Like most post WW Two boys I was rugby mad but living in a rural back water by the sea we did have heaps of other activities to interest us, winter and summer. We followed North Auckland and the NZ Maoris avidily. At Te Aute College it was one of three compulsory subjects; that, English and Maori at least to Form Four. Fron 155 boys between 1952-56 we managed to field eight teams regularly every Saturday on the train to Hastings. The First 15 had a number of rugby tours around the country. In my day we played in the curtainraiser for the Springbok-NZ Universities game at Athletic Park in 1956. Not a protester in sight. After a stint in Senior B rugby in Auckland and country rugby I more or less gave it up at the age of 24 except for stints of coaching school boy teams, selecting and finally coaching under 21 teams at Waikato University I gave it up and became a TV spectator. All this involvement was voluntary and for interest and enjoyment.
The big change came with pro-rugby and competitions like Super 14 and World Cups. The game it seems has become a corporate one where regional loyalties are lost in favour of Super Team franchises. Team names are now brand names like Hurricanes, Blues, Crusaders, Chiefs and Highlanders. It is globalized, glamorized, and celebrity-fied; vehicles for advertising and selling merchandise.Before long the Super 14 franchises will be sold. Rugby in fact has been homogenized much like a McDonalds menu. Frankly, this to me a country boy who was privileged to see Colin Meads getting ordered off on his home ground, is too much. The hype surrounding the World Cup therefore makes me sick of it already and I wish it would hurry up so we can focus on far more important things like who is going to govern us after it. It seems to me to be all part of the malaise NZ is in. In medieval Europe the rulers whenever the peasants were starving and beginning to revolt, used to invite a circus into town to entertain them and make them forget that they had no bread. In political and economic terms isn't that what NZ has become?
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