• Bryan Gould was a Labour MP in Britain before returning to New Zealand.
Stephen Jones is the rugby correspondent for the Sunday Times. He has a long record of, as he puts it, "winding up" the New Zealand rugby public. It is perhaps unfortunate that a supposed expert on rugby should deliberately, on his own admission, fail to provide a balanced and accurate analysis to his own readership and give priority to the pleasure he apparently derives from irritating readers in another country.
He then seeks to deflect the criticism that inevitably comes his way from those who dislike the obvious bias and spleen, by accusing the New Zealand rugby public of being unable to "understand irony" - the classic defence of the intemperate across the ages.
His bile is best regarded as the distillation of a puzzlement no doubt shared by many for whom the All Blacks' success is an impenetrable mystery. Rather than use what limited expertise he might possess to unlock the secret, he takes refuge in a range of explanations - the All Blacks cheat, they practise foul play, they are favoured by referees, and so on.
But he has now broken new ground. He has taken on the role of social critic. We are treated to a further display of his supposed expertise when he says solemnly (oh, I forgot - with irony) that New Zealand is obsessed with rugby and that the obsession is "ridiculous".
I do not claim to be an expert commentator on rugby but I do rather fancy myself as a student of New Zealand history and society. It is true that many New Zealanders, but far from all, perhaps not even a majority, are proud of and interested in the dominance of world rugby (and I don't think that is an over-statement) achieved by our teams.