CHRIS RATTUE finds that cricket's threatened players' strike has created a shoddy new chapter on representing New Zealand.
Sporting patriotism came easier in days of old, before national borders were prised open by technology and mass media, when people didn't hurl money your way, and there really wasn't much else to tempt a man such as Colin Meads away from 133 matches in a jersey he truly treasured.
There was the farm of course, but who - given the chance to fulfil rugby prowess, experience the thrill of combat in front of huge crowds, tour with comrades and enjoy hero status - would steer their gifts towards year-long husbandry instead?
These days, even advanced cases of national pride can miraculously leave the body about the age of 27, especially when the selectors don't call any more.
Foreign assignments and cash become the cure. Which is perfectly okay - making a living isn't a crime - if it wasn't for that corporate statement-type patriotic brow-beating in the first place.
We're talking mainly rugby players and a couple of sailors here, who are in the rare position of being highly valued in teams beyond our shores.
Don't forget, though, that Chris Cairns was due to miss some Black Caps' matches in 2002 so he could play county cricket, before injury did him in anyway.
But a whole new and shoddy chapter on representing your country was written this year when our top cricketers, via their players' association, threatened to strike.
You always suspected that the full-scale strike would be averted in time for the Indian series to proceed as planned. But to even contemplate a strike in the first place, well it just wasn't cricket.
Using the sporting fervour of a nation to advance the cause of your own bank balance is unlikely to go down well with the masses. It was an alarming development, but one that is unlikely to be repeated hastily after New Zealand Cricket stared back and the players blinked like fluttering blinds in the wind first.
Cricket had already experienced a strike of sorts years earlier, when the great batsman Glenn Turner refused to play for New Zealand because they wouldn't pay him a decent wage.
Turner may have had a fair point back then, although you could debate whether he made it well. The present players, though, were surely dreaming by chasing huge increases which, they claimed, would in the process raise the status of cricket as an occupation for budding athletic talent.
There might have been some noble aim for the future of cricket buried in their arguments, but it was trampled by the over-riding image of a few well-paid players chasing extras, with the rank-and-file doing the running for them.
Top Black Caps earn more than $200,000 a year, it was revealed, and most of them are on more than $90,000. There are other earning opportunities aplenty.
This isn't Crown Jewels stuff, but it's a decent wage in a sport which has about the same depth as the English batting order.
To involve players from the domestic competition in industrial action was the giggle of the year.
Domestic cricket has already been beaten to strike action by their audience. Put it this way. They don't bother collecting money at domestic matches because the takings wouldn't even employ the gatekeeper.
At a game in Masterton a couple of seasons ago, an illegally-parked car blocked vehicle access to Queen Elizabeth II Park as Auckland and Central Districts went to battle on the first day of their Shell Trophy match.
Suffice to say, the car stayed there for half the day without a break-in - to the ground that is - being reported.
Domestic cricket might not always sink this low, but it doesn't reach too many spectacular heights either, judging by the empty spaces around the grounds.
It's a place where players look for a break, not take one.
Going on strike when you are a sporting no-name is not one of the great career advancement moves. The chance to impress the selectors is rare enough anyway.
The top players had some bargaining chips, but when it came to the crunch they lacked the courage of their convictions. This strike was on a fast road to nowhere.
Throw in appalling PR by the players' association and that New Zealand Cricket boss Martin Snedden is a master at playing the good guy, and it became the Black Caps versus the man in the white hat.
Snedden had plenty of good sports star wage issues throughout the world to consider in the unlikely event he was about to falter.
Glory-hunting sports club owners around the world are as much to blame as greedy agents and players for pay escalation - the full effects of which have probably yet to be seen in places such as British soccer.
Living beyond its means is not an option for New Zealand Cricket, which must also foster junior development in a sport that is struggling to maintain its position as the No 1 summer game now that the Super 12 has taken up residence early in the year.
The baddies in this particular little gun fight quickly fell under the hail of a few carefully-aimed bullets.
So here the brief strike sits, in the pages of New Zealand history, a nifty little reminder that despite all the well-chosen words about the meaning of sport, things just ain't what they used to be.
We've all become used to the pluses and minuses of professionalism, from the extraordinary rise in some performances, to the rhetoric about national pride, and the dollar values that are attached to everything.
The elite sportsperson's mantra is that they love playing for their country, love playing for any team that's got black or silver or fern stuck somewhere on the name tag.
That is, of course, until they bugger off overseas and love playing for the impoverished folks of Biarritz, a Japanese car plant, or a bloke with more pounds than sense.
They might even enjoy yachting bliss with the Swiss. And then again, they might contemplate withdrawing their labour.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and these same cricketers turned up in the white hats, so to speak, against India. Stephen Fleming and Co must have quietly patted their own weak knees in thanks.
India, of the touring kind, collapsed to two defeats in just six days of test cricket. Sachin Tendulkar and Co, as they always do, can head back to home dirt to work on their averages.
All power to the inexperienced Black Cap bowlers - Shane Bond and Daryl Tuffey in particular. Even given India's weak heart, it is some feat to knock players of this calibre over so convincingly.
There were other fine sporting achievements in the year.
Sarah Ulmer defended her Commonwealth Games pursuit title in Manchester, Philip Tataurangi and Craig Perks won golf tournaments in the United States - Tataurangi putting behind him health problems and the tag of promise unfulfilled, while Perks took out golf's "fifth major" in Florida, The Players' Championship.
Barbara Kendall beat a load of youngsters to claim another boardsailing world title, the Warriors and Tall Blacks were magnificent, and the Evers-Swindell twins won world doubles sculls gold.
Mountain runner Jonathan Wyatt, young golfer Eddie Lee, some of Ulmer's Games team mates ... they all had their magic moments around the world.
The All Blacks grabbed a trophy for once, the Tri-Nations, but the Bledisloe Cup is still in enemy territory and the jury out on John Mitchell's team.
One thing is for sure. You had to stifle a yawn during the end-of-year All Blacks' and Kiwis' tours to the Northern Hemisphere, especially when comparing them to great adventures past.
The All Blacks may be developing a World Cup team, but their lustre has surely been tarnished by leaving top players behind.
Rugby's World Cup was lost without playing a game, the Crusaders were magnificent, the Auckland rugby team a revelation, and that industry known as the America's Cup sails on.
Tiger Woods came and went, pocketing loose change at Paraparaumu and saying all the right things without revealing much more than what we knew about him anyway.
But, by and large, these are sports stories of the normal kind (although Tiger might not pass this way again).
They have nothing on a strike if you're looking for something to alert the senses, and get the hairs standing up on the back of your neck.
And when you are talking strike, you are getting to the nitty-gritty of modern sport. Money.
On this score, a recent conversation with a clearly frustrated head of New Zealand Softball, Haydn Smith, sticks in my mind.
Smith talked about the effect a lack of television coverage has had on softball, which he says needs to find a mind-boggling amount of money - by its standards - to get on the tube.
"With the budget TV One spends on the America's Cup and rugby sevens, there's not really much room for us," commented Smith, who believes significant New Zealand culture and opportunities for youngsters are lost through the domination of a few sports on television to the exclusion of others.
Smith's archive search revealed there were about 60,000 serious softballers in the 1980s when the sport had 22 hours a year of television coverage.
That is, fewer than three weekends of Super 12 rugby matches. (That's not counting all the associated programming for rugby).
In the following decade, the television hours evaporated to zero, and the playing numbers also crashed, to 30,000.
One is not entirely accountable for the other, but there is undoubtedly a strong link.
All you can do is box on when you're not on the box.
Maybe our cricketers deserve a little more. Maybe cricket could do with an overhaul. Strike action though? Think again troops.
But if you do decide to create a little free air time, there are plenty of battling New Zealand sportspeople desperate to jump, swim, run or make a pitch at your time slot.
<i>Year in review:</i> Things ain't what they used to be
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