Expected Behaviour.

A principal's principles: Six All Blacks have been given a ticking off and fined after a late-night drinking session on the eve of the crucial Wallabies match at Eden Park ... The six were not in the starting line-up for last night's Eden Park test, but All Blacks manager Darren Shand told media last night the players "had let themselves down" and broken team protocol ... They were fined $500 and reprimanded for what All Blacks management is calling "inappropriate behaviour".



Now I see this as entirely proper. The all blacks these days apparently do not have the ability to spontaneously adapt to variations in the play of their opponents and only tend to do so, to a greater or lesser extent, after the half-time interval - after principal input and redefined restated rule-governed directive.



I was somewhat concerned when our parliamentarians decided to take control of 'in house' video coverage because of it displaying members in a 'bad light.' I believed they wanted to be able to give full flight to their more primal behaviour without public scrutiny ... but now I realise, they just wanted to be shown in the same respect as our all blacks ... the ability to display members on the field of play with impunity, to be able to gesture emphatically, the ability to spit with high frequency, to explosively flare and clear their nostrils .. the ability to share body fluids in a much more indiscriminate manner than is depicted in the world Cup advt.











Now if our television channels were to make a compilation of this behaviour and run it during the interval and after the game both on television and the 'big screen' at the field, public scrutiny and the ensuing overwhelming sense of 'sick' and despise and loss of revenue it would engender, may just curtail a large portion of this uncivilised, nay, absolutely primitive and sick indiscipline.



As an ex-principal, I believe, Graham Henry ... a man used to not sparing the rod ... would not only be similarly disgusted with the behaviour, similarly find it to be unacceptable, see it as probably largely responsible for the number of teenagers spitting on the footpaths in town, in fact anywhere ... role models indeed.


But it is a very infectious behaviour ... even those players who were not previously doing this, now are, even the wallabies are starting to ... in fact for a brief moment there at the tri-nations/bledisloe cup trophy presentation I was sure I saw Graham's throat move, transferring phlegm to his mouth, saw him take a quick deep breath, his lips pucker ... his hand start to slip down the front of his trousers ... but then he checked himself. But it may have all been due to the emotion of the moment, an overwhelming sense of pride, that unbridled sense of affinity with his considerably younger more virile ill-disciplined charges ... something so basic, so visceral ...



It was always said that 'rugby was a game for thugs played by gentlemen, rugby league a game for gentlemen played by thugs.' I think perhaps the wheel has turned ... that rugby is now a game for 'grubs' with poor impulse control that can give full expression to their primitive side with impunity.


But if our all blacks already have too much to remember due to the number of planned and coded moves then perhaps what is needed in addition to the 'ball boys, water boys' and 'kicking tee' boys are numerous 'spittoon boys' who of course could double as 'pee boys.'





Our all black pin-up boy could market them whilst modelling his jocks with those well-sculpted abs. ... it might well reflect a sense of culture, of refinement ... but somehow I doubt it.
The behaviour is simply reprehensible, uncouth, is indicative of ill-discipline and is becoming increasingly associated with our elite sportspeople.