48 hours: Obsession shouldn't be limited to games

There are moments in most sporting careers from which there is no turning back, when a drastic turn for the worse only gets worse or a player turns a major corner to find that everything turns out brilliantly.

The trick is actually spotting it at the time, knowing this is the moment to ride gloriously into history rather than let history ride all over you.

This moment arrived for a player in Christchurch a day or so ago, as he followed in the footsteps of a bona fide legend.

Patrick Phibbs will always know precisely when his pivotal point arrived. If ever a player was given a message from above that he is, for now, a nobody living in the shadow of a somebody, it came for Phibbs on Friday night.

It arrived exactly 12 games and 41 minutes into what turned out to be the final Brumbies match of the first Super 14 season.

Phibbs, while covering for the suspended George Gregan and cover-defending at Jade Stadium, came under the perceptive gaze of Murray Mexted, New Zealand's favourite rugby commentator and a man who runs a rugby academy.

"Blububbs," Mex blurted, doing his level best to identify the Brumbies halfback while the audience settled in after the halftime break.

Mex then launched into some nifty covering work of his own, inquiring: "How do you pronounce that name?"

Silence ... and so many thoughts must have raced through the minds of Mex's colleagues at this point.

Given Mex's initial effort, and his penchant for mixing up first names and surnames, it wasn't clear whether the clarification was required for the Patrick bit or the Phibbs part although there was just enough of a clue to install the latter as a warm favourite.

"Phibbs [as in Fibs]," someone exclaimed although, like Mex, in the heat of the moment I failed to make a decent identification.

The crisis was over for us at least, although Phibbs, or Blububbs, will have to bounce back from it. We should all just be thankful that Phibbs' understudy, by the name of Burgess, was safely tucked away.

In no way is this an attempt to undermine NZ's favourite rugby commentator, although those in the world of academia may have concerns. If they do, they should realise that after 14 weeks of phase counting anyone can get "phased", if not fazed, even a rugby-academy owner.

No. This is a way of saying that the mad, mad world of Mex was sorely missed the next morning, when another player also followed in the footsteps of a legend.

When All Black coach Graham Henry announced from the Christchurch Rugby Club that the great Richie McCaw would succeed Tana Umaga as our national rugby captain, there was not a live TV feed in sight. Or not one that I could find, anyway.

As Henry had so eloquently predicted months ago, it meant that even a blind man could get to see what was happening with the new captain.

Presumably the Christchurch Rugby Club was chosen as a representative of the grassroots game rather than representing McCaw's roots - even though he is nominally their player and was lured into the Canterbury system in his teens.

McCaw was bred in North Otago and educated in Dunedin, and - now, how do we put this - only ended up in Christchurch because of the four Ps: Canterbury's power, prestige, professionalism and pocket book.

All fair and above board. But parading the Christchurch Rugby Club as the home of Richie is a bit like crediting a Dave Currie haka for inspiring a Valerie Vili gold medal.

You might even ask why, if roots are so important, Richie doesn't run around in Otago/Highlanders jerseys?

Hush I say to that, and any of you out there who might charge the New Zealand Rugby Union with careless use of a rugby club.

As Henry said, space was needed for this significant announcement, and if you are after empty space then any rugby club will do.

Where all this will lead to, who can tell. Maybe Henry will announce his All Black squad while being driven around Palmerston North by a football mum with a pile of smelly rugby jerseys in the back seat of her Holden. The key would be to make sure there was plenty of gas in the tank, given the number of names to be read out.

Back to Saturday morning and the bitter disappointment it brought.

The Richie McCaw announcement really needed Mex to lift it out of the humdrum and surely it wasn't much to ask of Sky to keep the whole team in town for this holy day.

I checked 23 of the most likely channels available in our house, and none were carrying this major rugby moment.

How different it might have been.

The cameras could have followed Richie getting out of his car, being handed a ball by Henry, and making his way to a hallowed table which has carried thousands of pavlovas and more cherios than you could wave a tiny stick at, even though wee Richie never ate any of them.

Mex would have had a theory or two on whether Henry was grinning more to the left or right, Smithy could have told us whether a draught was coming in under the door, and Nisbo would have shouted the odds.

This is rugby, the national obsession, to be picked over until the bones are dry. If it really has to be show time, why limit it to game time?