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Former All Blacks star slams veteran commentator Keith Quinn's 'harmful' Twitter post
By Online Editors
Former All Blacks star Zac Guildford has hit out at veteran rugby commentator Keith Quinn's advice to New Zealand men to "harden up".
Quinn sparked controversy on Twitter on Monday night with the post in which he questioned "bloke- ism".
"What's happening to bloke-ism? In the TV news the last few days Dustin Johnson, Lewis Hamilton & Puma rugby players & coach all crying their eyes out. Would the sight of All Blacks wearing pink boots have moved Pinetree Meads? I doubt it. Harden up - blokes of today," the broadcaster posted.
After a meteoric ascent into representative rugby, including being part of the victorious All Blacks squad at the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Guildford has been plagued by off-field problems with alcohol and depressions, including a much publicised 2011 incident at a Rarotonga resort where he assaulted a patron while inebriated.
Guildford also sensationally walked out on French club Nevers early last year - only months after signing a new contract.
In an interview with NZME on Tuesday, Guildford described Quinn's comments as "outdated" and "damaging".
"Having not been able to open up and keeping it bottled up, my emotions eventually boiled over and got the better of me," Guildford said.
"One comment by someone like that, in a position of authority can undo a lot of good work that others are putting in, moving rugby forward.
"It was a huge factor in jeopardising my career because all my feelings I had inside had no way to come out, except when I was drinking and when they came out, they came out in a bad way."
While not directly replying to Quinn's tweet, All Blacks icon Sir John Kirwan also made his stance clear, posting, "My highlight from the weekend was the team and Mario Ledesma crying, made me cry. Beautiful," he wrote.
Dozens of other Kiwi Twitter users replied to Quinn's tweet expressing their disappointment at his views.
"No Keith you've got this exactly backwards," one Twitter user replied. "It's great to see top sportsmen unafraid to express emotion, and explicitly rejecting the 'harden up' ethos of years gone by. More of this please."
"This makes me really sad. I grew up watching rugby with my dad by my side and you in our ears. Dad's gone now but he was learning to mellow as he aged and be less repressed about his feelings. I hope you can learn that too," another Kiwi said.
Quinn eventually backtracked from the initial comment, posting: "Point taken everyone. For the record and in all seriousness I think it's great these days that men can openly express their emotions. I often do myself. I was really just thinking of the differences from earlier times."
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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