KEY POINTS:
It took a while, but when the Kiwis were about three-quarters of the way around their Suncorp Stadium victory lap after Saturday night's win in the league World Cup final, Aussie supercoach Wayne Bennett was finally cajoled into holding the cup aloft.
"That'll be your back page photo
tomorrow," a mate joked as the photographers clicked away at a rare half-smile from the taciturn guru.
"Benney's Cup! That's the way the Aussies will play it," we laughed, assuming the dethroned league kings would know how to put a positive spin on one of their worst-ever night.
How wrong we were.
So disgraceful was the reaction of Kangaroo coach Ricky Stuart and the vast majority of his players that there was only ever going to be one story.
It's surprising the traditional "Gate" tag has yet to be applied as a catch-all for the various outbreaks of petulance, denial and buck-dodging that has rumbled on in Australia since the Kiwis lifted the cup.
Whinge-Gate would be appropriate. Then there's Sour Grapes-Gate, Stitch-up Gate or my current favourite: Quit flapping your jaws and take it on the chin you losers-Gate.
Having had the good fortune to be in the Lucky Country for five days following the match, it's fair to say the reaction of Stuart and his fellow failures made the Kiwis' success all the sweeter.
Had the Roos camp simply paid tribute to their conquerors and issued a grudging "you deserved it" - the attitude of just about every Aussie man and woman on the street I talked to - the whole thing would have been done and dusted by now.
Instead, not even the dramas of the world's worst pub patron and keen fisherman Andrew "Roy" Symonds have been able to relegate the fallout from the Roos' defeat to the inside pages.
Stuart's petulance is now so much a part of the news cycle across the ditch that when former Kiwis coach Graham Lowe pulled out the Underarm 1981 call, it led the Sky News sports bulletin for most of a day.
Lowe's comments were a reaction to the bizarre view of Stuart and some of his players that the game was fixed.
After the final whistle Stuart is alleged to have approached ARL chief executive Geoff Carr on the pitch shouting "Why? Why?" Back rower Paul Gallen referred to a "stitch-up".
Even accepting the propensity of Aussie leaguies to see conspiracy lurking at every corner - remember Craig Bellamy saying the judiciary was corrupt for suspending Cam Smith in the NRL playoffs anyone? - Stuart's paranoia is breathtaking.
It wasn't referee Ashley Klein (an Aussie, by the way) who forced Billy Slater to throw a Hail Mary straight to Benji Marshall or who made Joel Monaghan drop a simple kick into his own in-goal and then react by pole-axing Lance Hohaia.
Sleeping on the defeat didn't seem to do much to help Stuart reclaim his senses either.
"You're the c*** who cost us the World Cup," he's said to have told Klein as he checked out of his hotel the next day. He also allegedly repeatedly called Klein a "f***ing cheat".
While the story has now turned to whether Stuart can survive as Kangaroos coach, his players haven't escaped a mauling for their childish reaction to the defeat. Just four of the squad - including Warriors captain Steve Price - made themselves available to the media after the game. The rest stormed off in a huff.
Slater and Monaghan, whose brain explosions under pressure were the decisive factors in a wonderfully contested match, have since provided their views on events.
But that doesn't change the fact that they chose to run and hide in the immediate aftermath of the defeat.
And Slater's version of a mea culpa turned out to be little more than a bitter spray at the media that had dared criticise him.
The overall impression is that Australia, a nation so often lauded for its determination to achieve sporting victory, is now producing a brand of sportsperson that is utterly unable to accept defeat with anything like good grace.
Their league players are hardly alone on that score. Consider the fractious relations between the Aussie cricketers and their Indian counterparts. Is it a coincidence that India these days is the only country that can consistently compete - and even defeat - the almighty Australians?
New Zealanders often speak in admiration of the ruthless dedication to victory that characterises our Australian cousins' approach to sport, and its obvious we can learn plenty from them in that regard. But if the league World Cup showed us anything, it is that Australians have plenty to learn too. For lessons on how to lose well (and often), they needn't look too far.
After all, at roughly the same time the Roos were copping their beating, Graham Henry was being feted for the graceful and gentlemanly way he led our national rugby team to a World Cup quarter-final defeat.
Still, even with all the fallout from Gob-Gate (there it is), you'd think the Aussies would at least try to steal a bit of our limelight. Where's Phil Gould when you need him?
"With all due respect to the emerging coaching talents of Stephen Kearney, I think we can attribute [the Kiwis'] impeccable timing and winning attitude to the big-occasion experience of Wayne Bennett," Gould wrote in his Sydney Morning Herald column.
Thanks Gus. You never let us down.
