Jolly bad sport

I think I was on my mid-morning caffeine high when it came to me. The problem, the terrible, terrible problem with the All Blacks has nothing to do with the fact Larry, Moe, and Curly are coaching them, or that the team has only one truly reliable player, or that Dan Carter appears more focused on undies and fashion week appearances than kickoffs.

It has nothing to do, either, with the guy throwing the lineout ball — who, apparently, is deadly accurate only when shooting at seals — or the lineout jumpers who appear to have all the precision of punks doing the pogo.

No, there is a much, much more sinister reason for the forlorn state of All Black rugby: the election of the National Party.

Think about it: ever since the change of government, those overpaid, over-indulged, puffed-up pack of pretenders — the All Blacks, I mean — have been playing like they're drunk.

And yet every single, alleged expert on the game seems to have missed this. I can't think how, though I do admit this theory is somewhat counter-intuitive: surely, you'd think, the All Blacks would be more likely to prosper under a bunch of red meat and potato-eaters like the Nats, rather than under the wishy-washy, chicken salad regime of Labour.

Yet the evidence is clear. World Cups aside, the team had a fine run under the last Labour government. Since the November tests and the election that same month, they have played like a bunch of headless chooks. And only the foolhardy should expect them to get better before the red-meat and potato-eaters have been booted from the Treasury benches.

So it is time, my fellow New Zealanders, to consider finding ourselves a new national game, at least for the duration.

To speed up the process, I have been considering the options on your behalf. And there are many. The received wisdom might be that rugby and milk are the country's only world class acts, but there are many other fields in which we New Zealanders excel.

The first, and most obvious, is moaning. New Zealanders have never met a situation that has not caused them to immediately make an angry phone call to a talkback radio station. Really, the motto on our national coat of arms should read (in Latin, of course) "Dear Sir, I wish to complain about everything …"

It seems the mere rising and setting of the sun is enough to stir us to bleating. We whine about the government not doing enough, about the government interfering, about the weather being too wet or too dry, about there being too many bloody foreigners or too few, about our rather benign race relations, about the placement of the letter "H" in a place name, about the price of bloody fish.

Even when we have left the country for good, haven't been here for decades, are earning gazillions in some corporate job in London or New York and no longer have to think about this country let alone put up with it, we still complain about New Zealand. That takes real talent, a world class bitterness — so why not enshrine moaning as our national sport?

Another thing New Zealanders are world class at is being somewhere when something really important happens. There may be only four million or so of us, but by God haven't you noticed how we pop up everywhere. Like Woody Allen's strange chameleon in Zelig, New Zealanders always seem to appear just inside in the frame — or is that just because our media is incapable of reporting international events without attempting, however lamely, to give it some sort of New Zealand context? No, it can't be that. Or maybe it is; even if none of us were in the vicinity when something really important happened, media reports inevitably begin, "No New Zealanders were injured when …"

So omnipresence might not be a bad sort of national obsession-cum-sport.

Another possibility might be pointless referenda. Anything will do, just as long as the question makes no sense. However, my personal preference for our new national sport is the endless entertainment of irking Michael Laws, the angry man of Whanganui. Almost anything sets him off and, when it does, he is the Richie McCaw of complaining: consistent, focused, unafraid of going into the tackle — but you can't help wondering what effect all those blows to the head have had.

Winding up Laws — and who will ever forget his windy, cod-Churchillian press conference over the vile letter "H" — is like rugby itself; brutish, hilarious, pointless and open to endless analysis by bored columnists and bloggers. Who knows, we might even be able to get the Australians and South Africans interested.

Let the games begin.