Facebook vs Bebo vs Who Gives A Shit?!

People keep sending me invites to Facebook. It’s the site that ‘sends’ the invite of course but either way, it’s getting on my tits.

Facebook is the new Bebo which is nothing to write home about as far as I’m concerned because Bebo is quite stink. Facebook is the new way to annoy the fuck out of someone who doesn't subscribe to the 'you're not cool if you're not on it' theory. Maybe it’s that I just don’t get it but there’s something about sites like Bebo and Facebook that I don’t trust and it’s not just down to the fat paedophiles pretending to be 15 year old boys who frequent them. Call me frigid (my wife does) but I just don’t think it’s kosher to put that much of you on display to potentially, millions. It’s like the old saying, don’t put on the Internet what you wouldn’t feel comfortable putting on the supermarket notice board.

Which is a shit saying really because who puts anything on the supermarket notice board anyway?! But you get my drift.

Maybe it’s the anonymity of having potentially millions view your stuff that makes it so appealing. Read that line again and it probably doesn’t make sense a second time either but it’s actually quite breath taking and some of my best work. It’s called being poignant. Allow me to illustrate my point: A guy at my work has a Bebo profile that has revealed that he prefers a spot of rimming. News to us, the people he spends ten hours a day with but it sure does explain a few things and obviously for him, it’s easier to be honest in the face of a million strangers than it is to be openly gay amongst 20 colleagues. He’s a big fan of High School Musical, apparently.

These sites are a great way to communicate with friends people tell me. No doubt, but you know what, so is talking face to face over lunch or coffee. How about taking the time out from posting the latest pics of you pissed at yet another dead beat party to actually meet your friends, in person? Sites like these are the new text message, which was the new email, which was the new note passed in class when the teacher wasn’t looking, which was the new - wait for it - way of talking to someone face to face! That’s the IT revolution for you.

What’s the real point of these sites I wonder? Well actually, there’s two points. One is to deliver soft porn to those too cheap to sign up to a hard core sight. In my one and only visit to Bebo I was awestruck by how easy it was to click my way through an entire generation of adolescent girls and their personal photos. Now I’m as big a fan of girls in various stages of undress as the next guy, but afterwards I actually felt for once in my life, like a dirty old man. I wasn’t invited to view these photos, I knew none of the people in them but through the wonders of the virtual world I managed to view the intimate moments of most of them. About the only thing I couldn’t do online is leave a little something special in their undie draw.

The second reason is because all those girls want to be noticed. By someone, preferably by the hot guy at school whose name is all over their schoolbooks, but by someone, anyone. So they add photos of them with their mates getting pissed, or getting ready before going out to get pissed, or the morning after they got pissed, just so someone will notice. Someone will notice alright, they’ll notice that you get pissed easily and frequently. Is it any wonder with so much personal stuff on show that it’s not long before the one hand surfer comes a knockin?

I love the photo of possessions though. Here’s my cool stereo or here’s my cool shoes. Who gives a shit?! In my day, if a mate had something you liked, you pinched it. My mate Bruiser had his entire G I Joe collection decimated in roughly a ten minute period the first and last time he bought them to school. My collection conveniently increased by about a third that day.

Here’s the sticky tissue that really gets me about these sites though – how do they make their money? Everyone is in it for the money, that’s just life Jim, but these are free to join sites, so where does the income come from? Banner ads? Have you ever clicked on one? So then what do they do with all that info they have on all their members when no one clicks on enough banner ads to make it profitable? I wonder. I wonder a lot.

I’m going to sign up to Facebook alright, because a perv’s a perv and it’s always better when it’s free. But the only pictures I’m going to use on my profile are going to be of my genitalia. It will be all very tasteful though, I won’t cheapen myself. I’ll have a courtesy trim before hand and ensure I optimise the lighting to best effect and I’ll mix up the angles a little, a few undersides here and there, some nice point of view images. I wonder how many hits I’ll get from my friends. At least one initial hit I suspect and then as alluring as I’m sure my pink bits are, I suspect no one is going to be particularly interested in my profile. Which says it all really.

Except maybe the guy at my work.

Porno Dad vs The Socially Irresponsible

My son walked in on me checking out naked women on the Internet the other day.

I say women, but really it was only the one and there was not a pink bit to be seen. Not that an eight year old sticks around long enough to note those finer details. I was watching Alicia Silverstone do her bit for the rabbit food eating community in their latest ad, the one where she hops out of a swimming pool supposedly nude. I doubt she was fully nude though, because in this day and age only truly naive celebrities like the chick from High School Musical pose nude in private and are then shocked when it ends up on the interweb. I doubt Alicia would take that risk – although I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing she would. The High School Musical girl was decidedly average by the way, in case you were wondering my opinion.

So although it wasn’t the good stuff I was looking at, it might as well have been. I made matters worse by acting like it was the good stuff when my boy walked in and tried to frantically minimise the full screen playback, only to reveal the picture of her lying nude on her side, the shot that the vegans are using for their banner ads. Needless to say my son acted pretty much as I suspected he would, promptly running off to tell his two mates in the lounge that dad was looking at naked ladies on the computer.

I guess that will make afternoons quieter around here. None of the neighbourhood kids are going to be allowed over to Porno Dad’s house no more. I don’t quite know how I’ll make it up to my son. His school is having a German cultural day soon and I’m guessing that in the aftermath of this incident, the Waffen SS uniform I planned to wear is not going to go down well. Nor I suspect, is my Hitler Youth Bake-A-Cake stall that I had planned to man.

It’s tough being socially responsible sometimes. For some people it’s far easier to be ignorant and a Mongol, than socially apt. I’m not talking about serious stuff like pinching the neighbours lingerie from her clothesline, or whether or not to call in that controlled burn off of yours that just jumped the fence. Doing the right thing with that kind of stuff is a no-brainer for we the majority. But fear not, for the socially irresponsible are all around us and you don’t need to look very far to find them.

Take for example, shopping trolley etiquette. How is it that some folk can’t even manage to control a metre long trolley in a series of straight, flat, three metre wide aisles? These are the pricks that bang and broadside you more than once because they’re oblivious to anyone else around them. Why does that happen? The supermarket is hardly sensory deprivation central and there are no blind spots in the frozen section, so how the fuck does it happen? And these pillars of society are then heading out to a car in a car park near you?! Yeah, nice one.

What about the munter that spends five minutes riding the seventy metre escalator only to then not know where he’s going when he hops off at the end? There are only two choices mate, take a chance at life I say and stop holding every other bugger up behind you, fortune favours the brave after all. This kind of genius likes to stop in doorways and the centre of walkways too, to make other life changing decisions like "shall I dump here at the mall, or wait till I get to the mother-in-laws?". Mention that he / she might be in the way and they’ll look at you as though you just laid a warm steaming cable on the nice white linoleum floor.

The list, quite literally, is endless. How about folk who never return hired DVDs on time? People who make a new queue - that they are then at the front of - when one clearly already exists. Arseholes that dent your car door with theirs. One of my personal faves is when people walk through a busy car park believing that they have the right of way, waltzing in and out of your every blind spot to be right behind or in front of you as you look to plant the pedal. The poindexter who did so to me on the weekend came close to tasting cold hard Hyundai steel, I kid you not. He certainly got a mouthful of language that could only have come from a Porno Dad.

But even he was surpassed in the ‘fuck me right off’ stakes today, by his mate Wayne Kerr, who parked his people mover just far enough away from, or close enough to, the petrol pump at my local servo to mean that no bugger could use it. I enjoyed glaring psychotically at his entire family sitting in the car whilst I stood in the rain pumping my gas.

Yep, social irresponsibility is everywhere alright and unless they allow me to start carrying firearms there’s not much chance of it ending. Maybe I’ll take to wearing my Waffen SS uniform out when I go out shopping….

When Car Ads Go Bad - Epilogue

My reply email from Ford NZ arrived the other day. I had written to them expressing the opinion that they were being a bunch of dicks in getting so worked up over the LTNZ ad.

Predictably, it was all very formal and waxed on about just how much Ford puts into road safety in NZ. And as I read the first few paragraphs I could just tell that the writer was gagging to say "our cars don't crash" and sure enough, about three paragraphs in, there it was. Strictly in marketing speak mind you, because the bullshit never stops when you're trying to sell something. More so when that something was just made out to be as fallible as the competition.

So I rest my case. Mind you, if there's one thing I like more than being right, it's proving pricks are wrong and I'm tempted to go take a Ford for a test spin and drive it off the nearest cliff just to prove a point.

But that will never happen, because their cars don't crash.

When Car Ads Go Bad

Here's a little something that left me a wee bit moist this week. Ford NZ have chucked a spaz because the latest road safety ad features one of their cars skidding off the road and down a bank.

Obviously the marketing guys at Ford shit themselves upon seeing it for the first time, they thought their worst fears had been realised – someone had leaked the out takes of their last ad campaign to the media. When they realised that it wasn’t they went into what promotions people always do in a panic situation, they initiated full bullshit mode.

The poor sheila who was obviously out of the room when they had the ‘so who’s going to front up to the media with this crap’ vote, spent several minutes on last nights television news pointing out that thanks to the anti-dandruff-traction-stabiliser thingee that comes as standard on all new Fords, this accident would never happen and therefore the advertisement mis-represented them unfairly. They had, she pointed out almost believably, received several calls from concerned Ford owners.

Really? Several calls you say? I would like to know what these owners called about. It’s a pretty sad day when after seeing an ad on TV you decided to call the manufacturer of your car. A product recall due to spontaneous combustion might do that, but a road safety ad? More importantly I would like to know how they knew the number to ring. These are the same organisations that are notoriously impossible get a hold of when you’re looking to lay a claim after your car spontaneously exploded into a ball of flames and yet, on a lazy Sunday night, several frantic people were able to contact them and express their concerns that the car in the ad looked a little like theirs? I don’t think so Ford.

Let’s read between the lines here. What Ford is trying to tell us is they don’t think that their cars crash and therefore we should excuse them from contributing to road safety. They forget that the weakest link in all this is the driver. Yes, the technology that goes into car safety has come a long way but as yet, no braniac has yet invented a system that fully negates the unpredictably of the munter behind the wheel.

I put car manufacturers right up there in this lack of moral responsibility they exhibit with tobacco companies, McDonalds, the oil companies and the guy at our cafeteria who put onions in my mate Big Gay Rays ham, cheese and pineapple toasty. He didn’t have any pineapple, so he figured onion would be a good substitute. By the way, Ray’s not actually gay. He says he’s only in it for the bumfun.

Here’s where a car company like Ford has the average munter fooled. They make fast powerful machines and market them as super cars that will never fail you. They make ads where the very relaxed, fresh from a colonic Joe Average driver throws his car around mountainous S bends like he just don’t care. Now the law says that they have to show a disclaimer in their ads and they do, but they make it as tiny and as blurry as legally possible so you can’t see it. It reads something like this:

“This ad was made on a closed road that our professionally trained driver of several years experience had 64 days to practice on. We worked out before hand just what we needed to do in order not to fuck it up. Joe actually drove this stretch of road 43 times and never once did he get out of first gear thanks to maintaining the 10kmh speed restriction recommended by our stunt co-ordinators. Then we fast forwarded the whole thing to make it look like he was doing a 110kmh. Enjoy your 60K metal casket, dumbass.”

And they have the gall to pack a sulk over an ad that features an unbranded model of theirs in a road safety campaign?! Will they lose sales over it? I doubt it. I suspect that the guy who traditionally buys this type of Ford doesn’t actually pay any attention to any road safety ad. He’s far too busy rushing to make his next colonic. And after all, she’ll be right.

Ever notice how the owners of Fords and Holden’s tend to be fat buggers? I’m not one to unfairly generalise, but think about it next time you see one puffing his way from out behind the wheel in a car park. I often wonder, did he get fat by working at a desk job all these years to make enough money to buy the thing? Or did he buy it because he needs the power to transport his weight around? Does he in fact have a tiny chopper? Both my neighbours own one and yes, both are big individuals. One dude is a lady though so it can’t be a case of penile dwarfism, although she is a bit mannish and I have my suspicions.

Ford New Zealand, proud to be behind the All Blacks, but not road safety. Nice one.

NB: Incidentally my mate Skids loves Fords, but he doesn’t actually own one. So you’re alright by me Marcus.

The Simple Life

Do you remember the days when shit was simple?

Not taking a shit mind you, because that’s always been simple. Even when you were wagging school and spent the whole of fourth period under the Naenae over bridge next to the railway tracks like me and my mate Tim often did, taking a shit was simple. I recall the first time I needed to unwrap a picnic bar whilst there I hobbled off to the tree line (from the knees down) and gladly dropped the tweeds. I had been ready to use the natural fauna as a substitute for the ‘ol two ply, but Tim, who had done this before I could tell, suggested I take a few pages out of my maths book. That day was the best use of a maths book, ever.

Tim incidentally, is the only guy I ever had the misfortune of walking in on whilst he was having a quick game of solitaire on his bed. A most unfortunate incident for us both and one that still makes me shiver to this day. Tim dropped out of school a year before me and did nothing but masturbate his brains out for that entire year. Information that would have been useful to me well before that fateful day I turned up unexpectedly after lunch whilst wagging some class. In his defense though, I did arrive unannounced, had my headphones on and failed to knock as the front door was open. In doing so I broke several key rules of WankClub, of which all we males are lifetime members.

Funny thing though is that after all the nightmares, the one lasting memory I have of him in that mental picture is that he actually looked quite bored whilst treating his body like an amusement park ride. I suppose whacking one off every hour would have that affect on you. And this was before the internet too, so all a fella had for inspiration was whatever catalogue came through the mailbox that day or Mums Woman’s Weekly.

But them were the days. Simpler times, when it wasn’t just about making the biggest profit in the shortest amount of time. When pre packaged food portion sizes were actually filling. Ever notice how they seem to be getting smaller and less substantial, but perversely more expensive? That really burns my gnads. But these companies play on the fact that no bugger is ever going to be sad enough to weigh the stuff from week to week and point out the discrepancy.

My best mate’s sister however, is one of them folk. Whilst flatting together she took out a campaign of accountability against a fruit toast maker. Their wrapper said ‘no peel’ and man did she hold them to it. Every slice was meticulously examined and if it contained peel, she circled it with a vivid and sent it back to them. Her reward for doing so? A preformed letter of thanks and a voucher for a freebie. The standard retort of any company that sells a product or service - chuck them free shit and hope it goes away.

I work for a government department and we have a subsidised Cafeteria. That should mean value for money and for a while it has. But now the almighty dollar is more important than a good feed and the prices have gone up whilst not surprisingly, the quality and quantity have come down. My mate DougalMac, who is a bit like a man in a raincoat standing outside a primary school when it comes to percentages (dodgy), works it out to be a 75% increase in price! Not bad for a non profit business aye?!

Certainly the ‘leek and potato’ soup I had the other day was non profit. It was green, but that was about as ‘leek’ as it got. I suspect the grounds man had run the hose through the lawnmower catcher to make it, such was the quality of my soup.

Companies are of course, out to make a profit. But that shouldn’t mean it has to be at a 200% margin. For a few years I worked at a privately owned music store chain that only had a mark up of 75%, which is still a lot when you consider how cheap it is to physically make a CD, but we undercut all the big retailers and kicked their asses in sales. We knew this because a) we were far busier and b) when they eventually bought us out and compared the books, they soiled themselves at just how much money we had made in comparison.

Now admittedly I spent most of my 6th form Economics class hiding the duster out of the reach of our vertically challenged teacher, but even I know that if you sell shitloads more of something at a marginally cheaper price than your competitor you make a lot more money. So why don’t more companies do it today? Create some competition dammit!

Just like back in the simple days. When a dollar at the dairy around the corner from my mate Bruiser's bought you a Popsicle, a K bar, a fifty cent mixture and a game of Street Fighter 2 on the Spacies machine outside. And some big Maori kid would always inevitably ask if you could spot him a 20 bro, or give him seconds. And you would, because he was big. And Maori. And you were Caucasian.

Shit was simple back then and life was good.

Conspiracy Theory #1

I thought I’d lighten the ClubDes mood a little by talking about child abduction.

I want to share with you a theory I’ve got on a high profile case of the above, not that I mean to trivialise it in any way, shape or form. Please do not get me wrong here, I would be beyond devastated were the same to happen to me or any of my family or friends.

Now I know that I take the piss most of the time, about trivial things like sliced cheese and frightened Caucasians being chased down by terrifying natives, of which I can speak with some authority incidentally. I had the pleasure of growing up in a low socio-economic area where Polynesian, Maori and Pakeha lived in equal numbers. It was in all fairness a very nurturing environment in which to spend my formulative years and I wouldn’t now change a thing about that period of my life – but it did have its humorous side.

At college we Caucasians were either one with the Bro’s or you were a Bogan. Or a stoner. Probably both. But for those of us that grew up with the Bros the choice was a natural one and that meant playing rugby league every lunch time. The natural order of things was quite simple. The Palungi (the skinny white dudes) stayed on the wings and would occasionally get the last pass, long after the movement had finished or had gotten so far out of bounds no one but you and your fellow paleface on the opposite wing cared anymore.

For most of us, that was choice. We liked it that way. But there were two juniors who ignored the first rule of BroClub which was ‘don’t take the piss’. These guys ‘scored’ so many tries at lunch time that they decided to actually take up rugby league on Saturdays because they were sooo good. Their words, not mine. That meant they’d be lining up against the same guys who had so generously tossed them the ball before the final lunch bell rang. Now shit was serious.

Neither lasted the full first game. It is widely reported that the brownest things on the pitch that Saturday were the white shorts belonging to the two honkies that had broken the first rule of BroClub. Needless to say, they never played lunch time league again. Maybe they would have done better if they had of worn tight titty tops?

Anyways, back to the point of this particular blog. Everyone has heard the tragic story of Madeline McCann, the three year old girl who went missing from her hotel room whilst her parents were in the restaurant downstairs eating dinner. I won’t pass judgement on their parental skills at this part of the narrative for I am about to do that a few lines further down. This all happened in Portugal and has captivated Europe, not so much here in NZ because we have a she’ll be right attitude.

I’m a pessimistic type of fellow (you may have noticed) and I like to question, or rather, not believe most of what I see and hear. Unless it’s on the internet, then it must be true. So straight away I’m having some doubts as to what’s actually happened here, more so when I never ever see the parents lose it whilst fronting one of the many media conferences they’ve held. Now I watch a lot of news (because I’m boring) and I am yet to see these two cry once and that doesn’t sit right with me. I’d hate to put myself in their shoes but if my son went missing, I’d be about as coherent as Sly Stallone.

And then something a little too freaky naughty happens - the case goes global. Internet sites, sports teams and rock stars start promoting the cause and wearing the tee-shirts. Who’s getting the money from those tee-shirts I wonder quietly to myself? Why are so many people getting on the case? Is it because it has a catchy slogan? There sure are a lot of missing kids in the world, do they have highly orchestrated multi media campaigns too I wonder? I’m really pissing my wife off by this time with all my out loud wonderings.

So here’s my theory. What if this is the biggest hoax since the Da Vinci Code? For those that don’t get what I mean by that, check out the list of the top selling non fiction titles of all time – it ain’t on there. Neither is the Bible but that’s another blog. It’s a horrible thought I know to have over what is a contentious and emotional issue, but it’s not impossible, is it? Who could do such a thing you may well ask and truth be told I ask myself that too but there’s always a first time. It would almost be right up there with marketing obesity causing fast foods to innocent children, wouldn't it?

Perhaps it's more a sign of today’s society that you can no longer believe anything you see on the news or in the papers? Not the intranet though, it’s all true on there.

I hope I’m wrong but if I’m right then dang, that’s whack.

Why China Doesn't Play Rugby

It hasn’t taken long for the bullshit merchants to crank it up at the World Cup. Not surprisingly it’s taken us Kiwis to set the bar for the coming weeks.

Clothing manufacturer Canterbury of NZ claim to have invented a top that increases performance by up to 3%. Tell ‘em they’re dreamin. It may be as tight as a mans anus but the only thing a tight top reveals is how fat your fans are – and you can take that from someone who’s football team found that out the hard way a few seasons back. These days, when a coach talks about how someone’s ‘shown a lot of guts out there’, it’s more likely to be thanks to the tight jumper than his testicular fortitude.

Canterbury’s ‘idea’ is called ionisation and its technology derived from the Luftwaffe. That’s right, the bastards who bombed my mate Keith’s local fish and chip shop during the war. Ironic isn’t it that they couldn’t conquer Ol’ Blighty but years on their technology is helping to fleece thousands of Scotsmen out of NZ $160 for their national rugby jersey.

I’ll tell you what keeps a joker cool on the field and it ain’t his jersey. It’s the constant fear of stuffing it up in front of the thousands in the stands and the millions (if you’re one of the four big rugby playing countries) watching on the box. Fear sweat keeps you cool, not a painted on titty top. As for tight tops making it harder to tackle an opponent, well that gem of marketing bullshit lasted about as long as it took you to read it.

Incidentally the All Blacks ditched Canterbury a few years back for Adidas, a German firm that can trace its beginnings back to Nazi Germany and apparently, does alright for themselves these days. My mate Rosie won’t buy Adidas because he’s a man of principal. His Grandfather (and mine) fought the mighty Hun so that we wouldn’t have to forcibly wear their clothes – now our national team is sponsored by them and we pay to wear their lightweight leisure garments! If only dear old Adolf were around today to see that all his efforts weren’t in vain. Unfortunately he died in Argentina a few years back.

The same old corporate crap is rolled out at every football World Cup too – where it’s always marketed as Adidas vs Nike. Regardless of who wins on the pitch, both will sell shit loads of overpriced two ply sporting garments all of which were made in Cheapsville, China. They don’t play rugby in China and I’m not surprised. If you and your children spent all day making the stuff for 20c in the hand, you’re hardly likely to want to pull it on afterwards and crash tackle each other. Besides, you have to be up half an hour before you go to bed for work the next day anyway. So who has the time for rugby in China?

China really is the sphincter of the world isn’t it?! I mean okay fair play, the World was well on its way to an Al Gore documentary before China started cracking a turtle head above the full bowl that is the environment, but they’re a bit like a fella who doesn’t get his first pube till well into his teens, a late bloomer. Now they’re making up for lost time and hammering in the final nail on the Worlds coffin in their quest to westernise themselves.

All of this sportswear propaganda really works though because we buy house loads of the stuff. We actually believe that by wearing the stuff it will make us faster and stronger and of course most importantly, better looking why we do it. The reality is that it doesn’t now and it definitely didn’t back in the day when the world’s athletes had nothing more than a pair of stubbies and a wife beater to wear. It’s all a bit like an airline trying to tell you their planes are faster because of the extra smooth paint they use on them.

Take my word for it, the only thing that is going to make a Scotsman run a personal best at the rugby World Cup is a giant Polynesian chasing him down the sideline and not a $160 top!

The good, the bad and the rugby.

The Rugby World Cup kicks off in a few days time, as if you didn’t already know.

Let’s be honest, if you’re not in one of about 4 countries that actually have a realistic chance of winning it then no, you probably didn’t know. Despite all the hype, rugby is still only a sport played competitively in only a handful of countries. Oh sure, there more and more nations turning up to play but being on the wrong side of a cricket score is hardly being competitive.

For most of the time, we have dominated world rugby. For centuries, teams from the Northern Hemisphere consisting of skinny, white upper class toffs would turn up on our shores for a 10 week tour and get pummelled from the moment they landed. It was hardly a fair contest. Gay Frenchmen would be lining up against fifteen human mountains, all of whom were farmers and had quite possibly eaten the only gay Frenchman they had ever met previously.

And so it went against all comers. Even our nearest neighbour, the Aussie, was no good at rugby. Not until the early nineties anyway when some of our guys went over there and showed them how to play the game. The only side that ever matched us in the intimidation factor were the Saffas, for they too were farmers and man mountains who ate their natives.

All that changed in the mid nineties though when the game went professional. All those countries that previously had been given the sporting equivalent of stand up sodomy by us, now found themselves in the enviable position of having all the money thanks to the return tours to their countries by the All Blacks – the biggest draw card in world rugby. And more money meant better gyms and drugs to make their players bigger, stronger and as fast as our farmers (if you think I’m joking about the drugs, have a look at Lawrence Dallaglio before and after the 2001 World Cup).

Since then, reputation has meant nothing to the gay Frogs and the English toffs. Australia never liked us anyway and the Saffas still eat their natives (albeit discreetly). We haven’t won the World Cup since the first one in ’87 and if we don’t win another soon, then we are in danger of becoming the rugby equivalent of the England football team – forever destined to remember that one time we did actually win it.

None of which really bothers me because rugby is not my thing. But it is the boat floater for the majority here in NZ, which means we’ll be ceasing all intelligent conversation for the next four weeks. I have made the connection between sphincters and opinions before in this blog so it should come as no surprise to learn that rugby brings out the verbal runs in us like no other.

Sport is in our blood and some of it we are very, very good at. We’ve always been a nation that has over achieved given its size and populace. We have had some tremendous sporting achievements over the years, but our strongest contribution to world sport these days is in minority codes. Rugby, cricket, netball and rugby league. All sports played competitively by only a handful of nations.

We’re decidedly average at football, crap at tennis and we have one good golf player but the only balls he seems to hit these days is when he steps on the rake in the bunker. Occasionally we do well in individual sports at the Olympic and Commonwealth games but it can be a long time between medals in those disciplines that have served us well in the past. With the advent or professionalism in rugby, there is little or no incentive for an athlete to play anything else, because the money is simply not there. Is it coincidence that ever since rugby turned pro, we stopped being good at a whole range of individual sports too?

Incidentally, I was no good at rugby. I recall the only two real games of ruggers I ever played in I had to retire hurt. Once because I banged my head on some joker’s knee and the other because someone said some very mean things to me. I did try to bluff my way into the rugby fraternity though by wearing my mate Bruiser’s first fifteen jacket at College. But that was about as convincing as my self proclaimed sexual prowess stories were back in those days.

Not that that was my first failure in trying to dress my way into something. In primary school there were only two ‘gangs’ you wanted to be a part of – the Red Swannies and the Blue Swannies (Swandri’s are of course the essential all terrain, all weather, all occasions garment for the Kiwi bloke). Despite knowing this, my mother bought me a gold / bronze / poo brown one. I think the only other colour available in the Swanni range was green and as I recall, only a girl at our school had that one. So no surprise then that no bugger wanted to swap their red or blue swannie for mine. Good times.

I bet the All Blacks don't have a gold Swanni. The French might though....