Dominic George: Getting those tribal juices flowing ...

Lincoln University students have a certain reputation.

I had the pleasure of speaking at a Lincoln University alumni dinner last week, the Southland branch to be precise. It was a jovial little gathering where a few lies were told over a few sherberts. The thing that stood out the most, however, was a genuine pride in the old alma mater.

The reputation of Lincoln students as a depraved bunch is worn as a badge of honour- and so it should be.

As you enter the workforce, you can unwittingly leave behind any sense of tribalism and we humans love a good tribe. Some of us find it at school, others with sports teams, even a band or a type of music can get the tribal juices flowing. Well, let me tell you, the Lincoln folk have it in spades. I told them I was from Otago University which, luckily for me, was acceptable as it appears Massey is the true enemy.

My time at Otago was a constant grapple with rugby and substance abuse, the latter severely hindering the former. But one thing many people were surprised to hear was the holy trinity of Otago student pubs, the Gardies, the Cook and the Bowler, are all no longer. The university has bought two of the sites and now academia rather than revelry reigns supreme on these patches of north Dunedin. The powers-that-be have embarked on a concerted effort to "clean up" the reputation of Otago and are trying to curb the image of a riotous hell hole, where fire and debauchery are prevalent on lawless streets of broken glass and discarded trash. Not an entirely false picture, granted, but one that doesn't play out well when the parents of potential students are scouring google for suitable places to send their offspring.

They'll never admit it, but the university wants to attract more students from overseas - the money they bring in is more plentiful than a bloke from south Dunedin. That's their prerogative but what is has done is usher in what I call manufactured fun. Much of the folklore of places such as Otago has been developed over decades of trial and error, tradition borne out of circumstance and situation. Now those elements are neatly packaged into a controlled environment dubbed "the scarfie experience". The difference is you never used to buy tickets for the Hyde Street keg party.

It's a classic State of Origin conundrum. The old battles between Queensland and New South Wales have become legendary. On-field fights like the one between Mark Geyer and Wally Lewis in 1991 came to epitomise the "biff" in those contests. The NRL still use this as a marketing tool to keep the viewing numbers up; it's seen as a point of difference to other rugby league contests. But, at the same time, they're under increasing pressure to clean up the image of the game to make sure they bring on board the next generation of fans. They encourage the biff but come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who indulges too vigorously.

But you can't change what's already been done and universities the world over have wonderful traditions and folklore unique to their towns and people. Like the Lincoln boys, who would occasionally head south to those aforementioned north Dunedin watering holes for a little mayhem and mischief. I was once interviewing that champion of the Dunedin scarfies Marc Ellis in one of his old flats for a TV interview to help promote a book he'd just written. We were chatting away while the cameraman was setting up and he suddenly became somewhat serious as he recalled those visits from the Lincoln boys. He said they used to have a call, similar to that of the Lions "99 call" on their tour of South Africa in 1974. One afternoon, they were in the Gardies when the call went out. All of a sudden, Lincoln chaps from all over converged on the pool table, grabbed fistfuls of pool balls and started launching them like grenades at the top shelf.

Ellis shook his head and stared into space, his eyes slightly wider at the terror of those memories, and simply muttered, "Lincoln boys ..."