Whineray

 

 

New Zealand now has a pretty well-oiled rite and litany for when some major, usually sporting, icon dies.  Our secular culture is confused and frightened about death, so we dive rapidly, by reflex, into memory and sentimentalism and hagiography.  The death of heroes is easily marked because we simply relive past glories. 

And so it was that over this holiday weekend we have had multiple references to the suddenly late Sir Wilson Whineray, former captain of the All Blacks and more recent captain of commerce.  I have yet to hear any serious critical assessment of his character, but we have been incessantly reminded of his leadership qualities, business successes, rugby abilities and things he said:  “I always told the team, you will do exactly what I say on the field, no matter what you think.  I am the captain, and if it’s wrong I will take the rap.  If you don’t do what I say, you will take the rap.”  Great.  That’s the way to talk to the blokes. 

The other quotations I have so far heard have been unmemorable and unoriginal.

He went to Auckland Grammar.  He was roughly contemporary there with me – and on reflection I do remember hearing the name Whineray, whenever Littlejohn the headmaster was moved to identify anyone he thought had brought credit on the school lately.  Whineray must, back then, have been already rugby proficient and therefore very much visible.  I doubt that he ever heard or noted the name Miller. 

It really matters in these things that we do get some perceptive and sensitive journalism, to stand against all the blandishment and idolatry.  Perhaps that comes later.  John Kirwan eventually went public about his times of serious clinical depression.  Barry Crump beat his wife, or wives.  Our square-jawed, thick-necked icons, in sport and in business, need honest and perceptive journalism.  Lance Armstrong, for years at the top of world professional cycling, is now seen as a druggie, a cheat and a humbug.  But for most of those years we were hearing mainly about successive Tour de Frances and his fight back from testicular cancer.

Now we have the cartoon in Granny Herald.  It epitomises for me all the inconsequence and utter shallowness of the sporting icon culture – and the way it suits so many now to mindlessly caricature religion and faith, about which never have so many known so little.  Deceased All Blacks seem to be all in heaven somehow – where else would they be? -- sitting around looking like tired and wounded heroes.  Well, actually they look like simpletons, village idiots.  They have wings, so I assume they have become angels, which must be bizarre and boring for them.  Their celestial captain informs them that Whineray is about to pass by, and they should rise and salute.  “Your captain and our colonel...” I don’t get that. 

It’s hideous.  Shallow sentimental claptrap.  Plain embarrassing is what it is.  The Herald once had a cartoonist called Minhinnick, as many of my generation will remember.  Gordon Minhinnick was genuinely talented.  He could draw.  He knew about subtle allusion.  He also knew what was important, and what was not, in human affairs.  That depth and quality of journalism is rare now, at least around New Zealand.    

Whineray was clearly an exceptional person, sportsman and leader.  I have lived long enough to know that he was also broken and fallible in places, and that he sometimes lay awake at nights.