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Roger Rabbits with |
Don’t want to be an All Black when I grow up now. Not now. The resetting of a reset rugby scrum doesn’t thrill anymore. Nor does wedging face between two ample buttocks of forged steel for a rolling maul. It would mess with my moisturiser.
I wasn’t expecting it, but it might have been nice on a 75th birthday to have the opportunity to decline a call-up for the Bledisloe tomorrow.
“Thank you, but no thank you Razor. I have line-dancing at the church hall tomorrow. Sort Joe Schmidt on your own.”
But remember Razor, we have split loyalties in the Bay of Plenty. Schmidt may have been born in Woodville but he taught at Tauranga Boys’ College and we still proudly embrace the man. So in Tauranga we can’t actually lose tomorrow – the ABs win or Joe Schmidt wins – and we win either way.
Is this all sounding a bit disloyal? Well, furthermore, we got the oil from former Ozzie hardman ‘Kearnsy’ today. “We’ll take it to them.” Mmm – whatever! Phil Kearns won a Bledisloe. But more famously, he gave Sean Fitpatrick two fingers and lived to talk of it. Kearns reckons he was asking Fitzpatrick to bring two fat sausages to a barbecue that night.
‘All time serous’
My interest in rugby was challenged even more by a Yarpie tradie on the job at my gaff last week. He banged on in a thick Afrikaans accent, about how other-worldly, how Herculean, the Springboks were in routing the ABs in Wellington.
They were indisputably all those things. But I didn’t need to be reminded ad nauseum. I should be wiser and immune to such drivel. But I’m not. And I hate losing to South Africa and Australia. At anything, synchronised swimming, Ludo, frisbee golf. Anything.
Then this. “I hate to say it but South Africa was a better, more beautiful country than New Zealand.” But ‘hulle het dit verpletter’ as they apparently say on the veldt – ‘they completely wrecked it’. Not sure who ‘they’ are. Regardless, the Boks remain behemoths, almighty, all-powerful. And coach Rassie Erasmus is “serious! All time serous!”. I think he was telling me Erasmus is the business, perhaps the best ever.
He was unmoved when I reminded him of the consummate, near perfect, All Black performance the week prior. As one of the commentators remarked, it was an “um-bleed-ball” – did he mean “unbelievable”?. “Only as good as your last game,” he chuckled with more of that supreme arrogance. It was becoming irritating. You can take the man out of Potchefstroom, but Potchefstroom still boils within the man.
Soar, leap, run, lift
In fact, it was a delightful encounter – we both enjoyed the “geskerts”, the banter. And I love the fresh perspectives and richness our imports bring.
Then last weekend a solid boot to the entrails when those maple syrup gargling part-timers from Canada put it to our Black Ferns. Playing for third place will be a double indignity.
So I have been looking for new heroes to worship. And I found a couple of deserving candidates in the sporting purity of athletics – “citius, altius, fortius” – soar higher, leap further, run faster, lift heavier.
In winning the World Champs recently, Kiwi high jumper Hamish Kerr flew to an “un-bleeb-ball” 2.36 metres or 7ft 9in. Mark that height on the wall. Get a sense of it and explain to me how he manages it. Kerr could have cleared the head of Sun Mingming, history’s tallest professional basketball player – 2.36 metres. “Un-bleeb-ball!”
And while a nation obsessed, it seemed, deconstructing a couple of rugby’s dark moments – headlines like ‘Humiliating record-breaking defeat’ and ‘Decline in NZ rugby’. Kerr and another bloke were hoisting us from the doldrums. But did their deeds get the exposure and the fanfare they so deserved? Arguably not.
Who’s Geordie?
And then that “other bloke” Geordie Beamish, another Kiwi, turned on the afterburners in John Walker-esque fashion, and spectacularly ran down the four times world champion Moroccan, to win the 3000m steeplechase, and, AND, New Zealand’s first ever world championship track gold medal.
Afterwards, the Moroccan admitted he had no idea who that Kiwi was. Not surprising. Seems many here at home don’t know either. So we did a very unscientific survey.
The first three people struck out – didn’t know Geordie Beamish. The fourth had an inkling: “Isn’t he that …um ..track guy?”
The fifth said: “You mean Jordie Barrett?” No! Jordie Barrett probably wishes he was a world champion. As most of New Zealand would. But no.
Another knew Beamish because he’d seen that frightful picture of his face being trod on after falling in the semi-final. Is that what he’ll be remembered for?
I will remember that dazzling dash from the water jump to the tape. Then the two men – the victor and the vanquished – sharing the moment as they reclined together in the pond of the water jump where the race was won and lost. Humility in victory, grace in defeat. That should define us.