KEY POINTS:
The Kiwis' win over Australia in the World Cup final is the biggest upset and the most-important result in New Zealand rugby league history.
To a man, the Kiwis team were magnificent.
After an up-and-down tournament where they kept producing a high mistake rate but were also managing to win, there was no one bar themselves who gave them any chance of beating what was regarded as one of the best-ever Australian sides. Myself included.
Make no mistake, the 2008 Kangaroos team is one of the greatest Australian sides.
The veterans in Darren Lockyer, Steve Price and Petero Civoniceva along with newer test players Johnathan Thurston, Greg Inglis, Billy Slater and Israel Folau provide the perfect balance of youth and experience. Throughout the tournament they have played like a champion team - they are awesome.
Which makes the victory by the Kiwis all the more amazing. My thought after watching the game was: "I wonder what will happen now with the Sparc investigation?"
The New Zealand Rugby League, with both men's and women's World Champions, now meets if not surpasses Sparc's own exacting demands for excellence at elite level.
That must make league eligible for substantial funding from Sparc of the type that rugby union enjoys. And perhaps the bureaucrats in Wellington would care to ask why the All Blacks failed so miserably in being knocked out at the quarter-final stage of the rugby World Cup after all the money poured into the 15-man game.
I suspect that Sparc will make all sorts of noises about the victory at Suncorp Stadium being a one-off, that the Kiwis were lucky to win a once-in-a-lifetime game.
So what. After 100 years of international competition, New Zealand league now boasts as many World Cup titles as does rugby union. The game deserves Sparc recognition and financial support to run its competitions, which continue to attract large numbers of young players in areas where sport provides a valuable social service.
The NZRL has made significant changes since Sparc became involved in trying to tidy up its management practices. Ray Haffenden was voted in as new chairman after Andrew Chalmers stepped down following disastrous results on the spreadsheet and the scoreboard and brought a steadier hand. The Kiwis coach Gary Kemble stepped aside after a player revolt and one of Haffenden's first moves was to appoint Stephen Kearney as his replacement and to ask Wayne Bennett to carry on with the Kiwis after the involvement he had with the 2007 All Golds.
His faith in those two has been repaid in spades. There were comments from former Kiwis fullback Matthew Ridge last week that Kearney should stand on his own two feet and throw the Australian Bennett out of the coaching team.
I believe Ridgey has again got it wrong. Everything that has come out of the Kiwis camp about the Kearney/Bennett partnership has been positive and the end result speaks volumes for what both men have achieved with a rebuilding team.
In the American NFL they talk about the game being decided by a matter of inches, that the harder you scramble for every inch in every play the more likely you are to win.
That was the measure of the Kiwis effort on Saturday night. They were more hungry and more desperate than the Australians and so they showed that on the big occasions in sport even the biggest of upsets is possible.
The rewards are the greatest when the hurdles are highest and the obstacles the toughest.
* Dean Lonergan is a former Kiwi international
