I thought I couldn’t stand the endless navel gazing our Media undertakes as they perform autopisies on our national psyche with screams of ‘why we should hate ourselves’ whenever the bloody All Blacks lose.
I was wrong.
Us winning is just as bad.
The All Blacks winning rugby games seems to be the only thing our Newspapers are bothering with anymore, there were 6 separate bloody stories on the NZ Herald page alone yesterday, and I’m not talking about in the Sports section, I mean in the latest news section.
Here’s the bloody truth about our Rugby.
Bugger all anyone else bothers to play the game. There. I said it.
We are world champions and have a great winning streak in a game no one else really plays, but because our masculinity and sense of National Identify is so terribly fragile and we drench everything we do in the creativity disinfectant that is our collective anti-intellectualism, we worship rugby with the mindless adoration of religious fanatics.
It’s about as culturally healthy as an addiction to alcohol.
the older criticisms of rugby culture hold–it enables and enforces conformity, rural conservatism, misogyny and macho boofhead behaviour; and in the professional era “corporatism” should be added, not to mention dissing Pacific Islands whose players are now vital to the All Blacks, but in many cases not allowed to play for their own countries at WC time!
when the ABs do suffer a, sob, loss, the general depression and malaise among followers would be a highlight for me–if not for the knowledge that many family members later ‘cop it’
rugby is a blight on the country, it takes focus off a hundred more important matters
Fair comment! I feel sorry for people engaged in other sports. They get almost no coverage at all. Even female rugby is left in the dark. And when all the rights are gobbled up by Sky, it guarantees nothing will be seen except by pirating.
Worst of all though is seeing King John in the crowd at rugby games. Do taxpayers pay for him to “represent” Kiwis by sending him to every game so he can shove his beak in the media spotlight?
Haha !
Two things put me off rugby for life.
Thing #1.
Getting kicked in the penis at high school while trying to play the dreadful brawling closet Gayness that is the stupid endeavour. ( No disrespect Gay people xx )
And no, not the balls. The penis. The searing pain was spectacular.
Thing #2
Having to get far too close to the idiots who loved getting kicked in the penis because … ” Win ‘n stuff! Got electrolytes dumbass. I’ll face/fist you an’ FUCK ! ”
The only rugby game I’d go and see would be if the game itself was held on a steep, grassy slope, that every player was dosed on good LSD, naked and smeared in Vaseline. At last, an honest game perhaps?
A # third thing could be that the game has become a marketing tool, ergo a head-fuck weapon to keep the moronic masses away from realising they’re being head-fucked.
Big bwave Ithcy Wichie Mc C-aw my Balls huh? Only the morally dubious could stand so close to jonky and not vomit or punch the little ferret. ( No disrespect to actual ferrets. )
My mum worked on her farms since she was a 16 year old kid. Firstly, on 650 acres then on 3000 acres. She’s literally earned millions of dollars in export earned revenue and paid $100,000’s of dollars in taxes during her sixty year stint. She ( More my father actually ) was hunted down by the now dead manager of the BNZ in Timaru and foreclosed on after the Timaru branch of the BNZ ‘ lost ‘ a significant sum of money into their gruesome internals.
( More on that later in the Blog I’m promising but have yet to deliver. ) At Don Brash’s 22 % interest rates and a steep drop in on-farm profits ( Yet product was getting record prices off-shore, as they’ve always done you dumb ass farmers. ) saw her wandering around her farm with my rifle. I found her with the barrel hovering around under her chin as her cats rubbed around her ankles. ( FYI Spooks. That was thirty years ago and I have no guns. None. Come and have a look if you don’t believe me. )
She recovered of a kind, her farm was sold at a mortgagee auction to a local farmer/property developer ,who’s son, whom he bought her property for, started stealing stuff from her that was earmarked for a clearing sale. Yes, arrests were made and a sentence of diversion was ordered. (Then he did it again bizarrly. )
She and my dad found an old tin hut out in the tussocks with no electricity, no running water and no phone and in there, my mum lived for ten happy years until she died of cancer at my home.
She’s waiting on her big shinny cup, her medals, her recognition, her fame, her glory and to stand up close to The Honourable John Key. Prime Minister of New Zealand / Aotearoa.
What’s the above story got to do with the obsessions of some with rugby ?
New Zealand’s steeped in a swindle perpetuated by a cadre of liars and rugby is one of the mechanisms that distorts our focus.
To think that rugby is not a global game or that the achievements of the All Blacks are anything other than outstanding is at the very least naive.
I love watching rugby / used to play and believe doing so in no way compromises my loathing of the Nats or disagreeing with any misogynist attitudes etc that some involved in the game clearly have, attitudes that some men have regardless of what sport they enjoy / political party they support / where they live.
Yes Key attaches himself to the All Blacks like some kind of parasite but anyone with any sense will see this for what it is I think generalizing rugby as per the above is ignorant and immature. If you don’t like rugby that is fine but I think desperately trying to paint rugby as the font of all societies failings is ridiculous.
I agree that winning is not enough any more.
I agree that rugby takes focus off a hundred more important matters. You know though, that if there were not rugby (or sports) to focus on, the column inches would go on Max Key etc.
I agree that a lot of other sports get little coverage. Should there be no focus on NZ rugby you can be sure the NZ media attention would got to the “corporatism” of English football (soccer) and the big movers in the globalisation of sport, American basketball, American football and American baseball.
I disagree that rugby is a game no one else really plays and no-one else is interested in. I saw this last week: “There are just 150,000 registered players in New Zealand, far fewer than the 230,000 in Australia, 290,000 in France and 340,000 in both South Africa and England.”
“because our masculinity and sense of National Identify is so terribly fragile and we drench everything we do in the creativity disinfectant that is our collective anti-intellectualism, we worship rugby with the mindless adoration of religious fanatics.”
We have been cornered by the whimpy MSM to believe rugby is all that matters now in the world, postulated by the SS Joyce mab and their propaganda machine so we need the opposition to now combine into a democracy fighting unit/forum NOW and on our collective behalf prepare a well set up public ownership claim into the court, for seizing back our – half the public asset known as RNZ/TVNZ for the express wellbeing of our future, & to open up the voters minds as the election approaches.
No to do this is to abandon our collective rights as taxpayers into a non functioning public media that has clearly been de-politicised for the current government purposes.
Can you begin a poll please for getting public support Martyn?
So if our national sport was Football the six stories in the Herald would be OK?
We have not matured as a nation.
When ONE code of sport dominates the way rugby does there is something amiss.
It has its own channels ,newspaper content ,usually the first 3-4 pages of the sport section and now creeping into the general news as well when its should be confined to sports coverage because that is what rugby is…sport.
Rugby has become a helpful distraction for the government spin machine keeping most individuals who follow the game distracted and the real news coverage is a poor second.
Everything is described with a rugby analogy in case we cant identify or work out a problem without one.
If New Zealanders put as much effort into solving the countries problems as they do with the religious zeal they apply to rugby then we would be a truly great nation.
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