Gotta no respect?
Whatta you thinka you do?
Why you looka so sad?
It'sa not so bad
You won the fucking game
Ah, shaddupa you face.
Joe Dolce (with modifications), 1981
Let me introduce you to some friends of mine. They're the New Zealand sporting public and they're the biggest bunch of professional fucking martyrs in the history of bipedal hominids.
A nation consisting of ten breeds of sheep
Some of whom got the vote
Whose national flower is the ugg boot
And whose national noise is the gloat.
Andrew Denton, 1992
Now, don't get me wrong. I like New Zealanders. I married one and I have a half-share in an small investment one. Slightly broken at the moment, but we're working on a replacement. As it is, even with a spiral fracture of the tibia courtesy a losing argument with a slide at the park, the little fullah's still whining about it a lot less than Brett Lee and can probably drop the thing on a length at pace with greater reliability.
It's just that... well, we all have mates with shit habits that they need to lose, for their own personal development as much as their social acceptance. Burping, farting, nose-picking, not getting their round in, nicking your porn, nicking your girlfriends, hanging a crap in a brown paper bag and lighting it on the doorstep of the local police station... while these are some of the reasons I stopped going out with Australian women, perhaps you've seen similar antisocial habits in associates of your own.
As mates go, the main reason noone talks to New Zealand at parties, particularly after it's had a couple of sherbets and is giving it some welly, is that it just won't stop bleating about the times it reckons it's been wronged, duffed up, done over, ripped off, sold the dump and otherwise cheated out of supreme glory by someone's evil nefarious schemes, usually those of its westie big brother. Listen to a Kiwi's passionately declared delusions of martyrdom and he'll (it's always a he, for some reason - probably that their women are smart enough to avoid Kiwi men) have you believe Australians stole Phar Lap, the pavlova, the 2003 World Cup hosting rights, Rusty Crowe, Split Enz, Crowded House and Shihad. Not to mention the Swiss stealing their best boat drivers for the Americas Cup and the European clubs stealing all their best rugger buggers, and then breaking them. And that's even before you get into any discussion of George Smith's tackle on Justin Marshall in the '03 World Cup semi (if anyone on the left hand side of the ditch even remembers it), or even the relative merits of each others' underarms...
I don't have a problem with the underarm thing. I don't have a problem saying it was wrong. Greg Chappell, if you read the book he wrote of his account of that season, was within gobbing distance of a monumental psychological breakdown, so I can understand why he did what he did, but it was wrong. But here's the thing. Underarm or overarm, that ball wasn't traversing that boundary fence. Not at the MCG in the years before they brought the ropes in and with an journeyman all-rounder from fucking Gore who used to moonlight occasionally for the All Blacks handling the willow. So we're agreed, it was wrong, it probably didn't actually change the result of the match, and it was in 1981. So what the fuck are we still arguing about?
Ah, but you can bet 'underarm' was the first body part brought up by the domestic news providers after the events of last night's game, and you'd be right (it was the 28th anniversary, as the Kiwi media were desperate to remind everyone). After the obvious mention of Brad Haddin's fingertips, which apparently unbeknownst to NSW's number two wicketkeeper, took the ball in front of the stumps - the ball in question being that which supposedly bowled Otago's Neil Broom. Every man and his dog got in on the act. Even the co-founder of the Beige Brigade, that dubious bunch of ferals who dress like jersey caramels as some form of deluded tribute to the worst uniforms in the history of sport (outside of Super League of course), got face time on national news to express his forthright views, a move about as relevant as asking the dork-in-chief of the local trainspotters' association to propose his solution to CityRail's latest infrastructure issues.
It was a fuck-up, pure and simple. Broom shouldn't have been given out, but he wasn't. Broom should have been called back, but wasn't. It happens. Brendon McCullum, NSW's number one wicketkeeper, hit the cover off the ball which he was adjudged LBW to. It happens. It doesn't give wee Danny Vettori licence to cast aspersions on the credibility or sportsmanship of another player, for the sole purpose of destablising an already weakened opposition. That, to me, would appear to be, what would you call it... conduct unbecoming the spirit of the game of cricket?
Vettori does had prior form in this. In the one-day series in England last year, after the side he captained folded up like a cheap Chinese-made deckchair in the tests, they were putting in a better showing in the ODIs and in game four were looking the goods, until stupid-haired England 'quick' Ryan Frontbottom ploughed into permatanned Sarth Efricorn import Grant Elliott mid-pitch and Pommy captain Paul Collingwood appealed for the run-out, which was awarded. It was wrong. It shouldn't have happened. It did. However, the BLACKCAPSLOCK ended up winning the game on the last ball, and all was well. Except for the deluge of pissing and moaning and whining and pouting which wee Danny and his troops spouted forth with in days, if not weeks to come. Indeed, wee Danny didn't stop until he'd gotten what he wanted. Collingwood was immediately replaced as England ODI captain, officially due to suspension over slow over rates but his position was now irretrievable undermined, his professionalism and integrity undeniably smeared, and he lost the job permanently very soon after. (Losing by ten wickets to Allen Stanford's Windies mercenaries in the twenty million game probably didn't help either.)
And here we go again. The professional martyrs on the warpath. The eternally wronged bastions of sporting purity and innocence, once more degraded and defiled on the back seat of professional sport's HQ Holden. Let's quietly airbrush out of the story any suggestion that a New Zealand sporting team might have, let's say, taken advantage of corrupt or dodgy officialdom, or perhaps even cheated like buggery themselves, in order to win a sporting event...
Ever wondered how international cricket came to introduce neutral umpires in test cricket? No, it wasn't Mike Gatting wanting to go that subcontinental parking inspector type with his bat in the mid '80s, though that was the final straw. What sparked it was the mighty West Indies team coming THIS close to walking out of their 1981 tour of a small, insular, parochial island nation as the astonishingly incompetent (to take the most generous interpretation) decisionmaking of belligerent hometown umpires gifted the largely incompetent home side the only series victory over the Windies that any Test-playing nation ever recorded right across their heyday, from the mid-Seventies through to the Tubby Taylor-led Aussies in the mid-Nineties. Any guesses what that small, insular, parochial island nation with the belligerent, incompetent hometown umpires might have been?
Oh, but the West Indies were just bad losers, the Kiwis will tell you. And we had Richard Hadlee, and Martin Crowe, and... And? And nine out-of-work sheep farmers. Plus two very handy jokers in the pack, in the shape of two good keen Kiwi men standing at the bowler's end and at square leg respectively. Two men so unutterly poor at the job they were selected for - I'm not about to publically suggest anything more than that, of course - that they were the catalysts for the introduction of neutral umpires in international cricket. Remember that the next time wee Danny or any other son-of-the-Shakies comes at you to bleat about ancient wrongs. And make sure you remind them that the only reason the likes of Steve Bucknor, Rodney Rudi Koertzen or Arse Head Rauf even have a job is because of them.
And as for wee Danny... Jesus Christ, do we really need to say it?
Son, you won the game. Pipe the fuck down and harden the fuck up.
The Doctor is OUT. In case any large gentlemen in wifebeater singlets and jandals is asking after him.
11 comments:
When your nation has an inferiority complex due to their talented big brother living right next door, whinging is just going to be your default setting.
Only good thing to come out of New Zealand (your wife and half your little one excepted) is the name "chillybin". It sounds way cooler than esky provided you don't say it in a kiwi accent.
Dear Dr Yobbo
Your post has cleared up an important personal issue for me. I have two brothers; one was born in Oz the other in NZ (Dunedin). I have always liked the Kiwi one less. Your post has helped me realise that this is due to objective, rather than subjective reasoning.
Thank you
The decision was farked. Haddin should have interceded to keep Broom in.
I felt a little bit sick after watching it, no way he should have gone
I'm a little out of my league discussing cricket, being an American, but I'm an expert when it comes to discussing the ugliest kits that ever took the pitch/field/arena/ice/etc.
Nothing....NOTHING...beats the uniforms of the Vancouver Canucks in the 1970's:
http://netcrashers.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/canucks.jpg
The man wearing this jersey wants to kick his own ass, I assure you.
But I will say I looked at the Superleague kits, and yes, they are pretty fucking ugly.
The ugliest thing about the Super League kits was the stench of sellout which accompanied them. But then again as a Souths supporter I was always going to say that.
I'd like to think Haddin, if he realised what had happened - which he says he doesn't, and I guess we have to take his word on that - would have pulled the play up. You could see a tinge of confusion in his face, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was that wasn't quite right about it, because he is a wicketkeeper, and in point of fact is a bit thick.
There is a actually serious side to this (aside from the sledging) - sadly there is a significant deficiency to the NZ psyche which means they can't actually enjoy success and have to find misery to wallow in or a reason to complain - the All Blacks rarely get credit for winning in proportion to the pounding they get for losing. Aussies get characterised as being loud, obnoxious and arrogant - our portrayal in Flight of the Conchords is pretty representative of how they view us - but we also get all the girls. The interesting thing though is that we're seen as much more confident and successful than them - it is absolutely an inferiority complex, but it's entirely self-inflicted. Sometimes you just want to slap them and say you have a fucking beautiful country, you're not as shit at everything as you secretly think you are and the rest of the world isn't out to get you - it barely knows you exist - so man up for fucks sake. And sometimes you just want to slap them full stop.
It'd be good if we could actually beat them at something this year though. They're starting to sound like us.
The fact that Broom walked is the end of it. Sure it was a mistake but if someone walks, they walk. Get over it NZ. You won the game!
I guess Daniel does have that little brother ('stop picking on me') mentality which I thought Fleming had gone a long way to eradicating. Oh well, back to square one and a lot of bleating.
Steve, just looked at that Canucks uniform from back in the day... Jesus H. Christ, that's a bit special. As in needs. It's Flash Gordon at the Gay Mardi Gras.
There's a long history of appalling sports uniforms - any Arsenal away strip of the 90s would be a shoe-in (actually most Premier League away strips of the 90s would be a shoe-in) - whatever Paris Stade Francais (the rugby team Mark 'Fire Up Bitch' Gasnier is playing for these days) are wearing on any given day - and NZ's teal green cricket outfit of the late '90s was pretty grim, though not as dubious as Straya's current T20 grey and gold unitards.
As a MINOR defense of the Canucks, back in the 1970's, the entire planet was under the impression that brown and orange looked REALL REALLY good together. So, this is more a damnation of all of North America's fashion sense than just the owners of the Canucks.
But, looking back (and I have this advantage, being "from here"), no other National Hockey League team had anything REMOTELY as ugly as these unis. Some were ugly, sure, it was the 1970's. The porn mustaches were blocking oxygen to the brain. But to be this horrendously ugly really takes something special.
Brown and orange - well Hawthorn in the Aussie Rules have been doing it for a hundred years or more, but it still doesn't excuse it. But they were very very Seventies colours. Burnt orange (Hemi orange p'raps?) and mission brown - our house was the latter, my Dad's shirts were the former, judging by the photos (I only turned up for the last two years of the 70s and wasn't paying much attention.)
That Canucks uni is so awful it's cool, like some of the old man's shirts which have survived. I've been thinking of doing a 'worst uniforms in sports' entry for a while, just haven't been arsed getting it sorted - but this will definitely be up the pointy end.
I will be happy to provide input on any hockey and baseball uniforms if needed (the Chicago White Sox, for one game in 1976, wore SHORTS, and the Pittsburgh Pirates used to wear hats that looked like the old hats French gendarmes used to wear.
The New York Rangers (hockey) uniforms are also pretty bad, but that has more to do with the douchebags that wear them.
My girlfriend and I lived with 7 kiwis in London's NW suburbs for a while. We took the blame for stealing Crowded House, Russel Crowe and French Onion Dip (no really). After a while, we realised that the kiwis were all really well balanced. They had a chip on each shoulder.
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