Sir Graham Henry

First of all...Happy 2012 to everyone out there.

This last week Graham Henry who has been at the helm of the New Zealand All Blacks got knighted. Yes - he shall now be known as SIR Graham Henry. It has got a lovely ring to it...so much that I think that mini New Zealanders will be confusing him with the guy that created the light bulb...who was that again? Sir William Tell? Isaac Newton? Alexander Graham Bell? *

I do think it's a little funny that New Zealand knights all of it's favourite or important people. Why just a few weeks ago Richie McCaw (Mr. Captain All Black himself) humbly declined being knighted as he still has some playing days left in him and wants the knighting to be a final hurrah. That might be a bit of a paraphrase. See the actual article here. So many times I find myself telling people that rugby to New Zealanders is like hockey to Canadians...but in some ways I don't think it is. Yes, hockey is our thing and it would be just as easy to remove that as part of our image or heritage as it would be to say that Brits don't do tea and Russians have nothing to do with vodka.

I do have to wonder what it would look like to honor our people like that. We don't knight people, do we? I know that we have the Governer General's award for volunteerism, and the Order of Canada...and there's literature awards...but nothing like "knighting" someone. And I would say that we can't because we're under England's rule and the monarchy would have to do it but then...isn't New Zealand also? I mean if it's about semantics...New Zealand knights their peeps as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit...but it's just so much easier to say...Sir.

What did we do for our players and coaches who have won the gold medals in the Olympics?...which for all intents and purposes would be similar to the All Blacks winning the Rugby World Cup. Graham Henry had one of the top winning percentages in the world as a coach (something like 86% over his time as a coach). But I think most of our Canadian hockey coaches would best that average - I don't know the number but I'm sure one of my readers would. Care to share?

I guess I'm just saying that it would be great to start knighting our peeps for what they do for our country. Now - this post has only been about rugby and hockey but I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of 'knights' in our great country. So I say that we start Sir-ing our peeps. Just saying.

Oh - and congrats to Sir Graham Henry.

*I realize that Thomas Edison is the correct man for the reference.