It "shocked" us, it was reported at the time.
These two events have done more than just about anything else to expose to the world a national anthem which but for Mohi's indulgence could have been sunk as quite forgettable, and certainly not the motivational tool that anthems have generally become as a preface to international sportsfield combat.
Ordinarily, God Defend New Zealand sounds almost like a dirge compared with some of the other national anthems of the globe, as shown just the night before the Denver massacre.
When lined-up against La Marseillaise before the All Blacks played France in Dunedin our anthem just wasn't really in the contest.
La Marseillaise is among the great ones, the point highlighted by the fact that while most of us have no idea what the words mean we do know what a lot of them are, we can pronounce them, and we know the tune.
Army engineer Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle wrote it in 1792, during the French revolutionary wars, as a marching song, with lyrics that have been described as "bloodthirsty" and evoking images of cutting enemy throats.
For more reasons than just one, it's just as well we have the haka, and our rugby's usually better than the anthem.
