This letter of application was sent to a well known North Harbour rugby club by someone who wanted to coach that clubs' premier team in 2005. Read more and you'll see why the application was not successful.

"Dear Sir,

I saw on your very boring website that you wanted applications for the various coaching/managerial posts for the season 2005.

I'll get straight to the point, I think I am suitable to coach the Premiers. This may seem surprising seeing as I have never played a decent game of rugby in my life and my first season as a coach of the Senior 2nds was the worst in my club's proud history.

However, our run of 16 defeats was entirely the players fault. My coaching was, if any criticsism can be made, too advanced for such a bunch of losers.

As such the NPC players in the 1sts will find it easier to transform my ideas into successful rugby.

One concern you may have is that the Premiers, particularly NPC reps etc, will find it hard to respect a coach who never got beyond his clubs fourth team. (This is not strictly true, back in Taranaki, I did play for the 3rds one week, during a particularly busy milking shift).

However, I think I will earn this respect by talking about my close relationship with Darryl Lilly and other greats of New Plymouth. Should this not prove to be sufficient, I shall simply drop the disrespectful players.

Another area that may concern you is my recent decision to announce my homosexuality, again I feel this is not really a problem. We live in the 21st century, in Auckland, and I think the players will be grown up enough to accept me for what I am. If the players feel uncomfortable with me seeing their hard muscular bodies naked, I will simply wear blinkers in the changing sheds. That way they can avoid my stare easily. The players will also sleep easy knowing I will not be trying to seduce their wife's and girlfriends during the matches.

My coaching style is based upon the phrase "less is more".

At times this can cause confusion, as with the Senior 2nds who took it a bit too literally and applied it to the scoreboard. Generally I feel we should only train once a month, to enable the players to avoid burnout.

Burnout is a very real risk during our season of 10 games. The monthly session will last one hour and each month we will concentrate on different skills, so all the players can multi task.

A sample schedule could be:
Month 1 - All players to practice goal kicking
Month 2 - Focus on the thumb grip - (My mate Mitch may be able to do a session here)
Month 3 - Practice the warm up
Month 4 - Competition Phase - concentrate on doing up ties for after match function.

I also propose a team bonding session on my brothers farm, where we could stay up all night milking cows - all that warm creamy liquid - lovely.

On the subject of remuneration, I acknowledge that my c.v isn't that glittering and as such I may not be able to command "top dollar". I would suggest we started at US$1000 per week (I insist on US$ - our pitiful currency isn't worth the paper its written on). This would increase by 50% for every win. I think this is more than fair.

I would also insist on a release clause. Should the AB's lose another game and Henry get the chop, you must release me to apply for the top job.

Please contact me if you wish to discuss this further

Yours in Rugby.
Name deleted to protect the incredibly stupid - Editor

GO THE 'NAKI !!!!!!!!!!!!
GO THE CLUB !!!!!!!!!!!!!"