Quade Cooper, Michael Cheika, Wayne Barnes and Israel Folau. Photos / Getty Images, Photosport
COMMENT:
Israel Folau is not the first international rugby figure to face a backlash from New Zealand fans. His case is unusual, with the real angst starting when, as a multi-millionaire, he asked for money so he can sue Rugby Australia for $A10 million.
More usually collective feelings are stirred by a referee (go back to 1905 in the test with Wales when a Scottish ref didn't award a try and the All Blacks lost 3-0), or dirty play, or, sometimes, just because an opposing player looks like a Marvel comic villain.
My favourite cartoon bad guy is Michel Crauste, a French loose forward from 1961, who sported a Mexican bandit moustache and played with a permanent scowl.
What infamous acts did he perform?
One. At the first training run by a French team in this country, he sashayed across to the goalposts at Nelson College and peed on one.
Two. Six weeks later, captaining France to a loss against South Canterbury at Fraser Park in Timaru, Crauste stiff-armed local second-five, Ted Smith. An Oamaru grandmother, Hilda Madsen, took a couple of paces on to the field, and punched Crauste in the back. "He hurt that poor boy," she said later. Two policemen escorted her from the ground, but, need I even say it, she wasn't prosecuted.
Looking at some of the rugby people who over the years New Zealand rugby fans have loved to hate, you find that some probably deserved full bore animosity, some not much, and, in at least one or two cases, should probably have got none at all.
Michael Cheika is the latest in a pretty long line of Wallaby coaches who Kiwis aren't keen on.
Sometimes they read the personality accurately.
In the 1980s, Alan Jones had a vicious streak a mile wide. Bob Dwyer and Eddie Jones were actually much nicer guys, who still copped some stick here because they loved a little dig at the All Blacks and their fans.
What has Cheika done to upset us?
Nothing hugely personal, he just acts like a bit of a pork chop in the coaches' box, and as a journalist you see him being a bully to Aussie reporters at press conferences, which isn't a pretty sight.
In August last year at Eden Park after the Wallabies were whipped 40-12 by the All Blacks, I was sitting behind Sydney Morning Herald rugby writer Georgina Robinson, who was almost painfully polite as she asked Cheika how he was planning to deal with the pressure he was under.
Eyes blazing Cheika snapped, "If you're naïve enough to think that I'm worried about myself here, then you don't know me at all."
He angrily told another Australian reporter, who was equally as mild in tone, "You need to take a pill."
Is it fair for Kiwis to denigrate Cheika?
Yeah, nah, but really nah.
I'd hate to have to work with him, but by and large, he seems to save most of his venom, not for Kiwis, but for his countrymen and women who dare to mention his record as a coach since 2015 is, to put it politely, mediocre.
Wayne Barnes, the English referee for the 2007 World Cup loss to France in Cardiff, the All Blacks' darkest day at the Cup, told a British interviewer in 2017, "I think, perhaps the most high-profile mistake was in 2007 when there was a forward pass in the lead-up to a French try against New Zealand. The fallout from that was pretty huge. I think I was voted the third most-hated man in New Zealand that year so it was pretty impressive."
Was he really that despised?
Quite possibly.
I have no idea if there actually ever was a most hated man poll in 2007, but if there was Barnes would have been a front runner. He did have a shocker in Cardiff.
A major factor in Graham Henry being reappointed as All Black was a DVD shown to the NZRU board in which Wayne Smith pointed out 20 occasions when he believed France should have been penalised by Barnes, but were not.
"When you watched the video," NZRU chairman Mike Eagle told me seven years later, "it had a massive impact."
Did Barnes deserve the roasting?
No. It was only his 12th test, and his appointment so early in his career was beyond ridiculous.
And it wasn't a European plot either. The head of the appointment panel in '07 was Paddy O'Brien, and he's a Kiwi.
Louis Luyt was president of South African rugby during the 1995 World Cup, and was a major figure in the game becoming professional that year.
He was a beefy former player, who locked the Orange Free State scrum against the 1960 All Blacks, and became a multi-millionaire running a fertiliser company.
As the president of the South African Rugby Union he ran things as if he owned the union, too.
Why did Kiwis dislike him?
At the dinner at the end of the '95 World Cup in Johannesburg, Luyt was not due to speak but did so anyway, and told the audience the 15-12 win for the Springboks that afternoon proved that if South Africa had been at the '87 and '91 World Cups they would have won them, too.
All Black Mike Brewer swore to me the next day that on the night he politely suggested to Luyt that he had spoilt what should have been a great day for rugby and South Africa.
Luyt, Brewer said, called him a pig, a typical losing New Zealander, and told him to "**** off."
Were we being fair bagging Luyt?
Yep.
Let me quote one of South Africa's most well respected historians, Jonathan Hyslop, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in the United States.
When Luyt died in 2013, Hyslop wrote: "Being nice about scumbags is a distinctive South African failing. There's nothing wrong with speaking ill of the dead if they deserve it. And Luyt certainly does."
Quade Cooper continues to cop it hard and strong to this day after his knee struck a prone Richie McCaw in the chin in 2011 in a Tri-Nations test in Brisbane.
The level of abuse for Cooper probably hit its peak a couple of months after that test, at the World Cup, when he was booed from the time he ran on the field in the semifinal with the All Blacks at Eden Park.
Was the McCaw incident as bad as legend makes it seem?
The hit was substantial, and McCaw did allow that "I felt it" when quizzed after the game.
Almost lost in the mists of time though is that Cooper was cited, but after a 45-minute hearing the next day, was cleared by South African judicial officer Jannie Lubbe.
He believed it was accidental.
Does Cooper still deserve to be booed?
Not unless you believe public relations on a Boris Johnson level of dumbness is a booing offence.
At the World Cup in '11 Cooper said he liked being Public Enemy No 1in New Zealand.
"It makes me play better," he said.
Whoever was advising him to hang tough probably deserves our disapproval more than Cooper does.
Jaap Bekker was a bull-necked prop in the 1956 Springboks. If you were a small child at the time, as I was, you believed stories that in training he once snapped a goal post by pushing against it.
What did he do that was so bad?
In the last test in '56 All Black lock, Tiny White, had to be helped off Eden Park after being kicked in the spine. In 1999, in a television interview with Keith Quinn for TVNZ's Legends Of The All Blacks, Bekker tearfully revealed the kick was deliberate, and followed a decision at a team meeting during the week.
But the man he was supposed to boot was prop Kevin Skinner, who had been dominating the front row with his scrummaging, and pugilistic skills as a former national heavyweight boxing champion.
In 2006, White told me, "I never experienced pain before, or since, that was a bad as the pain I felt then. I was probably only a couple of millimetres away from being paralysed. I was only told that afterwards. I didn't realise how close I was to becoming a paraplegic."
Did Bekker, who died within months of his '99 confession, without making a direct apology to White, deserve forgiveness?
White, who died in 2012, described the kick as "one of the most cowardly deeds I've ever heard of on the rugby field."
It's hard to disagree.
Michael Brial was the Wallaby No 8 who in 1996, just five minutes into a Bledisloe Cup test at Ballymore in Brisbane, launched into a frenzied attack on All Black Frank Bunce, throwing 10 unanswered punches.
All Blacks coach John Hart said, "There was no possible excuse for what the player [Brial] did, but the referee did nothing. That's unacceptable."
Why did Brial lose his mind?
Frank Bunce was in Noumea this week playing Classic Rugby, but in reply to my texted query, "why did Brial go nuts?" Frank texted back, "It was my fault really. I elbowed him in the face."
Freezing the YouTube video of the incident shows exactly that.
Brial goes in for a tackle, and his face connects with a raised elbow.
Then the punching starts.
So were we all wrong about what a psychotic villain Brial, who now lives in Queenstown, was?
So it seems. I know it's a mere 23 years late Michael, but let me be the first New Zealander to say sorry for springing to conclusions about what you did.
Simon Barnett and Phil Gifford are back together on Newstalk ZB from July 1.
Arne Slot’s side moved four points clear at the top with a win over Spurs.