Paul Thomas: It was dumb, but let's call off the wowsers

The test drew 44,000 people, and some had too much to drink and acted like goats. Photo / Dean Purcell

So what exactly happened at Eden Park last weekend?

Was there a riot? Was it rugby league's uncouth demographic - the bogans from out west and the South Auckland underclass - doing what comes naturally, or maybe inflamed by the opulence of the rival code's revamped headquarters?

Was it a harrowing glimpse of the nation of yobs that we're becoming as a result of our booze culture? Was it, in fact, a national disgrace?

Actually, what seems to have happened was that an element in the 44,000-strong crowd had too much to drink and acted like goats. This is not without precedent.

Indeed, it was deja vu all over again for veterans/survivors of the terrace frenzy that accompanied one-day cricket matches in the 1970s and 80s - sun, grog, Australia, defeat, epic boorishness.

But much of the media and public reaction suggested something rather more serious and shameful took place. Sure, it was nothing to be proud of, but neither was the aftermath which revealed a streak of small-minded, puritanical authoritarianism.

The wowsers were out in force. As always, their solution to a single instance of a small minority overdoing things is to ban it, whatever it may be. Not content with demanding a total ban on alcohol at sporting events, some even advocated breath-testing anyone suspected of being intoxicated before they enter the ground.

There were calls to eradicate the Mexican wave, perhaps by evicting those who start them. If you pay the price of admission, aren't you entitled to enjoy the occasion as you see fit, within reason?

I think Mexican waves are inane, but whenever I go to a big match I notice that those who choose not to participate are in the minority.

Yes, the booing of the Australian national anthem was crass, but let's not lose sight of the context and the faux nationalism, sentimental yet aggressive, that international sport generates. And that's the point: it was a game of rugby league.

It wasn't a solemn state occasion or some high-brow cultural event that we're obliged to take terribly seriously. And going by their lurid catalogue of larrikinism and worse culminating in Joel Monaghan's dog day afternoon, Aussie rugby league players aren't easily offended.

The most extreme of the many responses to the Herald editorial on the subject came from Kiwis living in Australia. You don't have to have lived there to know that what we have in common with our neighbours far outweighs that which divides us.

New Zealanders who live across the Tasman fall into two broad categories.

There are those for whom absence makes the heart grow fonder. The longer they've been over there, the more embedded in the Australian way of life they are, and the looser their ties to this country, the more self-consciously Kiwi they become.

Many of them marry Australians and raise little Aussies. But when the two countries go head to head in sporting contests, they dress in black, get jacked up on Steinlager or Marlborough sauvignon blanc, and become rabidly anti-Australian.

Then there are those who go the other way. In the privacy of their bathrooms, they say 'feesh and cheeps' over and over until it becomes second nature.

Whenever their discipline slips and their residual Kiwi accent is detected, they die a little inside. This is the zeal of the convert syndrome, whereby people who swap sides - go from being an agnostic to a believer, or smoker to non-smoker - tend to be more strident and uncompromising than those who've always been that way.

And in their eagerness to prove they belong, they never miss a chance to denigrate their country of origin.

Thus New Zealand is "full of thugs" and on its way to becoming the "Sodom and Gomorrah of the South Pacific". Those who booed and hurled bottles probably have a grudge against Australia because they were refused entry on account of their criminal records.

As far as these expats who look back in anger are concerned, the only thing wrong with Australia is that it's far too accommodating of Kiwi riff-raff.

As one respondent put it: "The trouble has been the low-quality deadbeat people who have drifted across here and, in my opinion, should be dumped back in NZ."

In my experience this type of ex-Kiwi tends to be every bit as ghastly in the flesh. It's tempting to take comfort in Rob Muldoon's dictum that Kiwi migration to Australia raises the collective IQ of both countries but, in light of last weekend's events, that would be a stretch.

Whatever was on display at Eden Park, it certainly wasn't intelligence.