Michael Burgess: Halbergs need five-step fix

The Halberg Awards are a glittering night but sometimes the brightest stars don t get a chance to shine. Photo / Photosport

The Halberg Awards are broken. Not yet beyond repair broken, but they need fixing.

If the awards, which date back to 1963, are going to remain relevant a rethink is needed. At the moment there isn't much confidence in the judging panel, or the system. Instead of a celebration of high sports achievers, they have become an annual head-scratching task ("They decided what ...?").

The Halberg Voting Academy have made too many curious decisions, a bit like that other Academy when they opted for Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction for Best Picture.

The latest came with the Sportsman of the Year award, when Michael Venus and Chris Wood missed on being finalists, while Ross Taylor made the cut. Venus became the first Kiwi in more than three decades to win a grand slam tennis title - the French Open doubles. Footballer Wood finished top scorer in the Championship, then made a spectacular start to life in the Premier League with Burnley, with his equalising goal at Wembley against Spurs on replay loops from Beijing to Bogota.

Taylor was nominated for achieving the highest test batting average last year. There were two problems with this; he didn't actually (it was incorrect), and the opposition was the West Indies and Bangladesh at home. So any accomplishments needed to be pegged with an asterisk, but instead the panel showed as much intelligence as Asterix's lumbering friend Obelix.

Sure, it's a thankless task, because comparisons across sports are always tricky. But our highest achievers deserve elite level judging, not the haphazard process we have now.

The five-step process to fix the awards

1. Revamp the judging panel

The 27-person panel currently comprises eight sports journalists - less than one third. The vast majority of the rest are ex-athletes, after the panel was changed in 2004, driven by then NZOC Chef de Mission Dave Currie. It hasn't worked, as few former athletes have an accurate view beyond their field of expertise. This was epitomised by Mahe Drysdale's bemusing reaction in 2010, when the All Whites were declared finalists in the Team of the Year category. "If the All Whites had won the World Cup, then no issue - scrap the nomination process and give them a clean sweep," he told the Herald on Sunday. "If they had made the semifinals, for example, then maybe that is a case where they are worthy over an actual winner. But ... they . . . didn't even finish in the top 16 at the World Cup."

2. Overseas opinion

It's surely time for some international expertise, who could offer a broader world view about achievements. Perhaps a couple of judges from Australia, one from England, someone from the USA or a European nation?

3. Encourage debate

Debate is crucial to good, sound decisions but it's been completed removed from the process. Instead of getting together in a room - where judges would discuss the contenders and justify their opinions - it's become a box-ticking exercise. Has anyone heard of Skype video calls?

4. Change nomination process

The national federations should be the main source of nominations, but the net can go wider. That's because national organisations have started to use the awards as a PR exercise (see New Zealand Football's nomination of the All Whites this year). It's also because feuds mean that some might miss out for the wrong reasons, like equestrian Andrew Nicholson this year, despite being the oldest winner (on the oldest horse) in Badminton history. Did the fact he had a bitter fallout with Equestrian Sport NZ impact his non-nomination?

5. Recognise the inherent bias

With the Halbergs it always seems that some sports fit the bill, while others simply don't. Maybe it's the cliched white collar/blue collar split? How else would you explain league's complete exclusion from the awards. Four times in the past decade the Kiwis have won the pinnacle event of that year (2005, 2010 and 2014 Four Nations, and 2008 World Cup) but they've never merited team of the year. The worst scenario was in 2005, when the Kiwis inflicted the biggest defeat on the Kangaroos since 1953 but couldn't even make the finalists, overlooked in favour of three rowing crews and the All Blacks. Also in 2014, Shaun Johnson was voted world rugby league player of the year - only the third New Zealander in history to achieve that honour - but couldn't make the five finalists, which included three All Blacks.