New Zealand

Every four years if you find yourself in the centre of a New Zealand town on a Sunday morning, you will see grizzled men in black t-shirts wandering around with looks of stunned disbelief. They avoid each others’ eyes as if some unspeakable tragedy had occurred. It has. New Zealand’s national rugby team, the All Blacks, has once again not won the rugby World Cup.

Since winning the inaugural world title in 1987, New Zealand has been favourites for every subsequent tournament, but on each occasion has ‘choked’ at a critical stage. It’s not just that there’s a belief that national tradition should make the cup theirs by right (after all, the English believe this about their football team) The All Blacks are actually very good and tend to routinely crush most opposition between World Cups, before inexplicably collapsing on the crucial stage. Their failure is like a metaphor for the entire nation’s self doubt and insecurity. Wrestling with the profound disturbance of a loss at rugby is the closest you’ll see New Zealanders get to doing existential philosophy

Rugby is the closest thing to a genuine national religion. Provincial New Zealand men, notoriously taciturn and with a non-sport vocabulary of about eight words, will wax lyrical on the joys of the ruck and the maul, and spend hours dissecting selection and tactics on talkback radio. Almost all New Zealanders have played at least the touch form of the game, and even many girls know how to throw a mean spiral pass. It’s said that All Blacks coach is the most hotly contested and prestigious job in the country. Certainly, icons like 1960s lock forward Colin ‘Pinetree’ Meads are viewed with a reverence approaching that accorded to the Dalai Lama, and are wheeled out to pronounce on everything from the decline in family values to rising interest rates.

This sycophancy has some basis in the past. Years ago, players were often farmers who wandered down to rugby practice after they finished banging in the fence posts, and would sometimes miss part of a season because they were too busy lambing. They epitomised the New Zealand ideal of toughness and self-reliance. One All Black is known to have finished a game after breaking his arm, and another continued after having his scrotum torn apart during a test in France.

Nowadays, the players are coddled sports professionals, but the weird idea that they should be ‘role models’ persists. The nation has to act shocked and surprised when another player gets into a bar fight, or is found passed out on a street corner or urinating in a hotel corridor.

The spiritual centre of the sport is the haka — the Maori challenge performed before the start of a test match. It’s remarkable in being a highly choreographed performance that joins together Maori, Pacific Islanders, and white guys that wouldn’t be seen dead jiggling to “Staying Alive” until after at least twelve pints. While it tends to be huge hit with crowds, New Zealanders take it so seriously that if another team ‘disrespects’ the haka (ie, stands in the wrong place or looks funny the performance), it’s generally agreed they’re lucky to only get a sound beating in the game.. People assume that the whole thing is an incitement to violence, but the words were actually written by a famous chief in celebration of having successfully run away from his enemy.

If you come from anywhere that might play rugby (eg, the UK, South Africa, France, Italy, Argentina or even Canada) try and form an opinion on the merit and performance of your national team, even if you have no interest in the game You will then be set up to have a conversation with most New Zealanders that bridges the awkward period following your answer to “so, what do you think of New Zealand”.

Likewise, if you find yourself in a part of the country where there’s an important match on, it’s worth doing some rudimentary research on who is playing. Asking for your opinion about “the game” is the a local Kiwi bloke’s way of saying “Welcome to my town; you seem like you’re alright”.

It doesn’t matter if you’re female and from Belgium or Baltimore: the New Zealander won’t seriously entertain the possibility that this week’s rugby game will not be at the centre of everyone’s universe.

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