Emotionally committing to a sport

 

ONE THING RUGBY DOES (did?) almost better than any other sport is to create moments of great intensity, great drama, that hinge on actions taken ine the next few moments, or seconds, on the outcome of which it feels (at the time) like worlds might fall or empires crumble.

It seems, on the evidence of the weekend, that that might be over. That rugby officialdom has shot all that in the foot.

To be emotionally invested in a sporting contest -- and that's why we invest so much time and, sometimes, money, to watch the damn things, isn't it? because we are so emotionally invested -- then we have to know that what we're seeing in front of us is final. Is authoritative. Is complete. Is over. That the thing that's just happened has happened, is irrevocable, that worlds have lost (or been won), and we can rejoice or lament as deserved.

In short, that the actions of that moment, for good or ill, are exactly as final as death.

But why commit emotionally when you know all decisions (bar send-offs) are contingent?

Why commit, as a fan, to your team defending the line for phase after heroic phase, when you know there's a match official with his arm out waiting to bring the game back five minutes by saying "No advantage." 

Why care, even a little, when you know the defensive effort will only be a reward for the other team?

And why care at all about a try, the one thing his or her team is straining heart and sinew to score and the fan can celebrate with whole heart and soul? Because even this, after whistle has gone and celebrations subside, can be taken away now at the tweak of an off-field match official's microphone which happens to bear the words "No try; we're going back four phases [four phases!] for a fumble on the other side of the field." A fumble which the on-field match official saw, at the time, and said "Play on"!

Why celebrate? 

Why care?

Why invest emotionally, even in (what should be) the greatest of things in the sport, of a scintillating and possibly match-winning try in a World Cup Final, when even that can be overturned so blithely? (Turns out, ironically, that the one thing, the only thing, that is irreversible is the awarding of a penalty. Even if the match official himself tells the players before the resulting kick is taken -- for three points in a game lost by just one -- that the decision he made was wrong, it turns out that he's barred from reversing it.)

I ILLUSTRATE BY CONTRAST. I take you to the very end of this year's home-and-away AFL season, in which the fortunes of five teams hinged on the result of one game -- a game in which Adelaide kicked what looked like a winning goal against Sydney. To give them a win. But almost immediately (and the speed was the key) the goal umpire called "no goal." No goal, he said, because the ball had hit the post. No goal, meaning that because of that decision teams went into the final eight that wouldn't have otherwise, and other teams missed out. Including Adelaide. (And my team, Geelong.)

Turned out however that the goal umpire was wrong. That the ball didn't hit the post. That Adelaide coulda-shoulda won. That (because of that putative win) several teams who had already started their off-season prep might have to be called back. 

So what's the AFL to do? Here's what they did: they came out on the Monday and said two things: "We wuz wrong." And: "Tough." It was left to sports commentators to say the third: "Suck it up."

At the time, I thought they were empty-headed. That they were wrong. Not so. What they perhaps understood, and what the weekend's failure of officiation illustrated so well, by its absence, is (and I capitalise this to be sure to make the point) that FANS NEED TO KNOW THAT WHAT THEY'RE SEEING IN THE HERE-AND-NOW REALLY MATTERS. Because if they don't, if they start to think that it's all contingent, that it's all mutable, then there's no point in hanging on the outcome of every damn moment in what otherwise is a pretty stupid spectacle.

And when that happens, people just stop caring. And stop watching.

And let's not even get started on red cards and yellow cards, and the foolishness of importing, into a man-on-man game of collisions in which every man matters, a system borrowed from soccer. (I'll let a sports writer at RNZ do some of that heavy lifting for me, suggesting a sport from which it might be better to borrow.)

Let's instead lament the decision of our team leaders who decided not to take three points when it mattered, and congratulate the Springboks and their coaches -- who worked out that to win, with the rules as they are, that it's best to play low-risk rugby in which you invite the other team to make the mistakes.

And to wonder whether we should really care about it at all.

Soccer? Rugger? Football? Footy?

"Archery was essential for defence of the realm; football wasn't....
    "Small wonder that the game was royally disliked. Its origins were as common as gum under a tavern table. At first it didn't even have a name with any distinction. All the royal edicts called it 'ball play or 'playing at ball.' The term 'football' first appeared in a 1486 document, but it didn't mean a game in which a foot came into contact with a ball. Instead, it meant a game played 'on foot' rather than on horse, as was royally-approved jousting. The name also showed that football belonged to the commoners; only the nobility could afford to use horses for games!"

~ PFRA Research, from their article 'A Friendly Kinde of Fight: The Origins of Football to 1633'

"The earliest written reference to a game called 'football' dates from the 15th century, although the game itself has been around a lot longer.
   "In its oldest versions, any part of the body could be used to control the ball or tackle opponents. The name it acquired refers not to the fact that only the feet could be used to propel the ball, but that the game was played on foot. This marked it out as a game played by ordinary people, as distinct from the team games of the nobility which were played on horseback....
   "This early knockabout version of football probably derived from a game called 'harpastum,' which was played by Roman soldiers. This would have looked a little like our modern-day rugby and was used as a training exercise. It involved plenty of body-tackling and general commotion. The locals then perhaps created their own rough-and-ready version."

~ from 'History of Football,' from ICONS Online (commissioned by UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

"Football, by the way, originally just meant any game played on foot, as apart from a game played on horseback. So it’s been a game of the streets, indeed much of the early history of football is told from the ways in which it was banned by successive monarchs, who felt that playing football would take people away from archery; equestrian sports were more obviously of military value.
    "With the growth of industrialisation in England from the middle of the 18th century, with urbanisation and the move from the fields to the cities, then the nature of the game might change. The sort of football played on paved streets is different from a game played in the fields....
    "INTERVIEWER: Where does the name ‘soccer’ come from?
    "A: There’s nothing definite in that. But essentially by the turn of the century, one of the stories is someone asked one of the chaps at school, ‘Want to come together at Rugger, old chap’ and he said, ‘No, I think I’ll stay and have a game of soccer’, and it’s the Association Football, shortened to soccer. As ‘rugger’ and ‘Assoc’ becomes ‘soccer’....
    "In 1863 after a series of discussions in the paper, in the field, that a group of old boys from the various Public Schools got together in London in the Freemasons’ Tavern in October of 1863, and founded the Football Association. That is the defining moment in the founding of soccer. It also the defining moment in the first football code, Rugby, which had been played at Rugby School for decades before that ... the essential difference then between the two major forms of football, one is the game in which you run with the ball, carrying it, and the other is the dribbling game. Much of that would depend on the school you went to. Rugby, wide open spaces, green grass, you could run, you could tackle, you could play the rough game. If you were playing at Winchester or the Cloisters on hard grounds, then you had bans because of space, of the surface, on handling and running and tackling."

~ sports historian Bill Murray, from an interview on the ABC's Sports Factor

"The English roll their eyes when Americans talk about 'soccer.' But actually, it's what the game should be called. And it's a British word....
    "The word comes from 19th-century British slang for Association Rules football, a kicking and dribbling game that was distinct from Rugby rules football back when both versions were played by British schoolboys. The lads who preferred the rougher game popular in schools like Rugby and Eton seceded from Britain's fledgling Football Association in 1871 to write their own rules, and soon players were calling the two sorts of football rugger and soccer.

~ Der Speigel, from its article 'It's Called Soccer'

Meanwhile, in a land down under ...

"Since its creation in Melbourne in the 1850s ... it [Australian Football] has evolved to a higher form, leaving behind other codes, which the writer Oriel Gray termed 'necessary steps in the ascent of man'."

~ Stephen Alomes, from his chapter 'Tales of a Dreamtime: Australian Football as a Secular Religion,' p.48

Bob Jones on rugby's decline

Bob Jones on rugby's decline:

"I can’t think of another sport so overwhelmingly rule‑bound. Constant whistle‑blowing, pedantic referees, interference empowered linesmen and third television referees to re‑examine the rare moments of action, make for a tedious spectacle. It reeks of the school room.
    "I’ve always been critical of my fellow New Zealanders for their timid acceptance of rule‑obsessed officialdom blighting our lives, so overall, the decline in interest in rugby is probably a healthy thing.
    "The sight of a referee, having for the thousandth time blown his whistle and stopped play, then beckoning with his finger as if addressing a two year old, to a giant forward to come to him is degrading. The oaf stumbles forward, stands meekly before him while he’s scolded, then if yellow‑carded, hangs his head in shame as he leaves for his 10 minutes punishment.
    "I thought about that when watching the greatest game of all, namely test cricket and the just completed, wonderfully dramatic Ashes series. A fresh Aussie bowler came on, stripped his jersey off and handed it to the umpire, already adorned with three other player jerseys around his waist, then the bowler pulled his hat off, banged it on top of the two the umpire already had on his head, then carefully placed his sunglasses atop of the pile, before commencing to bowl.
    "During overs it’s common to see players joking and chatting with the umpires. It’s a game for God’s sake...
    "Potentially rugby is a spectacular game but there’s an urgent need for a more relaxed approach to the rules, a cry I might add, echoed by the previous coach."

. 

So, not the drunken shambles the lemon-suckers predicted, then

Good news—maybe. Could adults soon to be allowed to be adults for more than just the duration of a sports tournament?

Allowing bars to open during Rugby World Cup games didn’t turn the country into the drunken shambles that had been predicted, say the backers of the law change that made it possible…
    A law change was made two months ago to allow bars to open early during the tournament, rather than having to apply for special licences.
    The change was enabled by a bill from ACT's sole MP David Seymour, who watched the final at a bar in Auckland's Mt Eden.
    He was happy there had been no major problems and it showed New Zealanders were actually responsible people.
    "The picture that was painted when the bill was debated was that New Zealanders are infantile and if there's not a law made to prevent it happening there would just be drunk people pouring out into the street and harassing children," he said.
    However, there had actually been a very positive spirit with many generations watching games together, he told NZ Newswire.
   Hospitality Association chief executive Bruce Robertson says it played out exactly has they had anticipated.
    "If police hadn't been so difficult over the applications for special licences under the existing act it wouldn't have been necessary [to introduce this temporary legislation for the tournament," he told NZ Newswire.

So for all the talk of drunken disaster peddled by the lemon-suckers, instead NZ adults were allowed to act like adults—and did.

Time to give the lemon-suckers the boot, and permanently restore the right of NZers to enjoy themselves responsibly.

Now this is what I call a fan!

Biggest All Blacks fan?

Everyone, meet my uncle- the @AllBlacks biggest fan #AllBlackEverything #RWC2015 #NZLvAUS pic.twitter.com/3xpjGNFAVQ

— Katie Brown (@katie_pai) October 31, 2015

Survey: Not many EnZedders care about rugby.

Frame from survey by Uni of Auckland Stupidity Department

Today’s story about rugby is that not many EnZedders care about rugby. Turns out that at least one sociologist cares little for accuracy.

Associate Professor Toni Bruce, from the Faculty of Education and Social Work, is conducting a survey on people’s experiences of and attitudes towards the Rugby World Cup, based on similar surveys in 2007 and 2011.
     The sport sociologist, who is a rugby fan, says the results so far in 2015 reveal a group of New Zealanders, which she calls “the silent majority”, who are not enamoured of the Rugby World Cup.
    “These are people who are uninterested in rugby or the Rugby World Cup, including some who are actively resistant to what they see as rugby’s dominance of New Zealand’s cultural life,” she says…
    Dr Bruce said 37 per cent of the survey respondents reported that winning the Rugby World Cup was personally important to them, whereas the vast majority said it was not.

The sport sociologist says a lot more besides: about violence, about increasing commercialisation of the All Blacks, and about the way New Zealanders “invest so much of their identity into sport”—all things you have to say to get tenure in a modern university sociology department whether you believe them or not.

All of it was faithfully reported in the Herald, the Press, at Stuff—and then just as faithfully reported around the world—complete with headlines like Silent majority turned off by All Blacks and rugby, survey claims, and 'Silent majority' of Kiwis are not into rugby.

Yet you have to read to the end the Herald story to discover that the sport sociologist’s survey “is self-selecting”—much like on of those Paul Henry or John Campbell questions where they ask —and, even worse, that the basis for the sweeping “silent majority” claim is a sample size of just 197.

So far 197 people have completed the 2015 survey. In 2007 there were 131 survey participants and in 2011 there were 267.

So just under 200 people have completed her stupid survey. Fewer people who have commented on her story since it’s been publicised.

Talk about making far too much soup on from one onion. Just 197 people in a self-selected survey, and this silly bitch’s “result” is getting all this coverage. 197 people, of which 126 said something she interprets as saying winning the Rugby World Cup was not personally important to them.

Why not head over here now to take her survey, and start to skew her stupid story.

UPDATE:  Farrar:

Sounds like it was a self-selecting survey, which is basically worthless.  [This means any quantitative data (ie more people are turned off rugby) is pretty useless, even though there can be useful qualitative data (why some people are turned off)]
    UMR did a scientific poll in 2011 about what news stories people followed. 83% of NZers said they closely followed the story of the All Blacks winning the Rugby World Cup…

Quote of the day: “The knockout stage is more like a 19th-century duel…”

“Yet no amount of big data or game management can prepare players
for the World Cup. This is not a military campaign like the European
Six Nations championship or the [Southern Hemisphere] Rugby
Championship…. The knockout stage is more like a 19th-century duel,
a spectacle where even the world’s best may fall victim to self-doubt.”
~ Lionel Barber, writing for FT Rugby: World Cup 2015

Song for the semi-final

I hear we’re struggling to find a song to sing at rugby games.

Ireland has the Fields of Athenry, England (for some reason) has a Negro spiritual, and Australia has the most annoying song written since our own National Anthem. Which should be unsung, but sadly isn’t.

So I don’t have a song for you to sing on every terrace, but there’s certainly a strong candidate for one to be sung at this weekend’s semi-final. An old classic, with only a few words needing an update. I mean, have you Ever Met a Nice South African … ?

Quarter-finals [updated]

So, who really wants to talk about much else this morning than those quarter finals?

Four great games, eh? And all the northern hemisphere teams sent home from a northern hemisphere tournament. How good’s that? And with memories of 2007 so quickly and thoroughly expunged—nine frickin’ tries!—how good was it that none of us even got the chance to have a decent chew on our fingernails.

But, well, with so much having been spent on and prepared for the tournament, and with so much riding on the result of every game—four more years, remember!—I can’t help wondering what is it about rugby that leaves so much to the arbitrary decision of a midfield maggot with a whistle? One of the world’s most important matches decided on a single penalty, where with rugby’s rotund rulebook there are plentiful penalties to be found in almost every play. A game in which numbers around the ball and in defence are so desperately important, yet which almost arbitrarily makes no-contest of a game by having borrowed a stupid send-off system from soccer.

And that’s not the only thing the game has borrowed from soccer.

If the best of the weekend was the nine tries run in by our All Blacks—they’re always our All Blacks when they run in nine frickin’ tries  aren’t they—the worst for me was the bloody Hollywood by our All Black captain. He’d come in offside at a ruck to snuff out a French attack when they were starting to look likely, a French fellow lent on him with a fist, and our alleged Greatest Al Black Ever started rolling around like both eyes had been plucked out—just long enough for the maggot to give a penalty the wrong way then pull out his yellow card and totally end the quarter-final as a contest.

That’s garbage, that is.

Same thing happened in a pool match, remember: Dan Carter rolling his neck just enough to get Tonga's Paula Ngauamo a yellow card. [Check it out from 2:46]

Takes the gloss off it for me, when your two starred veterans start rolling around like a gut-shot Brazilian to shut down a game.

UPDATE: Yes, I could go with Adolf’s suggestion:

It's high time the fifty-seven old farts took a leaf out of cricket's book and allowed a captain to challenge a ref’s decision, requiring the TMO to intervene and decide.

England’s options

After England’s embarrassing exit from their own Rugby World Cup tournament even before the knockout stages have started – did we mention they’ve had their worst tournament in a history of bad tournaments – “a catastrophe for country and RWC” says the hyperbolic UK press – the Telegraph suggests teams England supporters could get behind now their own sub-standard team has been dumped. Because, frankly, all the other options are going to give a fan much more fun.

Prospects include the French, who’ve had to endure Croydon; the Japanese, whose joyous giant-killing has already installed them as most fan’s second-favourite; and the Scottish, because “English and Scottish fans have a long history of friendly co-operation.” Oh, and of course New Zealand, if “my friend, you are a glory-hunter.” Like these young ladies…

[Pics by Telegraph]

UPDATE: Wanted …

There’s something wrong with a game…

… when the running time is nearly a hundred minutes, yet the ball is in play for only a smidgen over twenty-five.

Unless you think referees should be the centre of attention.

UPDATE: Even the All Blacks were bored.

Fantastic win!

Is this the best 90 seconds of video you’re going to see today? The last minute of the biggest upset in Rugby World Cup history, maybe in the top-five sporting upsets of all time: Japan’s immediately-famous last-minute win over the Springboks, complete with Japanese commentary …

Well done Japan and coach Eddie Jones, who thought through the victory.

I wonder how some of those previous Japanese coaches feel today?

[Pic by SBS.Com.au]

When Auckland is strong … ?

Finish this phrase for me: “When Auckland is strong … ”  Let’s hope it’s not true, eh.

I always said it would end badly when they gave the Blues to a man knighted for his services to depression.

Still, at least Andy Dalton is doing a fine job as Auckland CEO. For Counties.

This one’s for relief. The next one’s for joy.

Picture ex New York Times

The wait is over.  The nerves assuaged. The World Cup jinx shattered. On Sunday night we  could finally party like we’d wanted to in 1991, ‘95, ‘99, ‘03, and ‘07. The long wait for a Wold Cup was was finally over, and the partying could start in earnest.

The moment when it came was explosive. Strangers were hugging strangers. People you didn’t know wanted to tell you every World Cup loss they’d been to, and how this one made it all better. Everyone was cheering Stephen Donald to a standstill (Stephen Donald!), and folk who knew better were singing along with gusto to a Freddy Mercury song to which in younger days they’d sworn eternal hostility. (Yes, I confess,  I was there too.) Hell, there were even people cheering Steve Hansen to the rafters for his cunning lineout move, and others could be heard thanking Helen Clark for getting the Cup here in the first place.

There was joy aplenty, but not unalloyed joy. It was joy heavily tinged with relief—and not just because the victory was so narrow, nor because the French team had fought so heroically, and so nearly successfully, to deny the ABs the victory.  It was relief that after twenty-four years the moment was finally here; that the Cup we’d thought we owned was finally ours; that for four years we could say our team are not chokers, they are the Wold Champions!

Let’s just say those last five words again, just because they sound so good: They are the World Champions!

It seems a long wait. Twenty-four years, and within that an inexorable four-yearly cycle in which the nation’s psyche was dissected anew with every semi-final and quarter-final disaster. It was hell, wasn’t it.

Yet perhaps this narrowest of victories—so sternly fought for; and with all our home ground advantages so narrowly and heroically won—might just tell us all the lesson we needed to learn: that to win a World Cup, in any code, is surely a task as hard, as tough, as the victory when it’s achieved is sweet. And more: that all those years of crying at our failure cut so deeply because all that time we thought the trophy was ours by right; we learned on Sunday that the trophy needs to be fought for, and fought for with every last sinew. (As Matt said in yesterday’s comments, “You're a world champion if you can take what that French team threw at NZ and prevail.”)

Perhaps now we’ve  won it in the tensest of struggles to a team everyone was unaccountably ready to write off we might now realise how difficult the task of raising the Cup really is, and we can perhaps prepare to forgive some of those on whom we’ve poured scorn in failures past. (Okay, maybe not John Mitchell, but if Stephen Donald can be so rapidly rehabilitated … ?)

Now we’ve got the monkey off our backs we can reflect that we never really owned the World Cup at all, and victory in its pursuit is sorely won, and so much more worthy of celebration for all that.

Which means next time we can celebrate with pure joy, and not just with relief.

I was nervous as I walked down to the ground last night [updated]

Nervous? Hell, I know I was, walking down the hill to the ground last night. And I know I wasn’t the only one.

Wearing the same tear-stained All Blacks jersey I’d worn to our 1991 semi-final loss to Australia in Dublin  (not jinxed, I hoped!) it seemed to me that night and others like it in Cardiff, at Twickenham, in Sydney, had demonstrated to every AB fan, to all of us, how difficult it is even just to get the right to play off for the big prize.  And the short and stupid game the night before had shown how easy it is to have your hopes overturned in one stupid rush-of-blood-to-the-head moment.

There were one and a quarter great semi-finals to enjoy over the weekend. Sadly, rugby’s destructive obsession with command and control* killed off the first one after seventeen minutes, but there were at least 97 minutes in all that were a great advertisement for the game.

And didn’t the boys in black step up in that second game! Apart from the two Williams boys (one of whom was a passenger, the other who was ejected from what could have been his biggest stage looking like an even bigger muppet than his mate Quade Blooper) every single player stepped up to the plate and hit a home run. Even Weepu, playing with flu and the memories of his late grandfather, could be forgiven for missing the kicks that could have put Australia away much earlier. He could be forgiven because the Australian pack were being monstered, destroyed, and finally just blown apart. (Who didn’t feel as thrilled as Brad Thorn when right on cue the black pack blew them apart utterly to deliver the penalty that finally confirmed the victory.)

But think of those great moments; those great “one-percenters.” Cory Jane’s marking of the high ball. Israel Dagg’s line breaks. Cruden’s coolness. Kieran Read’s superbly dashing tackle, backing himself to come off of his man at full speed to snuff out an attack. McCaw’s driving tackle to push Genia back ten, fifteen, nearly twenty metres and then steal the ball. (Is that how it happened? In the stands around me, we were were all starting to get a bit messy by this late stage of the game.)

The pressure of the black machine was just immense.  Only one try in it at the death, but in the end there was only one team in it.

Not because Australia played badly. But because they just weren’t allowed to play well. (“Four more years, boys,” every Australian in the crowd was being told over and over.)

Roll on next weekend. **

And yes, I’m already starting to feel nervous again.

But at least I know it isn’t my jersey that has the hoodoo.

* * * * *

* I blame soccer:  The rolling on the ground by the felled French winger; the whole ridiculous read card/yellow card nonsense—both entirely inappropriate imports from a game where they do play tiddlywinks. 
Rugby is a man-on-man physical battle needing all fifteen players to make it a contest.  Yes, referee Alain Rolland followed the letter of the IRB’s rules in sending Warbuton off for his adrenalin-fuelled spear tackle (so stop your whingeing about the ref), but they’re bloody stupid rules he was enjoined to follow.
Tens of thousands of people travelled many hundreds of miles for a match that was four years in the making, and many months in the anticipating. Millions of dollars, pounds, euros and zlotis have been spent getting these teams and all their fans to this point of the tournament. Millions tune in to watch the drama, and the hopes of whole nations rest on the outcome. So to kill it off as a contest after just seventeen minutes—tokill it stone dead—suggests to me that rugby still needs to sort out its house.
My suggestion: abandon the sending 0ff rule altogether.  It doesn’t protect players; it only destroys the game. It destroyed this one-and with it, for many, the credibility of the tournament. Instead, do what AFL does in contests of equivalent tension and physicality: instead of sending players off for egregious offences (which is what Warburton’s was, make no mistake) in an AFL semi-final he would have gone on report and his team been marched back fifty metres—earning the French the appropriate outcome from the offence (probably, on the much shorter rugby field, it would have been a five-metre scrum or some equivalent), and earning the Welsh captain the well-deserved ire of his fans and team-mates, instead of (as he has been now) being elevated into the ranks of sainthood for having lost his head when all around him his team-mates were keeping theirs.

** There’s only one game next weekend: the World Cup Final! Who cares about the joke game that is the third and fourth play-off, a game unlived even by those playing in it. Put it to bed, please—or better yet, set it up as a Battle of the Hemispheres, with selected players and coaches from north and south shoulder-tapped to take part as their teams exit the tournament.
It’s not like they have anything else booked for the week.
And wouldn’t it be great to see Victor Matfield and David Pocock pack down next to each other against Sam Warburton and whatever other northerners could be found worthy of the contest. (Even throw Bryce Lawrence the whistle, to redeem himself in a much more good-natured contest than his last outing.)
Like the classic barbarian games of old, it really would be World in Union—and unlike the dreary third-fourth Battle of the Sad Sacks, it’d be a fantastic curtain-raiser for the Big Game!

UPDATE: Best line this morning from an Australian:

Was a week that started with endless [Australian] huffing and puffing over [Gillard’s] carbon tax ever going to end in anything other than a blackout?

Read the rest of Anthony Sharwood’s piece on the All Black Sabbath. I guarantee you’ll love it.

The battle of the coaches [updated]

After a great weekend of rugby action, what has emerged as the remaining four contenders for World Cup glory are four teams, three of which are coached by New Zealanders.

Henry v Deans v Gatland.

May the best coach win?

UPDATE: I hereby and most humbly apologise for making an idle Stephen Donald reference last week.

I should have touched wood.

A great weekend for the pointy ball

It’s hard to talk about the unsavouriness of politics after such a ripping weekend of glorious finals footie, and some pretty good World Cup Rugger.  If you’re a fan of pointy-ball sports, this was a weekend to savour.

It started for me 9:30 Friday night, watching Hawthorn do their very best to knock of Collingwood’s inbreeds for the right to play my Geelong Cats in next week’s AFL final. It came down to one kick in a terrific Prelim Final to next week’s main event, with Collingwood just coming out ahead in a thrilling finish that could have gone either way—but with enough bruised and battered Pies’ bodies to make a Cats fan optimistic for next weekend. (Especially since the Cats beat these deadbeats by 96 points just a few weeks ago.)

Saturday’s couch-surfing epic started for me mid-afternoon, watching Geelong beat a tired West Coast by 60 points to confirm our own place in next weekend’s AFL final. (Top effort that. It’s looking good for three flags for Geelong in five years.) I left all the other members of the Auckland Geelong Supporters Club to party on his own, then motored over to watch the All Blacks thump France with a knowledgeable rugby crowd. And wasn’t it great to see the number one team finally out on the track and playing together for the first time. What a coaching master stroke. And how emotional seeing such an ill Jock Hobbs presenting Richie McCaw with his hundred-mission cap. A great moment.

Two games down, two resounding wins for my teams.  A great night. To celebrate, I dropped everything to race down the road to watch the second half of the league with a garden-shed-ful of Warriors fans. Who would have thought they could play finals footie with that intensity?  Or a garden shed could contain all that excitement when the final whistle went and the Warriors went through to the final!

(And how strange to see champion Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse taking the night off by watching this game over the road from the MCG, where the night before he had cried in the coaching box at his team’s narrow escape—and how strange to see former All Blacks coach John Hart in the Warrior’s coaching box at the same stadium, at the same time as the ABs were redeeming themselves against the team who once made Hart’s ABs, and the entire country, cry.)

Hearing Argentina knock off Scotland yesterday was almost an anti-climax after that. But Scotland have been pathetic at this tournament, and Argentina deserve to go through again. And knocking off a “Home Nations” team has always been good for footy.

So what a great weekend for pointy-ball sports. And for my teams, of course. 

A Puritan World Cup?

After another weekend of great games and celebrations, the puritans want to take the city back. “Auckland’s party mood worries officials” reports a po-faced Royal NZ Herald this morning, with stories not about the thrill of seeing smiling, happy faces filling the city but instead of meetings, concern and  “urgent talks” about the phenomenon.

Remember Mencken’s working definition of  Puritanism:

The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”

That’s exactly the type of thing worrying these “officials.”

Here’s some good advice fro them: “Chill out: it’s a party.”

How to speak New Zillund

For the many foreign readers of this blog struggling to know what’s going on down at the park, here’s a handy guide put together by our Australian friends:

Alright? Got that?

And just in case any of our Australian friends missed the apology to their good selves from NZ’s Minister of Bad Manners, which is currently circulating around the interweb:

I would like to extend my heartfelt apologies to the members of the Australian Rugby Union contingent for my behaviour at the corporate facilities at North Harbour Stadium during the Wallabies’ frankly unconvincing win against Italy on Sunday.
    My conduct was unbecoming a government minister, let alone one charged with the duty of hosting overseas guests even if those overseas guests happen to be Australian.
    The barrage of abuse I hurled against not only the playing fifteen, but the very character of Australia and Australians — while at times hilarious and often technically accurate — was not acceptable, and for that I sincerely apologiSe.
    “Cheating convict scum” is not an expression I should have used.  If I had my time over again, I would allude to Australia’s past as a convict colony, along with its historical propensity to violate the rules and spirit of rugby, in a more dignified fashion.
    I have called James O’Connor — who I can confirm is absolutely not Justin Bieber’s gay twin — to apologise directly.  Similarly, I tweeted an apology to Quade Cooper — whose name is spelled Q-U-A-D-E and not Q-U-N-T as I may have implied a few dozen times on Sunday.
    Finally, to the catering staff at the box, I would like to thank them for their encouragement and occasional applause during this unfortunate episode. I will autograph the remainder of your drink coasters today and get them sent over right away.
    Thank you.

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: It is, quite literally, a National-isation

Your weekly prescription of good hard sense from Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath.
This week, how to stop MPs and immigrants from gouging NZ taxpayers.

• NZ HERALD: “Waterfront move an 'overreaction'” – Auckland Council transport chair Mike Lee says Murray McCully’s move to nationalise Party Central is an over-reaction…

THE DOCTOR SAYS: For the first time I can remember, I find myself agreeing with Mike Lee. This National-led Government, voted in on the pretext of rolling back Clarkism, has turned instead into Blue Nanny, seizing control of the Auckland waterfront in a crude and blatant power-grab.
    It is, quite literally, a National-isation of Auckland’s crown jewels.
    And for what? To “create more space for partying.” So that more JAFAs can get pissed. Is that really a legitimate government activity? Should local or central government have even become involved in staging a pissup? Or a rugby tournament?  (Answers on a postcard, please.)  Because this, right here, is the logical outcome of having pollies plan your sporting contests.
    Politicians like Murray McCu**y and his National Socialist cohorts see a situation that has been screwed up by a simpleton (who Aucklanders must now be embarrassed at voting into the mayoralty). McCu**y seizes his opportunity, and with it Auckland’s transport, Auckland’s wharves and Auckland’s downtown, showering over the newly National-ised piss-up infrastructure yet another golden shower of taxpayer money.
    His plan? That one week after a ginormous 200,000-strong party, few, if any, punters will be willing to try repeating the experience anyway.  Ergo, pictures on Monday morning of Wellington’s shortest cabinet minister crowing over his “success” in quelling Auckland’s crowds.
    So what would a Libertarianz Party MP have suggested doing instead? Easy: have the politicians stay the hell out of the Rugby World Cup altogether; don’t give the IRB the power to shut down local businesses; leave the Rugby Union and Martin Snedden to organise their own tournament using their own money; Let the IRB subsidise them if needed. Leave private enterprise to organise the after-match piss-ups however and wherever they wanted. Why? Because how a person or group of people amuse themselves (provided they don’t hurt anyone who doesn’t want to be hurt) is none of John Key’s damned business.
    It may come as a surprise to McCu**y and even to many New Zealanders, but one of the core functions of government is not facilitating the kicking around of a pointy ball and the drinking of piss.
    However, my final prescription is this: forget the parasitic politicians for the next month or so and just enjoy this veritable feast of rugby. I know I will be trying to.

See you next week!
Doc McGrath