That rugby game

Okay, I can't avoid it any longer: I'll have to weigh in with my take on New Zealand's early exit from the Rugby World Cup. I think it's some sort of national requirement or something.

Anyway, the New Zealand All Blacks won the first Rugby World Cup back in 1987, but no All Blacks team has been able to win it since. This also wasn't the first time New Zealand was knocked out by France. Australia also left early this year.

I was disappointed at the loss, but—to be brutally frank—not upset. It was, after all just a rugby game, and the Rugby World Cup is just another tournament, and not a very good one.

To rugby fanatics, the loss of this match, and so the Cup, is the worst thing imagineable. But I think it says something about the the New Zealand psyche that we'll have weeks of talking heads on TV and radio and in newspapers going on and on and on and on about it, dredging up the whole mess over and again, pointing fingers in every direction possible. In Australia, the same thing will happen—but for only a few days. Then, they'll pretend it never happened at all.

New Zealand is still unsure of its place in the world, and desperately wants to do well at international events to “prove” it's a real country. Australia, by comparison, full of a kind of chauvinistic nationalism, considers itself “the lucky country,” and doesn't feel it needs that kind of sporting validation, no matter how hard it tries to get it.

I admit I'm not much of a rugby fan, anyway. I was interested in it when I first moved to New Zealand, because it's a much better game than American football—faster, more interesting and with better looking players who don't wear pads or helmets. But the game has been expanded through professionalism to the point where there are far too many games played far too often and far too early in the year (the rugby season now starts in summer, while the cricket season is still going).

Actually, New Zealanders in general have been cooling to rugby, as attendance figures demonstrate, and for pretty much the same reason I have: There's just too much of it. Which makes it all the more strange that people will care for very long about the loss of the World Cup.

The Rugby World Cup is an intensely flawed competition—not very interesting in the early stages (boring, actually), and then moving closer to the finals everything rides on a single game. That's stupid. The New Zealand All Blacks won game after game over four years, losing few, and entered the World Cup ranked number one in the world, then they lost one match and they're out.

Personally, I think they should take only the top eight teams in the world and have them all play a round robbin series, which is more likely to produce a winner worthy of the title. The argument that the Cup helps the so-called “rugby minnow” nations (like Canada and the US) to gain international experience is just plain silly—that's what test matches are for. The World Cup should be about finding the real, true and actual best team in the world, not just the one that managed a few lucky games.

After a few weeks or months of agonising, attention will finally turn away from this loss. Then, attention will eventually turn toward the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which will be held here in New Zealand, and hopes will rise again. I understand that feeling: I'm a Chicago Cubs fan. But no matter what, I know the difference between professional sports and life, and that the former has no bearing on the latter. I just wish the pundits did, too.