KEY POINTS:
Shortly before midnight last Saturday, disturbing scenes took place in households up and down the country. Grown men and women gestured wildly and howled at their TV screens. A mental health professional observing this behaviour would have had no hesitation in classifying it as deranged.
These unhinged individuals
were rugby fans. Their atavistic rage was caused by the spectacle of the All Blacks stumbling to defeat in Melbourne, but had several specific targets. Some was directed at two traditional hate figures: a South African referee, and the apparently ageless and demonic George Gregan, who seems to have been put on this earth primarily to get up Kiwi noses.
Some would have been heaped on the All Black selectors, who sent a boy to do a man's job by picking Luke McAlister out of position at centre, where he had to mark Stirling "Son of Frankenstein" Mortlock.
For the past few years Graham Henry has justified his often bold and occasionally bloody-minded actions by pointing out that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
The most vicious tirades were probably delivered by fans who'd taken these words at face value and assumed that if Henry failed, at least it would be because he'd found a new way to stuff up. And some would have been heaped on the players who in the space of a few hours had been transformed from world-beaters to feckless, spineless bunglers who'd either forgotten or ceased to care that they have an obligation to their fans to win.
Such is the lot of the Kiwi rugby fan: joy is short-lived and contentment elusive because each victory brings us closer to the next defeat. An iron law of sport is that you can't win 'em all.
There are exceptions to every rule but examples are everywhere: Roger Federer can't win the French Open, and Tiger Woods lost the US Open to an Argentinian who looked like a character from The Sopranos.
History tells us that the All Blacks win around 75 per cent of their games. I'm old enough to remember when we were more or less satisfied with this, the highest of any nation and one that some serious rugby countries would happily give their share of the International Rugby Board's gin and tonic budget for.
But somewhere along the line, 75 per cent ceased to be good enough and the delusion took hold that the All Blacks simply shouldn't lose. Ever. And one of life's iron laws is that those who won't settle for anything less than perfection will never be happy.
The World Cup has only made matters worse. Former NZRU chief executive David Rutherford observed we'll always emerge from the World Cup "in one of two states of being: euphoria or depression". Every four years since 1987 we've been plunged into depression.
The All Blacks' consistency is to a large extent a product of our expectations, but the World Cup has turned this strength into a liability.
No other country regards losses as unacceptable during a rebuilding phase; no other country's success is dismissed as peaking too early; no other country's fans would gain such scant satisfaction from being ranked number one in the world.
Surely a nation as small and plucky as ours doesn't deserve another dose of sporting heartbreak this year, on top of what transpired in Valencia but, as Clint Eastwood growled in Unforgiven, "Deserve's got nuthin' to do with it".
And I see that even before Alinghi's mercenaries had uncorked the champagne, our Minister for Jockstrap Sniffing, Trevor Mallard, had written Team New Zealand a cheque for $10 million, explaining that this taxpayer largesse was needed to buy the loyalty of "vital team members".
Well, vital members of the All Blacks are jumping ship but the Government rubbished the suggestion of tax breaks on the Irish model to make staying in New Zealand more financially attractive.
Why Dean Barker but not Carl Hayman? Rugby, after all, is our national sport and Team New Zealand has a long way to go before it matches the All Blacks' contribution to our international profile.
But when it comes to keeping an eye on our investments, I guess a few weeks rubbing shoulders with the jet-set in Valencia beats the hell out of a cold winter's night in Dunedin.
