Speaker: Mixing it up, with stats like
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A fucking great post. Nothing like a few hard facts to deal with grizzlers.
One other apsect of course is the nubmer of ex All Blacks who are now coaching overseas. There's at least two at this World Cup, quite possibly more, not to mention all those ex ABs coaching non-national teams around the world.
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Stephen
BTW love your Heroic Cock (chk out his site).
I think there is quite a masculine trad of sculpture in NZ. -
One other apsect of course is the nubmer of ex All Blacks who are now coaching overseas
All good illustrations of market forces in rugby and the fact that NZ does a great line in the global rugby export (and knowledge) economy.
But does anyone else think its a bit rich of Ted and Co to give McAlister a hard time for going to ply his trade overseas on a bigger wage after their own coaching experiences?
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I know the R word should be used advisedly, but that's really what we're talking about here. Not deranged, foam-flecked racism (no Godwin, please), but the cheerfully (wilfully?) ignorant knd, that can't conceive of the Other except in the simplest of stereotypes.
Samoans, Tongans, Fijians etc do not exist in British eyes, except as rugby players. Nothing unusual there. It's not too dissimilar to New Zealanders thinking West Indies = one country = cricket, both false. If an immigrant community is not visible in your own society, you ignore it in other people's. And of course this is reinforced by the marketing/nationalism of sport, especially ye olde conservative rugby, where Scots wear kilts not turbans and the Welsh are only black from being down the mine, look you, and so on.
But it's important not to get sucked into the "born" argument. That can leave you holding a position somewhere to the right of the BNP or Le Pen. There is a significant difference between:
1)Monty Panesar - born in England
2)Nasser Hussein - born overseas, moved to England as a child, with family, for reasons that had nothing to do with cricket
3) Kevin Pietersen - born overseas but moved to England to play for EnglandThe nationality (traitor / poaching / bad accent) debate should only ever be about number 3). Anything else is an anti-immigrant platform, way beyond sport. As pointed out in the original post, the overseas-born ABs are overwhelmingly in category 2). And as much as anything, it's abhorrent to equate nationality only with where you pop out, something that can be the result of your parents being in the armed forces or global business or hippie travellers or even (shock) an international liaison before Mum brought the toddler home ... really, it's all so bloody reactionary.
It's desperately sad that a huge NH media pack can follow the Lions here for many weeks in 2005, and yet apparently not once take the trouble to wander over to a school playing field in Auckland or other centres, and see what New Zealanders look like - and then report this to the folks back home. The public are ignorant, but only because the media (choose to?) perpetuate the "Polynesian poaching" myth.
PS It looks like we need a new lock over in France. I reckon we should send Flavell, Filipo and Rawlinson, and ask the NH rugby folk to choose the proper Kiwi for us. What's the betting they pick the import?
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It looks like we need a new lock over in France. I reckon we should send Flavell, Filipo and Rawlinson, and ask the NH rugby folk to choose the proper Kiwi for us. What's the betting they pick the import?
If I was a NH rugby person, that's exactly what I would do because the other two are better rugby players and I wouldn't want the All Blacks to do well.
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Simon G, that's a great post, I liked your point about the Lions' media pack - they wouldn't even have to have gone to a school to see what NZ's ethnic mix is like these days, just getting out of the Hilton hotel for a while would have done the trick.
Actually, I think they'd rather just have the ready-made, go-to excuse for when they get their arse kicked.
Oh, and there's no locking crisis. But Flavell would be my back up choice.
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> Oh, and there's no locking crisis.
Hee hee that rules. Well done.
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PLUG
By the way the new Dropkicks podcast is up. And in record time, less than 48hours since we actually recorded it. Hooray Noizy!
ENDPLUG -
Yes, very interesting post. I've always thought that the claims by British sportswriters that NZ "poached" pacific islanders was not only ignorant, but, at base, somehow a bit racist....
Just one nit-picking quibble--I don't think you really mean "homogeneous." That means "made up of identical components." I think maybe you mean "indigenous"?
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Jim now you're talking.
"Just one nit-picking quibble--I don't think you really mean "homogeneous." That means "made up of identical components." I think maybe you mean "indigenous"?"That make 3 for the All Blacks, 2 for Sth Africa, & nil for Australia.
Please correct my numbers I plucked them from god knows where.
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Just one nit-picking quibble--I don't think you really mean "homogeneous." That means "made up of identical components." I think maybe you mean "indigenous"?"
I dunno that you can even pick this nit really. 'Indigenous' usually refers to people who are the original inhabitants eg. Maori in NZ and for instance Zulu in South Africa. I think the Dropkicks have gone for a less loaded word.
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Oooh...now we're getting into semantics (and potentially charged discussions)! We went for "homogeneous" as in "uniformly born in the one place". Weak, yes, and another in a long line of our mangling of the English language, but we hooked onto it and wouldn't let it go: we Dropkicks have one-track minds. Maybe we should've used "home-grown".
And Simon G absolutely nailed it with his points about not getting sucked into the whole "born" argument. People out of the know (e.g. the NH journos) don't bother to get in to the know and therefore generalise, either because they're lazy or it sells more papers or pagehits. Whatever.
That they latch on to the large number of players of Polynesian and Melanesian descent in New Zealand rugby (ah, the racist undertones) and use that as proof of "poaching" is sloppy journalism and it's infuriating. You can't prove anything based on where someone was born - heck, they don't even do that; if someone looks like they should have been born somewhere else, they've been "poached"!
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absolutely. i agree with my dropkicks comrades hadyn and m. roseingrave.
born somewhere means nothing.
i was born in sydney, for example. i had extreme trouble convincing australians i was anything other than a new zealander.
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merc,
You mean you weren't born at Tauranga? You're Australian! Woot, woot, woot!
Just kidding, just kidding. Serious questions, are the AB's still a national side? Who owns the AB's now? Are the Maori AB's an indigenous side? Why can't the Maori AB's play in TWC? -
Yeah Che, and to think I called you "bro".
i had extreme trouble convincing australians i was anything other than a new zealander.
You should've had a criminal record, then they'd believe you.
And hooray for Mike's first post!
Merc: the NZ Maori have never been a test playing team. they are a New Zealand representative side, like the English Saxons. To play for the Maori you need to show an affiliation to an Iwi. It was mooted a few years back that they should be able to play. But i don't think it was rugby players who suggested it.
New Zealand's first ever team was called "the Natives" which was largely Maori (Native meant born in New Zealand). the team later evolved, after the All Blacks were created, into the NZ Maori.
There's a really good fact sheet about the NZ Maori here (pdf). The guy who wrote it is a bloody genius. Also give Matt Te Pou's bio a read.
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Didn't a Maori Rugby League team play in the Rugby League world cup a while ago? Came... 4th?
Google tells me it was in 2000: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/world_cup_2000/group_4/1006739.stm
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you're assuming i don't have a record.
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Kyle, I went to see NZ Maori play Ireland in Dublin, a game notable only for Tawera Nikau being sent off about three seconds after he came on. That world cup had a team from Lebanon also, and wasn't a great advertisement for allowing minnow sides to play from memory. I guess countries like ours are in that hamstrung position where our provincial sides would be competitive with many internatioanl teams at sports like rugby, league or netball.
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Nice to know the stats, once and for all. And with the added bonus of the frisson of cyber flirting. Bonza.
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Somehow it doesn't seem enough to post the "facts" and congratulate ourselves; I wish someone would print Sideline's piece out, roll it up into a baton and give Stephen Jones and his colleagues a comprehensive swatting about the head with it.
(that's not an erotic fantasy, by the way).
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Living in London as i do, I've come to dread opening a newspaper when the ABs are over, as I know I'll have to read yet another tedious ilinformed rant about our PI players.
Trust me it's not just Stephen Jones, all four major national papers have been at it.
The saddest thing is it's been repeated so many times without challenge, it's basically accepted here as gospel. If you strike up a conversation with anyone in a pub about rugby, it's not long before you get the 'well they're not really NZers are they'. To be fair once you've explained things most people tend to be ok & even a bit embarassed, but it's still incredibly annoying.
I know loads of Kiwis have written to the papers with the facts so it's not merely ignorance, and I'm sure they're well aware what they're printing is nonsense but print it anyway. Sadly I doubt a trip to school in South Auckland or the like would change much.
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Not strictly relevant, but I must share this with someone.
Great photos of French rugby players.
Check out http://www.rouvre.com/main.php?lang=en and go to the exhibition called "broken faces".
It's really worth a minute or two.
Marcus
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merc,
Rugby in France holds a special place. During occupation in WW2 there was a restriction on men gathering in groups. Round my brother's village the only thing you could gather to do was play rugby. It followed that this was seen as a very powerful statement, to be able to gather at all.
Rugby in France is imbued with things such as this, including inter-village rivalry, much perhaps like the Maori Iwi competitions here in Taranaki and on the East Coast.
BTW the penalty for gathering during the occupation was death. -
By the way the new Dropkicks podcast is up.
Out of curiosity, I subscribed in iTunes, and listened to about half of the latest podcast on my walk to work this morning.
I rather like it. It's not muntery and doesn't rely on the listener having encylopedic rugby knowledge to understand what's going on. And it's really nicely edited, if I do say so.
(I feel like I'm being initiated into a cult.)
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Robyn G wrote:
(I feel like I'm being initiated into a cult.)
You are.
Gathers in groups at night around flickering fires /screens....stange language of its own....
Just watch for the pamphlets and the funny underwear....
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