New Zealanders are already quietly preparing themselves for their team’s dismal failure at this year’s Rugby World Cup.
Never mind the fact that they have the best team in the world - on paper and on the field - their loyal fans are privately getting ready to be as positive as possible about losing abysmally.
How does one know this? That reliable old crutch of a quiet day at the newsroom, the survey, proves it. About 450 children at one school in admittedly our largest city, Auckland, were asked whether they thought their team would win the William Webb Ellis trophy this time round. In that rather charming way that children have they said no.
They did add, however, that the All Blacks would get to the final, which really is no consolation at all. But because the survey said so it has to be universally true, even though we all know that 7.86 people out of a sample of 10 innately distrust surveys.
But there’s another thing that drives the Kiwis quietly insane. They know that, even if they do win the cup this year - and it’s a big if - they still won’t have proven much. They know that if they win that elusive trophy they will only have won it on home ground - just like the only other time they ever kissed it, back in the mists of 1987.
After all, their three biggest opponents, the Wallabies, the English and the Springboks have taken it on foreign soil. But not the Kiwis, haunted as they are by another fact: the Boks did not play in 1987. It is this “away” factor that torments the outer reaches of Kiwis’ overly decent dreams in a country whose largest export is not mutton, of course, but milk.
So what do New Zealand’s supporters do before they fall into a fitful, feverish sleep every night? Why, they pray, of course. Not on their knees or anything quite so demonstrative, but they pray nevertheless. What do they pray about? They pray that nothing will happen to their two iconic players, captain Richie McCaw and flyhalf Dan Carter.
So much hinges on these two top-notch but injury-prone athletes that a mere bruise to a ligament becomes national news, on all channels, as if they were real icons that have been damaged in a Romanian church by some deranged pornographer.
But there could be a Maori explanation for all of this. Might an absence of those ultra-cool tribal tattoos on these two gentlemen not be the real bad mana, karma, voodoo or spirit for the team? Quite possibly. How do we know that they don’t have any major tattoos? Because they’re always whipping off their clothes to advertise this deodorant or that refreshing sports drink on our TV screens and billboards, that’s why.
Whatever the case, most of the rugby fans here in tiny New Zealand will be waiting to see these giants of the game perform their awesome haka with their team-mates and hopefully not choke against the more brutish, aforementioned opponents - let alone those, no, let us rather not even mention the French and the nightmare of 2007.
That could only open a can of frogs’ legs.
But here they are, the French, and the Romanians. Everybody’s here now, even the Scots, who were the last to arrive. Was it because they really are tightfisted or because they’re being hosted in Invercargill, the town that is the furthest south and therefore the coldest and thus the most like home?
Whatever the case, they were so overwhelmed by the warm reception they got there, what with bagpipes blaring and open-faced children performing a welcoming haka, that they insisted on taking that area’s prize foodstuff – oysters – right off their menu.
Meanwhile, a Maori professor has said that all immigrants from South Africa, the UK and US should be denied entry because they’re racists. She has a point, of course, because there are some racists in Browns Bay, Auckland, but then there are lots of Saffers who get on better with Maoris than Pakehas (whites) for the simple reason that they’re more used to mixing with other races than the local Pakehas.
Professor Mutu also seems oblivious of the fact that plenty of Saffers here are not white: they’re Indian and Coloured. But she does have a point, just like someone would have a point that Maori men should be banned for bashing their babies, wives and partners, especially when their teams lose.
It’s a known fact that medical teams are actually on standby for this eventuality, but then I went up One Tree Hill with Haare Williams last Sunday, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar (if I still had one) that that poet, sage and leader has never touched a woman in anger in his life.
Anyway, all of this just so happens to coincide with the Pacific Nations Forum, in which the environment and Fiji were top of the agenda. Maybe people are more tolerant of each other here because they have an enemy that is much greater than them. That's not China, but nature. Some of the islands are being threatened by rising oceanic levels and it must be quite hard to discriminate against others when you're drowning.
As for Fiji, sanctions will remain in place against this military-run island until it has democratic elections again. None of its players with military connections were allowed to enter the country and partake, so the last one resigned from his post a week before the finals so that he too could play. Would one be surprised to learn that he resumed his role after the tournament? Hell, yes.
Which brings us to tonight’s opening match between Tonga and N’Zealand, as Prime Minister John Key tends to pronounce it. The former country’s resident and visiting citizens take the prize for the most colourful and enthusiastic supporters so far. We’ve been promised a “physical” match, which comes as a great relief: imagine a psychic game of rugby, with millions just visualising the game.
Then again, it could become a great hit in, say, India.
Or, if you’re a Kiwi you shout (and pray, and hope, and pray again) for New Zealand, and then for your country or island of origin, like the man whose entrance, with its Kiwi and Irish flags I photographed.
When I asked him if I could take a picture of it so that I could share it with my millions of readers worldwide, he responded with all the grace and generosity of this distant country’s people, even though he could hear I was a South African.
Then he rather tellingly added this proviso: “Just don’t win the Cup.”
Neil Sonnekus
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