Paul Lewis: Damage control is too late for a tarnished sport

Ian Ferguson. Photo / Getty Images

By any measure, the axing of former Olympic canoeing heroes Ian Ferguson and Paul MacDonald has been a disaster; a bungled job; a case of mismanagement in a former glory sport.

It has been a PR nightmare - Canoe Racing New Zealand seen to be dumping our most decorated athletes in a callous way. Allegations of Sparc and even the Minister of Sport, Murray McCully, being involved in their ousting were made - and denied.

The sport is split between Ferguson, MacDonald and another former Olympic gold medalist Alan Thompson on one side, plus another former national canoeing coach Andras Szabo.

In addition, Mark Sutherland, a former national coach who himself coached MacDonald, Ferguson and controversial paddler Ben Fouhy, resigned from CRNZ's sprint advisory committee over the Fouhy selection issue (where he did not have to attend selection trials to win the right to compete in Europe).

On the other side are CRNZ CEO Paula Kearns, high-performance director Wayne Maher and new coach Gordon Walker.

The way Ferguson and MacDonald were jettisoned was asking for trouble. No one can deny that sports bodies and coaches have to part ways at some stage; that people reach use-by dates. Irregardless of whether Ferguson and MacDonald had reached theirs, there is a right way and a wrong way to end such associations.

If CRNZ felt a change had to be made, why not ease the golden pair out gently; working with them to gain buy-in and retaining their services as ambassadors or guest coaches with paddlers with whom they still had affinity? CRNZ might say it did that, but Ferguson and MacDonald were contractually gagged, able to speak out only when their contracts had lapsed. Not much buy-in there.

Similarly no one is saying Fouhy should not paddle for New Zealand. He is clearly talented and capable of more glory in the sport.

The two issues became entwined. Ferguson and MacDonald say they were subject to a long, slow campaign of strangulation designed to oust them; that they took away a team to the recent world championships subject to severe restrictions on what and who they could coach - and were then forced to 'wear' the poor results. CRNZ says they had had long enough at the helm of New Zealand canoeing and it was time for a change.

Ferguson and MacDonald say they were also "set up" over the Fouhy issue. The volatile paddler quit the sport, citing irreconcilable differences with Ferguson even though he had had little or no coaching contact with Ferguson for years. He was later persuaded to return - but separate from the rest of the team and the coaches; a bad look for the team and Ferguson and MacDonald.

Sutherland, one of many hired and fired by Fouhy in recent times, said: "Ben has burned through five coaches [including Sutherland himself] and has fired them all. There's one common denominator there, isn't there? What happens is that everyone tries to help him; everyone gets in behind him and then he stabs them in the back. We all worked our arses off for Ben and then he just spat on us. He would have won gold in Beijing in 2008 if he'd done what he was advised."

Now canoeing's City Hall is in PR damage control and returning fire. In an article in Saturday's New Zealand Herald, by Phil Taylor, Rob Nichol, head of the NZ Athletes Federation (and who accepts the accolade of the man who got Fouhy back into the sport) said CRNZ and Sparc deserved credit for taking "hard decisions" in getting rid of Ferguson and MacDonald.

Nichol's canoeing credentials were never examined. In essence, he heads a body which champions athletes' interests - an advocate akin to players' managers. Asking him what he thinks of the Fouhy situation is like asking Dan Carter's manager whether he thinks Carter should be an All Black.

In the same article, Sparc CEO Peter Miskimmin hinted that Ferguson and MacDonald had become part of the problem. Sports bodies had to make decisions in the interests of the athletes and the sport, "not in the interests of personalities within the sport".

In the same article, McCully said that suggestions of a conspiracy were "fantasy" and that he had directed changes in the sport were "sheer nonsense". He then went on to detail how he met directly with Fouhy and asked him to continue in the sport.

The same Herald piece also used an unnamed canoeist to say that Ferguson and MacDonald were amazing athletes - but that didn't make them amazing coaches. A second story quoted one Troy Burbidge who wasn't happy being coached by Ferguson.

Burbidge was the same athlete to whom an email was addressed by Maher - asking him and other paddlers to come up with reasons why they did not want to be coached by Ferguson or MacDonald; seemingly to shore up the decision not to use them any more.

In this entire saga, now running for nearly two months, the Herald on Sunday has been aware that Ferguson and MacDonald have not used the canoeists formerly under their charge to press their case, even though many of the athletes and parents are upset. This is because they felt it would wound the sport and athletes irretrievably.

They also turned up at the last regatta (at the Blue Lake, Rotorua) to help lay the course, even though they were technically no longer involved.

There is, after all, a right way and a wrong way to go about these things.