Andreas Heraf Said Some Things About New Zealand Football So Let’s All Freak Out
Ordinarily some sloppy comments from an ex-NZ Football employee would not be something TNC would feel the need to crank out an article about. Maybe if Anthony Hudson dropped an interesting line or two about his time with the All Whites, although there’s fat chance of that happening, his press conferences basically go to a script. (Yeah, really proud of the lads today, they gave their all, couldn’t ask for more, it’s just a shame we went down to ten men so soon after conceding the second goal or I really thought we could have got a result there, can’t fault the lads for effort though, each and every one of them gave a hundred percent today and the fans should be very impressed with that performance). That might peak some interest but otherwise it’d be a rarity. Damn sure happy never to hear another word from Andy Martin, I’ll tell you that much.
There was nothing ordinary about the whole Andreas Heraf thing, however. Fella pops by the country with the Austrian U20 side, loves it so much he decides to stay and very quickly gets elevated to Technical Director with the national body. He then decides to coach the women’s national team and the penny-pinching ex-CEO figures, FIFA guidelines be damned, this is my retirement fund we’re dealing with, let’s just give the bugger the job. Three games later the team’s best player has gone back into retirement and a dozen or so others are threatening to follow her if this bloke stays on as gaffer.
Old mate’s been out of sight and out of mind since he resigned but he’s come out swinging a couple times in the Austrian media, most recently on the telly show Talk und Tore (Talk and Goals). It says a lot about the processes of the man that he’s still pleading innocence on all counts but it also says plenty about the state of NZF which hired such a blatantly incompatible character and, let’s be honest, plenty about the way in which us kiwi footballing publicans have been known to dramatise things with a touch of sanctimonious why-i-never-ness. Obviously that kiwi trait is way more prevalent when someone stoops so low as to infer that our beloved rugby team is anything other than saintly but it bleeds into other things too, can’t deny it.
Heraf is coming at this from an outsider’s point of view. Not to say that he’s been as harshly treated as he seems to think but treating him like a war criminal is also excessive. This was a football issue, first and foremost. There are elements of workplace bullying but that can be a tricky distinction when it comes to coach and player relationships – you only have to look at the situation with Hockey NZ at the moment to see that. One player’s bullying is another’s challenge to rise to. Here’s what Andy had to say about the whole thing…
Andreas Heraf: “I have a pure heart, a clear conscience. I am not aware of any guilt. Many things happened in New Zealand that were a meeting of different cultures. For example: participation. Participation is prioritised and performance is almost non-existent. The ladies have participated in four World Cups and have never won a game. On the other hand, there is this incredible belief and will of the entire population that you can win everything. I've explained to the team and the people that you cannot win five or six games in three weeks if you've never won a single one before. It was difficult to understand this culture.”
Heraf had to go, there’s no doubt about it. He had to go because it reflected an unacceptable lack of transparency and accountability to have him acting both as Tech Director and a national team coach – which is Andy Martin’s fault most of all and also why he had to go too, good riddance. Heraf also had to go because his culture clash with the team was completely compromising the Football Ferns’ ability to perform, something that any decent technical director should have seen and acted upon. It’s not about whether there were any deeper illegalities going on. There might have been but we haven’t really heard too many specifics yet, if there were then we’ll deal with them. But simply in terms of Heraf’s position, it doesn’t matter. His position was already untenable because the team could not perform to their capabilities as long as he remained.
It’s pretty unfair to say that New Zealanders expected their team to win five or six games at a World Cup, mate I’m usually over the moon if a kiwi side, any kiwi side, wins a single game at a World Cup. This Ferns team is good enough to do that and they haven’t, an undeniable underachievement. The team probably got too comfortable and needed a shake-up with more emphasis on results. That’s why Heraf was hired and he’s not wrong about that.
It’s about how you do that, though. Heraf tried to go from 0 to 100 in a split second. He cut off his foot because his toenails needed a trim. Part of this is because he’s apparently a bit of a callous arsehole but most of it seems to be down to a massive culture clash and one more reason why he maybe wasn’t the best candidate for the role in the first place.
Andreas Heraf: “There are now five investigations in New Zealand, in hockey, in cycling, netball, rowing and football. That's also the problem that New Zealand has for me. There is this term "player-led", led by players. I did not know that either and then I was a bit surprised that it is common practice that the athletes want or have a say in different things. That was also the case for me in terms of tactics, compilation of the coaching team, training structure. There was a message that the association had received a message from the players' union, that there was dissatisfaction, and that the coach and technical director of the national team should be placed on leave to initiate proceedings. I was surprised that nobody spoke to me. I had no opportunity to express my opinion. I'm here today after two and a half months, where I finally have the opportunity to say something.”
Oh so New Zealand Football wasn’t completely transparent with him? Didn’t offer up a comprehensive line of communication? Bro, now you know what it’s been like for the rest of us. Andy Martin’s NZF never openly addressed anything that didn’t paint them in a happy, glowing light. As for the investigations, no doubt about it that kiwi sport is in the midst of a reckoning. Rugby and cricket are only missing from that list because they both had their own internal investigations a couple years back before he arrived. And it’s no coincidence that almost all of these reviews relate directly to women’s sport.
Andreas Heraf had never coached a women’s team at any relevant level before he got this gig. This isn’t one of those implications that you have to go easier on the lasses or anything, Abby Erceg is probably the hardest working footy player this country has ever produced, but assuming you can waltz in and bring the same approach to a senior women’s national team as you did with an U20 boys team is mental. Of course you need a different approach. Same as you’d need a different approach with Liverpool or Manchester United. Or with High School Old Boys. If you can’t relate to your players then you shouldn’t be there – your job is to get the best out of them, after all.
In Europe there’s more of a culture of coaches and managers having total control and the players having to be flexible to them but in Aotearoa we don’t defer to authority that easily – tall poppy syndrome looms large here, you’d better prove yourself if you want us to blindly go along with you down a dark alley. Heraf has already suggested that his ‘European approach’ was let down by the players not buying into it. Yeah… another reason why he shouldn’t have ever gotten the job.
Andreas Heraf: “From the beginning, resistance against foreigners has been felt throughout the country. I have to say that very clearly. I can prove it and that was the reason why I left the country. The newspapers that massively attacked me compared me to Adolf Hitler, the Austrian dictator. These are things that go too far. And a native coach, who was also clearly against foreigners, said to Fritz Schmid, whom I also installed: ‘Heraf is gone now. I would also recommend that you leave the country because there is war now and there will be bloodshed’. If you hear such things, football is no longer an issue for a long time.”
There isn’t a resistance to foreigners in football in this country, Heraf would never ever have gotten those two incompatible jobs so effortlessly had he been from Palmerston North or Rotorua. If anything there’s an inferiority complex which sees us hiring way too many foreigners to bring their foreign perspectives to jobs better suited to folks who understand the kiwi players better. Most of them are English too, football colonialists as I refer to them.
But I don’t doubt that Heraf’s otherness was used against him by people once he established it so clearly by clashing with our inferiority complex through his negative tactics in that infamous game against Japan. I’d be extremely surprised if Heraf had many people explaining to him in a patient manner why his ideas were failing, instead he was swiftly painted as the enemy of the people and, from his point of view, he still didn’t understand why. NZF sure weren’t going to help, they were too busy trying to sweep another controversy under the mat. But Heraf didn’t move to this country and get involved with football here to ruin it from the inside – it was a case of good intentions being extremely badly realised, large blame falling once again on the CEO who enabled it because it was the cheap option and he fell for the rhetoric.
Heraf and NZF were largely unavailable for comment throughout the ordeal and there was nobody else to defend them. It became, let’s be honest, a pile-on. The footy media did not hold back, at times going beyond pure reportage to allow a little of that piousness to frame their angles. Hey, I enjoy most of these people’s work but I’m just saying it how I saw it. Whoever threatened Schmiddy was probably a lone voice, at least I’d hope so, but Heraf sure copped it and I’m not convinced if he’d opened up for a few mainstream interviews after the investigation had been announced that he’d have gotten a fair shake in any of them anyway.
As for comparing him to Hitler, Heraf couldn’t remember the exact example but we already know it was Chris Rattue. Called him an ‘Austrian football dictator’ and then the NZ Herald pled innocence in the exact same paragraph as they acknowledged that. Like, you just plain forgot about that other notorious Austrian dictator, did you? It’s not an explicit comparison but it’s pretty bloody obvious. If you say ‘Austrian Dictator’, people think ‘Hitler’. Rattue, a man whose job is to wind people up, knew exactly what he was doing. And if he didn’t then his editors should have.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying that there wasn’t a certain literary flair to that description, Heraf being Austrian and trying to run the team like a dictator and all, but may I refer you now to Godwin’s Law. Currently the entire kiwi media is getting discussed in Austria within a much more concerning frame of reference because Rattue couldn’t help himself and the Herald just continue to go out of their way to shrink their own credibility by giving free licence to these deliberately inflammatory ‘opinion writers’. They’re not the only ones who do it but damn. There are such incredible journalists working there and they’re getting undermined because oh here’s another Mike’s Minute and today he’s yelling at poor people for being lazy and teachers for being greedy and telling the government to give more money to the bloody All Blacks.
Andreas Heraf doesn’t realise what went wrong and he’s probably never had it explained to him. Hence why it’s enlightening to listen to the other side of the argument. Look at things from a different perspective, rather than picking out the bits that confirm your own existing view of events. You don’t have to agree with Heraf, most of what he says is self-serving if not outright silly, but there are always lessons to be learned. For example if he’s being a dickhead then, in true kiwi fashion, call him a dickhead. But don’t call him Hitler. And don’t pretend you didn’t when we all know what you meant.
TNC keeps it real so smash an ad if that’s your thing.
Be a Generous George/Georgina on Patreon to be a part of the TNC Revolution.
Keep cool but care.