KEY POINTS:
SCENE ONE: Darling Harbour, Sydney, 1.30am on the day after the All Blacks have lost to Australia in that shock Rugby World Cup semifinal in 2003. A lone Kiwi, unwilling to follow his friends off to a joyless sleep without experiencing something of the flavour of semifinal night,
enters a bar where there seems to be a goodly amount of noise.
He bumps a large Brit who is buying drinks and spills a pint. Kiwi offers to buy him another beer. Accepted. As it's being poured, the Brit asks where the Kiwi is stationed in the bar. Kiwi admits to being alone.
The Brit escorts him back to a large group, composed equally of Brits and Australians. Spirits are high, banter is firing between the two groups like champagne corks popped out of shaken bottles. For a time, the Kiwi is the butt of much humour; all good-natured stuff.
Kiwi leaves the bar about 4.30am. Reflects as he walks back to his hotel that it has been the ebullient and enthusiastic nature of the Brit fans which has sparked the Australians to be such welcoming hosts and run such a good World Cup.
SCENE TWO: Auckland city street, 2005, during the Lions tour. A bunch of fans bedecked in Lions jerseys and silly hats are singing on their way to more good fun.
A small group of young Kiwis gathers at the traffic lights opposite, waiting for the pedestrian crossing. They chip at the Lions fans from across the street. The Lions fans sing more. The Kiwis respond with cries of "whinging Poms" (seemingly unaware that the group contains Welsh, Scots and Irish people) and one of them hurls an insult; something about soap and lack of hygiene. It's an attempt to be funny. It isn't.
SCENE THREE:In the busy streets outside the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Rugby World Cup 2007, there is deep shock etched into the faces of All Blacks supporters. Most head back to their hotels for a consoling drink, bitter analysis and a search for someone to blame for the loss to France.
Many sell their tickets to the final, disgusted but also with half an eye to the money that can be gained. They do so with no apparent feeling that they are missing a special experience; a World Cup final, regardless of whether the All Blacks are in it or not.
What's wrong with all these scenarios - all actual - is something keeping Martin Snedden, CEO of Rugby New Zealand 2011, busy as he prepares for New Zealand's Rugby World Cup.
About 50 per cent of his time is devoted to shifting subtly the perceptions inherent in the three above scenes into a way that he can deliver a World Cup tournament of genuine breadth, warmth and class.
Scenes one and three embody the "All Blacks are everything" syndrome. This is where the overpowering, insistent, parochial wish for the All Blacks to win overshadows everything else - even a sense of occasion which, even though your team has lost, can still provide fun, colour and an experience not to be missed.
Scene two shows a relatively young country, used to success in the rugby world, trying to cope with some of the traditions of older countries and cultures.
"We don't know, sometimes, where the boundaries are between what is funny and what borders on the hurtful," says Snedden.
"It's not a large percentage of people who are like that but it gets noticed by visitors and communicated."
Snedden has done a lot of research in his overseas trips, asking fans, media and people in the game what they think of New Zealand. The answer can be surprising to those of us who think New Zealand has an international reputation as a friendly, welcoming country.
"Many think we are arrogant," says Snedden, "especially when we win. We see ourselves as the home of rugby and as being included in rugby tradition - and fair enough. But we also have to be careful that we are not seen as being exclusionary by the rest of the rugby world. We often say we have a beautiful country. But there are a lot of other beautiful countries out there, in Europe and elsewhere.
"If I can get the message through to the average person in the street that how he or she addresses visitors - in the streets, taxis, buses, restaurants, bars, or even when just giving directions - will make a huge impact on the way the RWC 2011 is regarded, then I will be doing my job. They can actually impact on its success."
This is where we should introduce the terms "stadium of four million" and "festival". This is part of the plan to deliver a World Cup tournament which involves and enthuses New Zealanders and which therefore offers something wider, more enjoyable and more all-encompassing than mere rugby.
Yes, you read that right. The Rugby World Cup 2011 is not just about rugby. It was sold to the International Rugby Board on that basis but Snedden and his small team based in Wellington have shifted the focus, with IRB and RWC blessing.
His is an ambitious project - to move and shift the thoughts, perceptions and emotions of a nation, even those who don't give a jellyfish fart about rugby.
Because, if you think about it enough, it's the only way RWC 2011 can succeed here. It's not going to work dragging visitors into our comparatively pokey little grounds and expecting them to be charmed with rustic New Zealand before we turn them loose to catch trains that never turn up or which won't fit them all. Remember the Lions tour?
But if visitors are swept up by a national mood which welcomes and fetes them, and shows them a nation having a good time instead of just pinning their hopes on the All Blacks, then this could join the ranks of the great World Cups.
Snedden is fond of the Beijing Olympics comparison. Multi-billion dollar facilities, impeccable organisation and coordination, a showcase of talent and effort - but no atmosphere; no connection with visitors; and therefore no real sense of involvement; all preventing it from being labelled one of the great Olympics.
Part of the plan to provide the festival and the stadium of four million is to have different regions host different teams. To do even that, however, takes gargantuan coordination. It's too big for one centralised body to pull off.
So Snedden and his team are devolving responsibility to 20 RWC regions, involving local councils, venues, tourism operators - anyone who needs to be involved in a region's efforts to host teams and the visitors who come to watch them and experience this country.
Snedden does this job largely by talking. And talking. And talking.
He has recently addressed the Bus & Coach Association ("We'll be using pretty much every bus and coach in New Zealand; they need to know what we are about"), hoteliers and moteliers and is working his way through an exhaustive list of industry sectors and associations, gaining buy-in.
Each time he speaks, he deliberately takes the vision wider than rugby. He covers the rugby background in his speeches and, when he does, he can see many in the audience get fidgety or dislocated. But when he moves on to describe the plans for involving a far wider work force than rugby and a far broader audience than just rugby fans, he sees them light up.
"They visibly relax; let out a sigh. They are clearly relieved that it is not all about rugby," he says.
"You start to see heads nodding in agreement and their eyes light up."
This is important because of the old management saw that says that people told what to do will never accomplish as much as people who want to do it.
"They might do a solid job if you tell them what to do but if you allow them to participate in the decision-making, they get into it heart and soul and the end result is a lot better."
So Snedden is spending his time endlessly outlining the vision and the breadth and scope of RWC 2011 with the associations, the industry bodies, the people who will be involved in RWC at ground level - and getting them involved.
Sometimes he calls it "herding cats" but he says this is where he and his team are making progress in getting around New Zealand's infamous parochialism where entrenched local interests would rather butt heads than surrender any territory or give up their 'patch protection'.
"We pride ourselves on being small and unified as a country but it is not quite accurate. We are quite individualistic and not necessarily aligned re the greater good."
There are encouraging signs - even in famously disparate Auckland - that various bodies and people within them are embracing the festival aspect rather than issues such as whether the RWC 2011 will be played under the ELVs or not.
That's the ironic thing about the RWC 2011 - rugby isn't actually featuring all that large at present.
Fact is, rugby in this part of the world and the NZRU as governing body face some enormous issues as many people are progressively "falling out of love" with the game.
Snedden says even before this latest battery of issues facing the game, New Zealand society had pulled back from rugby as an all- encompassing thing.
"I'd say rugby as a religion went out as far back as the 1981 Springbok tour," he says.
"That's why some people are relieved when they realise the Cup is not all about rugby."
He says he gets some sideways looks from some at the NZRU who wonder why he and his team dissociate themselves a little - or maybe more than a little. But he has neither the time nor resources nor mandate to bite off the job of safeguarding and growing the sport. That's for the NZRU.
So watch carefully. Closer to 2011, in a town near you, there will come a Snedden-inspired push to get us all to be better hosts than maybe we are at the moment; to get involved in the festival and to be part of the stadium of four million.
It will likely come in a number of different ways and cover all sorts of issues - Snedden mentions boorish behaviour in stadium crowds and confesses that, as CEO of New Zealand Cricket, he used to watch and wonder anxiously what would happen as alcohol levels built up in the crowd.
At the end of it all are some big goals - bigger than just a successful World Cup. They include tourism, investment, New Zealand's image on the world stage and much more. And if we can be the kind of hosts the Australians were in 2003, that the French were in 2007 and if we can prove we can successfully mount a global event, well, it's got to be good for us.
If not, as Snedden says, the reaction in this country if the All Blacks were to go out at the quarter-final stage, for example, could be fearsome.
If it had been the French, rather than New Zealand, that had dropped out of their own World Cup last year, the Gallic reaction would have been "indifference".
"Ours is a potentially lot nastier reaction," he says. "So we have to be conscious of that risk and we have got to recognise these failings in ourselves.
"If we do, we will have a great World Cup and we would be capable of dealing with it. But if we fail to acknowledge it, we have probably got a big problem on our hands."
