it a paradigm shift, the guy on talkback this week just said he wanted "the old New Zealand back".

Either way, the team wants a new backline, Coach - and a new backbone as well. In that part of the country that isn't Wellington, in those benighted realms where your expert advisers, the academics and policy analysts don't hold sway, more and more people suspect the old establishment is hanging on by its theory nails, clutching shopworn straws, clinging grimly to notions and nostrums as stained with failure as any of the theories they supplanted.

Coach, the team's behind you - but only if you're not behind it. Call the shots, sir. Go for gold. Dip deep. We won't quit. We shall never surrender. You'd win a lot of fans, you'd get new respect from the team if just you asked us to play a bolder and braver game. Trust us. We're up for it.