KEY POINTS:
We are just simple football folk, Sel Bennett told me as the Nathan Fien "granny-gate" disaster took hold.
Taking a swipe at a bystander along the way, the New Zealand Rugby League chairman then suggested fancy-talking legal eagles alone would be rubbing their hands with glee. Then he
blamed the Sydney media.
Bennett has the actions right, but he's tagged them to the wrong people.
It is Great Britain and their coach Brian Noble - who suggested skulduggery ran the clock down in Christchurch - plus the Australians' street-fighter coach Ricky Stuart and Willie Mason, Mark Geyer et al who will be warming their hands.
As for the birth certificate-checking Sydney media, they're covered in glory.
The fancy talk belongs to Bennett. He does, it might be said, have the manner of the old television attorney named Matlock, played by Andy Griffith, who was sometimes folksy and sometimes prickly, although with a lot more substance.
Like a fanciful TV drama, the NZRL's prized exhibit - some Oklahoma legislation with its opinion of a grandparent - was dropped in to their offices by an anonymous well wisher after the Fien controversy escalated on Monday. Some case.
But unlike the standard TV lawyer, Bennett is not going to win in that highest court - public opinion.
Few would fancy his chances either in the international league federation and Tri-Nations' docks. The first will rule if Fien is Kiwi-eligible, the second on punishment.
Simple folk know what a grandparent is. These are words I never envisaged writing in a newspaper - your grandparent is your parent's parent. There you go.
Bennett told the Herald that a Melbourne meeting of himself, Fien, NZRL board member Andrew Chalmers, Kiwi coach Brian McClennan and manager Peter Leitch un-reservedly believed Fien qualified for the Kiwis via his Wanganui-born great-grandmother.
Why then did Fien try to make it hard for the media to track his parents? Fien also clearly told me in Melbourne that his family's NZ link had merely skipped his father's generation. In reality, Skippy was more heavily involved than that.
If the NZRL was so sure, why omit the Fien print, that the relevant granny was a great-granny, when informing - to use the word loosely - the public.
Simple folks know the Kiwis should lose the Tri-Nations points they falsely earned against Great Britain, Fien should be turfed out of the Kiwis, and the NZRL fined for bringing the competition into disrepute. Bennett's future is also in doubt.
No amount of humbug from the NZRL should convince anyone otherwise, or diminish the national embarrassment.
Fien does not qualify under the international league federation's rules which state that, for now, he needs a grandparent born in this country.
Given the ludicrous NZRL argument, it might be scouring maps in the hope of announcing Fien's birthplace of Mt Isa is a New Zealand province. It would be best advised to plead for mercy and just hope it hasn't caused a split in the Kiwis camp.
There is a wider issue here. To many, the them-versus-us element of tests is eroded through selecting players who, lets face it, are Australians. Some are only here on professional assignments, and could be living in Wigan next week.
Until now the situation was, to my mind, just about contained within acceptable boundaries. The Fien debacle has busted that belief.
At least there needs to be debate about eligibility - a complicated business for sure, especially in a Pacific region of high migration.
If the consensus backs the status quo, that in future there might be even more Australians in the Kiwis, then fine. But to continue on this track without the debate is foolish.
Maybe the blurring of test lines led to 6000 empty seats at Mt Smart Stadium just over a fortnight ago.
The Kiwis are going to Greymouth in a tribute to the game's history. Their opponents - the Residents. Ironic? Appropriate more like.
