Paul Lewis: NZ fans need to lift game

All Blacks fans need to leave it on the field. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The Welshman on the terraces at the old Cardiff Arms Park offered me a swig from his bottle of beer.

"We are light years behind you boys," he said, shaking his head at the same time he shook my hand with heartfelt congratulations well before full time. "We play a different game."

It was 1980, we were watching Graham Mourie's All Blacks rip the proud rugby nation apart 23-3 (a hiding in those days) with some fast, creative and attractive rugby. The man standing next to me had heard our Kiwi accents as we bellowed unheard encouragement to the All Blacks; he grinned and nodded and now was in sad, contemplative mood.

He was just a little chap, probably in his 50s but as good an example as any of the sort of welcome New Zealand rugby fans experience everywhere the All Blacks play, but perhaps particularly in the UK.

Yes, he had a bottle of beer. No, he didn't biff it at the All Blacks as a drunken gesture of defiance to the conquerors.

Later that night in Cardiff, a Welsh friend took us to the only Welsh-speaking pub in the city (this particular lad had a bit of a sniffy view of Cardiff; calling its inhabitants "Englishmen" as they had allowed themselves to assimilate too much with the dominant nation; letting their Welsh heritage slip).

The mood inside the pub was menacing. Dark men, dark corners, dark looks, As I stood at the bar to buy a round, a giant paw encircled mine as I reached into my pocket for the money.

"Where are you from?" came a gravelly-voiced inquiry. When I told him, the paw thrust my hand back into the pocket. "Well, you'll not be paying for this," he said. Thus began - to cut a long story short - a fantastic evening of hospitality and never-seen-you-before friendliness; never forgotten.

Fast forward to the 2003 World Cup in Sydney - a terrific World Cup made so by the boisterously joyous British fans and the way their Australian hosts reacted to their colourful presence. There was a lot of banter but also a lot of hospitality and genuine pleasure in the mixing of culturally different groups with the single bond of rugby (and, ahem ... drink).

We have a lot to learn, here in New Zealand, from the Brits and the Aussies. I have wondered many times since that day and night in Cardiff 30 years ago, whether Kiwis pay our visitors the same sort of gentle, friendly court that bloke on the terraces and those in the pub did.

I hope so - but the bottle-throwing and bad behaviour at last weekend's double-header of rugby league at Eden Park was a bad sign.

There was more than a whiff of media beat-up about the whole thing - you'd swear it was the first time anyone had thrown something at Eden Park - and I believe it was due more to the double-header than anything else.

Faced with an England-Papua New Guinea match they did not care about, many of the fans got munted instead. They were helped by the fact that some of the bars inside Eden Park were selling drinks like ready-to-drink rum and cokes. When the Kiwis made a good fist of waving the Kangaroos over their line for three tries in the first 25 minutes, the contest was dead - but the drinking was still alive.

Some rugby union snobs made snotty remarks about "league crowds" but that was about as misguided as the Kiwi defence. Alcohol doesn't care about what sport the drinker supports.

If that had been a rugby double-header, ending with the All Blacks getting skunked by the Australians, would the behaviour have been any better?

The real issue here is how we behave as hosts, as fans and as people. Let's not get into a debate about how our society has slid into a greater morass of yobs and yahoos. Let's not also forget that the Brits and Aussies have their share of bad eggs too.

But we can get a bit carried away with our hopes and wishes for the All Blacks. The World Cup issue has ignited and embittered us for 23 years now. Still a young country, we are still, perhaps, over-reliant on the All Blacks to proclaim our well-being as a nation.

We want fiercely for the All Blacks to win - to the extent, sometimes, that we forget our manners. We can, when things go wrong, present ourselves as snarly, bitter, even dour people.

Martin Snedden, CEO of Rugby NZ 2011, knows this. Writing in the New Zealand Herald this week, he said: "There is always a risk that the All Blacks will not meet our very high expectations next year. If they don't ... how will we react? Not many of our thousands of international visitors will care much about the All Blacks' fortunes. All they will care about is how they are treated by us while here as our guests. We must collectively make sure that the hosting experience we deliver is something special."

Never a truer word. During the Lions tour of this country in 2005, I saw a band of costumed, merry Lions fans on a street corner in Auckland. They were having a whale of a time, singing and all. A group of young Kiwi blokes gathered on the opposite street corner.

The situation was ripe for some good-natured banter and verbal points-scoring. What the Lions fans got was pretty much abuse. That was in a series which the All Blacks won 4-0.

As fans, as hosts, we have to leave it on the field in 2011. Just like the players do. There are many golden-hearted people who take real joy in welcoming visitors to these shores; that quality is still alive in most New Zealanders, I prefer to believe. There is a world of potential pleasure behind the question: "Where are you from?"

Just like the All Blacks, we need to lift our game.

Speaking of which, what were the All Black coaches thinking of in naming Keven Mealamu in the team to play Scotland, even though he was banned for four weeks?

An appeal is one thing; naming him in the side quite another. Small wonder some in the UK and elsewhere find New Zealand rugby people aloof and arrogant. Take your lumps, chaps, just like the players do. They have to hold their discipline when provoked. So do coaches.