Dylan Cleaver: All Whites should not have won Halberg prize

All White team members arrive for the Halberg Awards. Photo / Jason Dorday

Let's get this straight: a team that played nine matches this year and won one, a friendly at that, while drawing four and losing four is the embodiment of New Zealand sporting excellence in 2010?

They're the best sporting act we could rustle up in the first year of the second decade of the 21st century?

Really?

Don't get me wrong, what the All Whites did was, in its unique way, terrific. They went to the showpiece tournament for the biggest sport in the world with the very real prospect of being embarrassed, particularly against defending world champions Italy. Instead they returned home after pool play without having lost a game.

Along the way they picked up a legion of admirers and turned all except the most hardened of rugby heads into temporary soccer fans. Winston Reid's stoppage-time equaliser against Slovakia was a genuine up-off-the-couch, double fist-pump moment.

The All Whites are almost worthy of a separate category of their own: "Warm Fuzzy Story of the Year".

But seriously, if avoiding humiliation is the benchmark of sporting success, then surely our cricketers making it through to the knockout stages of the upcoming World Cup should qualify them as a shoo-in for next year's big prize.

To be blunt, the All Whites were not even close to the best sporting act in New Zealand last year, even if they did produce the best storylines.

But if it's compelling storylines that determine the winners, then why did Valerie Adams, after an ordinary year by her lofty standards, triumph over Nikki Hamblin, or gold medal-winning Silver Ferns captain Casey Williams)? Why did Richie McCaw - the right decision, incidentally - beat out Benji Marshall and Ryan Nelsen.

There was a faulty logic to last night's awards that reinforced the sense that nobody has any idea what the Halbergs stand for any more.

From this angle, the awards have never had the same gravitas since the flawed decision, driven in part by New Zealand Olympic Committee chef de mission Dave Currie, to increase the numbers - read, increase the numbers of former sporting names rather than sports media representatives - on the voting academy was ratified.

There are holes in this approach. First, the assumption that great sportsmen and women have a broad knowledge across a range of sports is flawed. Those that have lived within the bubble of a single sport rarely have the time or the inclination to look outwards.

The idea it is a more democratic process falls flat, too. The greatly increased numbers - there are 28 people on the academy - means costs and logistics prevent them meeting to discuss and debate the various possibilities. The votes are now collated coldly and remotely. That's a nonsense.

There is no 100 per cent foolproof method for determining a fair result when the debate is so subjective, but there has got to be a better way than this.