Kerre Woodham: Balls to the better classes

Bottles litter Eden Park during last Saturday's Four Nations league game. Photo / Getty Images

The real eye-opener for me in the wake of the debacle that was the league test at Eden Park last weekend was not that people who'd been drinking heavily for hours behaved badly.

It was the tribal bigotry that came out afterwards.

Self-proclaimed dyed-in-the-wool rugby union men said the bottle-throwing and the fighting - and the appallingly boorish behaviour - was only to be expected when you mixed predominantly lower socio-economic league fans and alcohol.

They didn't mention the words brown or Maori or Polynesian but they didn't really need to. The inferences were obvious.

They - the rugger bugger boys - declared there wouldn't be a repeat of that sort of behaviour during the Rugby World Cup because the sorts of people who could afford the price of the tickets wouldn't behave like that.

What utter tosh.

After the French team beat the All Blacks in Dunedin last year, Les Bleus expressed disappointment at being pelted with full and half-full bottles of beer as they did their lap of honour around the field. They were also a bit miffed that their kicker was booed every time he stepped up to take a kick.

This predominantly white middle and upper-middle class crowd - many of whom are studying at Otago University to become the sort of people who can afford $600 tickets to the footie - behaved like louts, exactly as the boozed crowd at Eden Park behaved on Saturday.

So too did the crowd at Wellington's stadium years ago, who pelted players and officials with bottles and flag sticks - first at a rugby test then later at a Phoenix-Adelaide United soccer game.

There weren't many people from the "wrong side of the tracks" at those games but disappointment and booze are a potent combination.

While the blame for the disappointing crowd behaviour rests entirely with those who caused trouble, it appears that the Eden Park debacle was not helped by inadequate security at the gate and in the ground.

I've always thought of New Zealand as an egalitarian meritocracy in which Jack is as good as his master and success is more about attitude and application than the school you went to or where you grew up.

Clearly, there are still some who believe it's the old school tie and the shape of the balls you play with that matter.