All Black Dane Coles. Photo / Dean Purcell.
OPINION:
So Dane Coles has got a gob on him, something which shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who has followed his career.
Coles likes a bit of verbal sabotage when he's playing. He's happy to offer unsolicited advice to his opponents on all manner of subjects, ranging from the technical to the sartorial and all points in between.
He seemingly offered Pablo Matera some geographical and cultural help when the All Blacks played Argentina in Hamilton this year, suggesting that the big No 8 "didn't belong here".
That was something that clearly got under Matera's skin, coming as it did as part of what he felt was an incessant flow of insults dished out by Coles during the game.
"He just continued picking on me in every ruck and every scrum, saying some things that really hurt, some strong things," Matera told James Marshall on the What a Lad podcast.
"I don't want to repeat it, but I couldn't understand why. They were winning by 40 points, he just came on … I didn't understand his attitude.
"I just didn't understand why he continued picking at me and he said things I'm sensitive about, like me being in New Zealand … 'You don't belong here'."
Matera famously refused to shake Coles' hand after the game, something he regrets, and yet, it has been the Kiwi cast as the one who has broken some not fully understood code of honour.
In the last few days, various team-mates have not so much defended his actions as his character, effectively saying that he's a good guy despite having a propensity to gob off at people.
Which means this whole episode between the two has provided fair reason to ask whether this sort of verbal taunting has any place in the game, and if it does, whether there is a metaphorical line for athletes when it comes to what they say to an opponent?
Test rugby isn't meant to be a fun or particularly kind place and Matera has come across as a little precious. Professional athletes should be able to withstand a few one-liners, even a barrage of one-liners and brush them off.
They should really be made of tough enough stuff to not care and rationalise it for what it is – a deliberate attempt to unsettle them and distort their focus.
To react is to give the perpetrator precisely what they want and legitimise the tactic and is why the Black Ferns revealed they have spent this last week verbally abusing each other at training to get ready for the likely onslaught they will face from the Wallaroos on Saturday.
They accept what's coming their way and have to be ready to deal with it.
Ahead of the 2015 World Cup final, Wallabies coach Michael Cheika was photographed the day before the game holding a piece of paper at the team's last training run.
A long lens captured what was written on it and it appeared as if he had instructions for his players to target All Blacks No 8 Kieran Read, whom the Wallabies coach obviously felt could be rattled.
It didn't say how Read would be targeted but it's a fair bet, given how many Wallabies of that time loved a little chit-chat, that he would be subjected to a few choice remarks that would be designed to irritate or intimidate him.
Coles clearly likes this approach and it's hard to say it doesn't work for him or the teams he plays for and absolutely, there is a place in the game for a bit of verbal jousting.
It can be a legitimate and valuable tool if done well and with a bit of strategy.
His objective in taunting Matera was to get in the Pumas' No 8's head – to distract him, mentally unsettle him and leave him thinking about the wrong things, focused on the wrong issues.
And it worked. Matera was a force of nature in the first test against the All Blacks and then a ghost in the next and while that was mostly due to the coherent and destructive, legitimate work of the All Blacks, there's no doubt that Coles' campaign was also a contributing factor.
The All Blacks hooker obviously provoked within Matera precisely the sort of hot-headed reactions he was looking for and hence worked out he was getting under his opponent's skin and kept doing it.
So if a player can dish it out and stay focused on what they need to do for their team as Coles did that night, taunting, or sledging as everyone loves to call it, is a valid strategy.
But did he cross any kind of line with his suggestion that Matera didn't belong here? Some will no doubt feel uncomfortable about that line because Matera spent a season with the Crusaders, but the very point of verbal taunting is to push buttons.
Sledging is meant to throw the recipient of the barb off their emotional axis and tip them into some kind of fug.
For all those who feel uncomfortable about what Coles is alleged to have said, they need to ask how they felt when earlier in the year, Irish flanker Peter O'Mahony supposedly said to All Blacks captain Sam Cane: "Who do you think you are pal? You are a shit Richie McCaw".
It was, from an Irish perspective at least, a supremely cutting and amusing line that encapsulated all the pain and drama that the All Blacks were experiencing during that series.
O'Mahony and Coles, although stylistically much different in tone and general content, achieved the same goal of upsetting their opponent.
The Irishman made us laugh, the New Zealander made us cringe, or at least feel a little uncomfortable, but both men spoke with the intention of undermining and unsettling their opponent.
The boundary on this is the same boundary in operation in everyday life. Anything that contains reference to gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, political leanings or any other subject that would meet the criteria to be classified as hate speech can never be condoned or tolerated.
But if one player can find another's weak spot with a few words that stay well inside those red flags, no one should try to play moral guardian and try to stop it.
Veteran Sam Cane is given his farewell test appearance.