Cows call table tennis coach home

For the last seven years James Morris has foregone many farm duties in favour of preparing the New Zealand table tennis team.
But the call of the cows has proven too much to ignore. Morris will step down from his position as national table tennis coach later this month, ending a seven-year term in the job.
A former national representative himself, Morris stamped his trademark on the job by stipulating all New Zealand players attend national training camps before major tournaments.
But his hands-on approach was also very demanding.
"I have just decided that, after seven years, it is time to step back a bit really," Morris said.
"You could say farm commitments is one of the main contributing factors. It has been a while working very hard doing it all really with the table tennis side of things," he said.
"I think one of the interesting things is that New Zealand Table Tennis (NZTT) are splitting my job up instead of having someone doing everything like I was trying to do.
"In a way I think that might be a compliment. It certainly recognises that table tennis needs to look at the coaching aspect more seriously."
"I was high performance coach, head of coaching education, national coach, involved with teams and taking teams away to international tournaments all at once. It is just too much to handle."
A dairy farmer at Marua north of Whangarei, Morris steps aside from the job after overseeing one of the more successful periods in the sport.
But his resignation cuts short his original plans to stay in the job until after the Melbourne Commonwealth Games next year.
Nominating the success of ex-pat Chinese player Li Chunli as one of his highlights, Morris said the challenge now was to make sure New Zealand had a top flight of players ready to head to Melbourne next year.
"The highlight of my coaching would have to be the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and our success there," he said.
"That was part of a plan which included a couple of training camps we held in Whangarei. To end up with four medals was an achievement."
Morris also battled hard to get table tennis ranked as a "listed" sport with SPARC, which then opened up access for elite players to get high performance testing and support.
But he said the challenge now was to ensure table tennis maintained the momentum gained through Chunli's success by developing a national coaching strategy.
"It is a low profile sport in New Zealand for sure. But globally it is huge, probably in the top three participation-wise."
Morris will officially tender his resignation at the NZTT annual meeting later this month and officially stand down at the end of November.