Olsen Filipaina poses during a portrait session at Leichhardt Oval. Photo / Getty Images.
Olsen Filipaina poses during a portrait session at Leichhardt Oval. Photo / Getty Images.
OPINION:
Olsen Filipaina, a quietly spoken, considerate, deeply humble man, should be remembered forever as a pioneer for Pasifika players in Australian professional rugby league.
On the field Filipaina, who was just 64 when he died in Sydney this week, was a force of nature. If you were lucky enoughto see him play for Mangere East in the late 1970s you saw him earn the nickname Archie Bumper. Big crowds flocked to Carlaw Park then, and the rickety old wooden grandstand rocked every time Filipaina's hip or thigh sent an attempted tackler sprawling.
He should have been a sensation in Australia too, but when he went to Sydney to play for Balmain in 1980 the odds were stacked against a 23-year-old from South Auckland whose father Aloese was Samoan, and whose mother, Sissie, was Māori.
Racism in Sydney league then ran deep, and, as detailed in Patrick Skene's excellent book, "The Big O", in the '80s nobody running the sport in Sydney took any steps about vilification from fans. Vicious racial slurs cut deep for Filipaina, as he told Skene. "Call me short, or fat, or dumb, or ugly, I can deal with that. But insult my colour, or my people, and you are insulting my parents, my children, my friends, my grandparents, and all those that came before them."
On the other hand there was always warmth and respect for Filipaina when he played for the Kiwis, and he was the man of the match in the greatest league victory New Zealand had over Australia, an 18-0 drubbing at Carlaw Park in 1985.
The only real discussion I had with Filipaina was in 2007, when I was writing Sir Peter Leitch's biography. Filipaina was exactly what I'd hoped he would be, self effacing, with a keen sense of humour. There was huge mutual affection between the two. Peter, a stalwart of the Māngere East club, was stunned when in 1977 at a club function Filipaina presented his first Kiwi jersey to him.
As I started writing about Olsen for this column, Peter rang. He'd lost a phone number of a mutual friend. I mentioned Olsen. Peter paused, and summed him up perfectly. "Yes, he was a beautiful man."
There's never been a Kiwi who exudes more joy in their sport than Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous do.
The pair, and their teammates, are diamonds at an Olympics muddied by the pandemic, and the weird dance by Olympic head Thomas Bach over the case of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. Bach's basic argument is "There's nothing to see here, so move along. Ooh, look over there, see the figure skating?"
Thankfully there are no caveats over enjoying not only the physical excellence, and sheer bravery, of New Zealand's snow stars, but also the unrestrained honesty they show when talking about their sport, and the pleasure they get from it.
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott of Team New Zealand poses for a photograph with her Gold medal. Photo / Getty Images.
Only a terminal cynic could not find delight in seeing Sadowski-Synnott's reactions after winning gold in the women's slopestyle, or learning that she started snowboarding as a seven-year-old, not with grand plans, just determined to keep up with her big brother.
My favourite quote of the Games so far came from her father, Sean, who joked that Zoi had sacrificed a lot to get in her hours on the slopes. "Zoi sacrificed doing the dishes, mowing the lawns, cleaning her room, and getting the vacuum out," he said. "She sacrificed all those things."
What does resonate is that there seems to be an internal drive involved with our winter sport winners, progressing from kids who loved playing in snow to naturally competitive, high achieving adults.
There are echoes of the way Norway, with a population of 5.4 million (compared to our 5.1 million), produces more winter Olympic medallists than any other country, with a national policy based on letting kids be kids.
"We're a small country and can't afford to lose children because sport is not fun," Inge Andersen, the former secretary-general of the Norwegian Olympic organisation told American journalist Ken Reed this year. "Our priority is the child becoming self-reflective about their bodies and minds."
I wrote three years ago of how Norway should be the role model for sport here too, and how they dumped rep teams and championships for pre-teens 30 years ago.
It's worth quoting again the head of Norway's Olympic programme, Tore Ovrebo, who told Time magazine, "We want to leave the kids alone. We want them to play. We want them to develop, and be focused on social skills. They learn a lot from sports. They learn a lot from playing. They learn a lot from not being anxious. They learn a lot from not being counted. They learn a lot from not being judged. And they feel better. And they tend to stay on for longer."
As great as the pleasure great athletes like Sadowski-Synnott and Porteous are giving those of us who are now armchair warriors, their greatest gift to New Zealand may be showing Kiwi kids what a delight sport can be.
