Rebels Mavericks and Tank Herring

So my mate Tank didnt beat his battle with cancer. Tank was a really good coach, a very sharp selector, he had great knowledge of scrummage, his attention to detail was excellent. He also built loyalty, encouraged players, and learnt from his mistakes. His gruff nature and piss taking was exactly what players loved, his generosity endless, and relentless pursuit of winning (shit he hated losing) was admired.

So Tank was never going to be selected as the Auckland Coach, or any other high profile coaches job. Tank was too rough round the edges, too frank, too grumpy, too innovative!

This resonates for me in leadership in education.

We have these mavericks in our schools, probably a lot like Tank, but they aren't celebrated.

When we look for people to motivate and lead our leaders we look elsewhere, in the universities, overseas.

We look for someone else, anyone else, we bring in australians, americans, poms, we get advice from those who speak eloquently, who wear nice suits, who have a slick presso and a nice sales pitch.

We actually need to hear from kiwis, people in the job, those who are making it happen, Bruce Hammonds wrote a good blog about Perry Rush, and Mike left a very true comment.

Rebels, mavericks, the GPC, they are out there, I'm gonna run a conference for all the nutters out there in 2010, and we will put all those principals in one room- imagine that.