Fans stand for the national anthems during The Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australian Wallabies at Eden Park. Photo / Getty Images.
Fans stand for the national anthems during The Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australian Wallabies at Eden Park. Photo / Getty Images.
OPINION:
It used to be just the 15 on the field wearing black that induced fear in rugby fraternities around the world, but these days it's everyone from New Zealand that produces a sense of dread wherever they go.
What's become undeniable in the wake of almost two decades ofunprecedented success is that the world has fostered a deep respect and admiration for the All Blacks, but a disdain for the typical Kiwi rugby fan.
Humility defines the All Blacks, but arrogance is the most recognisable trait their fans possess, a point Italy coach and New Zealander Kieran Crowley made last week when he said: "One thing I've found since I've left New Zealand, and I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but New Zealanders are arrogant."
He was specifically referring to the inability of New Zealanders to recognise greatness in others and to afford a competition such as the Six Nations the respect it deserves.
New Zealanders place New Zealand at the centre of the rugby universe, oblivious or wilfully ignorant of what lies beyond.
There's an argument this is the cause of unfavourable time zones and the practical difficulties of consuming offshore rugby products, but it's the product of something much deeper which is a tendency to view the rest of the rugby world as an amorphous bloc sharing a single characteristic that the All Blacks will be expected to beat them.
It's a particular brand of hubris with which the typical Kiwi fan is afflicted, subtle even, but it is an arrogance none the same to homogenise the rest of the rugby world and by doing so, effectively brand them inferior.
Crowley didn't use the word embarrassing but he didn't have to because those who have lived beyond these shores and witnessed first-hand the assumed superiority of New Zealanders abroad know exactly what was being said without being said.
For decades it was the English fans who were cursed with a superiority complex borne from the days of empire-building, but there are only trace remnants now of that colonial smugness.
The English fans tend to only get under everyone's skin these days when their team wins and the embedded privilege of their public school support base manifests itself in undesirable ways.
Ireland's Jack Conan and James Ryan celebrate as Ronan Kelleher scores a try against the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
But All Blacks fans cause permanent irritation in others because they simply can't understand or accept that there can, should or will be any other narrative than their team winning and dominating the global game.
Every All Blacks loss is a shock horror moment for New Zealanders which prompts a witch hunt: this insatiable need to wheedle out people to blame and shame.
It seems beyond the cognitive range of Kiwis to accept that sometimes, as was the case in Dublin and Paris last year, the other team wins rather than the All Blacks' lose.
To think otherwise is to imply that it takes luck rather than sustained excellence to beat the All Blacks: that victories against them are anomalies – undeserved and freakish.
New Zealand likes to think it has matured since 1999 when some people were so angry about the All Blacks' World Cup semi-final defeat to France that they spat on coach John Hart's horse, while some were so sad that Massey University was offering students grief counselling.
Maybe it has, but not to the point where anyone has been willing to give up on their belief that New Zealand's rugby system is inherently better and that no other nation could possibly build comparably gifted players.
Such is the level of parochialism when it comes to international rugby that New Zealand fans have developed a reputation for being not actual lovers of the game, but boringly obsessed with All Blacks' victories.
Kiwis are good company when the All Blacks win, but nowhere to be seen when they lose and that's why Crowley is by no means the only expat Kiwi who fears New Zealanders have become internationally renowned for their arrogance.
This need to be exclusively insular in defeat, to apportion blame, to identify underperformers, to question the strategic approach and execution of the All Blacks has been legitimised over the years by being sold as the passionate outpourings of a fan base that does its bit in holding the team accountable.
The All Blacks themselves have often acknowledged the motivational role public expectation plays, with former captain Tana Umaga saying in 2005 that it was a welcome and energising force.
But high expectations are fine until they cross the line into being unrealistic and founded on an erroneous and unjustifiable premise.
And this is the problem to which Crowley alluded – New Zealand fans don't so much hold high expectations as a misplaced sense of entitlement.
Previous and prolonged All Blacks success has been misinterpreted by some as a licence to consider global supremacy a divine right.
This cast-iron conviction that the All Blacks should win every test is celebrated in New Zealand but is something the rest of the world finds both tedious and odious as it makes fans from this country dismissive of the achievements and excellence of others.
France are, at the moment, the better team with the better players – another point Crowley made and yet, as he also so saliently observed, most Kiwis would have no idea whether Antoine Dupont is a revolutionary hero, an impressionist, an award-winning cheese maker or the inspirational and quite brilliant captain of the national rugby team.
The point that has been lost by New Zealand fans is that the All Blacks should be benchmarked against their real potential and not their assumed potential.
Or more bluntly, lose the arrogance and realise that New Zealand does not have a monopoly on rugby excellence and that it defies reason to automatically believe that each All Black team at every stage of their development should be the best in the world capable of winning every test they play.
That the All Blacks currently sit third in the world rankings is about right. It's a fair representation of the ability and experience within their group and New Zealanders don't have to like it and are entirely within their right to hope for better, but they shouldn't automatically view it as irrefutable evidence the team is underachieving.
To some degree this relentless expectation is the product of so much success, but there has to be acceptance that the near 90 per cent win ratio the All Blacks enjoyed between 2010 and 2019 was the exception not the norm.
And more importantly still, there has to be acceptance that the All Blacks could be going to the next World Cup as the third favourites, and if Kiwi fans can't make peace with that, then they will likely be travelling to France as the tournament's least favourite supporters.
