KEY POINTS:
I was hoping and praying I wouldn't have to go through another World Cup loss as a talkback host. It has been my great misfortune to have piloted the airwaves during two previous campaigns when the All Blacks have crashed and burned and it wasn't pretty.
The low point in New Zealand sports supporters' history would have to be the feeble-brained idiots in Christchurch who threw beer cans and spat on John Hart's horse when it raced a couple of weeks after Hart's All Blacks were bundled out of the Rugby World Cup in the semis. That one is still hard to comprehend and illustrates perfectly that the root word for fan is fanatic.
But I wasn't overly concerned about this campaign. Surely this time, we'd got it right. I wasn't willing to bet the house on it, but if I'd had a granny flat out the back, I would have happily wagered that. But it wasn't to be. Nana would have been homeless.
That familiar queasy feeling in the stomach started when poor young Luke got sent off, there was a slight lifting of the spirits when we scored a try and then it was the gut-wrenching agony of watching the clock run down and the All Blacks, yet again, run out of options. Then the final whistle blew and it was all over.
The phone lines went ballistic. Everyone wanted to gather together and speculate as to why, WHY!, we'd failed to fire yet again. I received emails from expat Kiwis in Qatar, Canada, Norway, the United States and Britain; phone calls from mourning Kiwis in Australia - from all corners of the globe Kiwis gathered around the radio to share the pain. But I have to say that the nation wasn't nearly as feral as they have been in the past.
Oh, there was disappointment and disbelief but the calls for the lads to be lined up against the wall and shot didn't come. Thank God.
There was even a considerable body of opinion that felt Graham Henry should be kept on because after all, we learn more from our successes than our failures - and so on. And so forth. It was hard to believe that was the same nation that had frothed at the mouth with fury for weeks on end after the last three World Cup losses. I don't know whether it's because Henry is a likeable chap and the All Blacks seem to be nicer guys, give or take the odd drunken rampage, or whether we've grown up as fans, or whether we're simply becoming numb to the pain.
Whatever it is, my World Cup campaign was a whole lot easier than the All Blacks'. I had a couple of English callers who smirked that we certainly seemed to be taking the loss tough and they couldn't believe how spiteful some of the callers had been. And there were a few nasties, that's true.
But as I pointed out to the condescending Poms, we hadn't hung an effigy of Luke McAlister in the streets after his sending off, unlike the Poms who did that when Beckham was red-carded in the soccer World Cup. Pots and kettles, boys. Certainly, there was a wide spectrum of opinion as to why we'd failed. There was the mad - some attributed the loss to a legacy of Fabian socialism combined with mothers mollycoddling their boys and feminism.
Then there were some callers who were certain the All Blacks lost because of a shadowy and ill-defined IRB conspiracy. The usual suspects were blamed - the ref, professionalism in sport, the haka, and the lack of moral fibre in young people in general and young All Blacks in particular. A number of older callers thought the pampered young show ponies should be sent down to Colin Meads' farm so they could find out what real work was all about. There were some insightful comments - maybe there were so many in the squad because good players who were on the fringe and might have been needed for the cup would have otherwise signed overseas contracts. The lure of an All Black jersey was enough to keep them in the country.
And then there was the plain fatuous. People who wanted to participate in the national jaw fest, without any real clue about what was going on. One lady bemoaned the fact that the team wasn't staying to play for third and fourth place. You could have knocked her down with a feather when I informed her we hadn't made it that far.
Another chap felt that the All Blacks had done rilly, rilly well and good on them. Ah, no, they hadn't done well at all. In fact, this is their worst result in World Cup history. Well then, he went on, undeterred, the French had the home advantage and that explained why they won. Show me the map that has Cardiff in France, I snapped as I hung up on him.
And another thought of all the hip operations that could have been done with the money spent on the All Blacks. I had to explain to him that the NZRU generates its own money through sponsorship and broadcasting rights. It wasn't $50 million of taxpayer money that funded the campaign.
But really a couple of calls later, and we were on to a completely new topic and for me, World Cup talkback appears to be over. Which is enormously gratifying. Let's face it, the All Blacks did play poorly. It was a huge disappointment. And it's way more than a game. But whenever I get despondent thinking about four more years, I go to my happy place and relive the joy of the Lions series. And replay the Bledisloe games in my mind. And remember the trophy cabinet is full. We probably wouldn't have had any room for the ugly old World Cup anyway.
As in any relationship, you have to take the good with the bad. And with this squad, we've had the best of times and the worst of times. I'll give them four more years.
