4 October 2024: James O'Connor apart of the Crusaders team for 2025

On Sports Fix with Jason Pine and D'Arcy Waldegrave for 4th October 2024, Aussie First five James O'Connor has signed on for the Crusaders for the 2025 Super Rugby season. Crusaders assistant James Marshall joins the podcast to discuss what he expects from the former Wallaby.

Piney offers his thoughts on the toxic behaviour from the sidelines of kids sport.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Last weekend I was watching a kid's football tournament featuring
hundreds and hundreds of kids from all over the Wellington region,
age between eight and sixteen. I looked around at one
point and thought, how cool is this? Look at all
of these kids playing football and doing it really well
at a very young age. They're doing things that previous
generations us couldn't possibly have dreamed of. They've got access

(00:39):
to better coaching, much more resource than the kids who
have played football before them, and not just the boys,
heaps of girls playing superb stuff over the weekend. Surely
I thought, many of these kids will go on to
great things. Well, they will if they're allowed to and
enabled to, and crucially if they're not put off the
game by coaches and parents who yell at them from

(01:01):
the sideline. I don't know why I'm laughing. I saw
one coach who spent the whole game walking up and
down the pitch five yards inside the touch line, just
constantly yelling. And another game between I reckon nine year olds,
one team scored a goal and the coach of the
other team pointed at one of his players and yelled, Hey,

(01:22):
that's your fault. Do you reckon that kit will still
be playing in three or four years if that continues,
No chance. I saw another game held up for three
or four minutes while the ref and a coach argued
about an offside call. While these two teams have bemused,
ten year olds who were playing just stood there waiting
for the chance to carry on playing. Now, don't get

(01:44):
me wrong, there's some great coaching and wonderful parenting going on,
but in the quest for winning at ages as young
as nine, we're doing the future of the sport. Not
just this one, but others in this country are huge disservice.
I'll tell you a secret. The kids really don't care.
The adults care far more about the results than the
kids do. And the sooner we recognize that and start

(02:05):
addressing it, the better. And here is a very good
place to stay. Run a tournament without any adults apart
from the ones who are organizing it. Parents can drop
their kids off and pick them up afterwards. How much
more fun dereckn that have For more.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
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