Wallabies suffer Kiwis’ spitting fury

THERE was a nasty undertone to Ireland’s victory over the Wallabies last Saturday, if reports in the Antipodean media are to be believed.

While the Irish team embraced a new section of supporters as the locals got behind the men in green, it seems the Kiwis are more than living up to their mantra of supporting the All Blacks and “anyone who’s playing the Aussies”.

By Monday morning, reports were spreading of Australian supporters being spat on and verbally abused by New Zealanders during the game at Eden Park and its aftermath in downtown Auckland and there followed a mixed reaction from Kiwis either anguished or embarrassed by such behaviour or outraged by perceived double standards from their cousins across “the ditch”, the colloquial term for the Tasman Sea that separates the two nations.

It seems we have moved beyond the usual jovial banter between sporting rivals that most of us who bear any sort of allegiance to a team are exposed to in our daily lives.

And when it is stoked by a local media which revels in any setback the Aussies suffer, that heightens the edginess.

Maybe the Wallabies should have decamped to Rotorua, where the only risk to life and limb is being killed with kindness. It’s a town delighted to be hosting three World Cup games, the last of which will be tomorrow’s Pool C match between Ireland and Russia.

Six years ago this reporter was less than impressed with Rotorua as the Lions rolled in during the early winter to be greeted with an awful whiff of sulphur from the volcanic springs and geysers that make Rotorua a popular tourist attraction.

So it was with trepidation that the 80km drive north up State Highway 5 was taken and a pleasant surprise on arrival to a stink-free town full of welcoming locals eager to make visitors feel at home.

And there will be plenty of them as the camper van convoy of Irish fans makes it way here over the next few hours before kick-off.

Head coach Declan Kidney was also on message as he looked forward to returning to the stadium where his Ireland tourists were beaten in the summer of 2010 by the New Zealand Maori.

“Well, we’ll be hoping to get off to a better start than we did 15 months ago. I think we were a try down after a couple of minutes,” Kidney told a local reporter.

“We understand the privilege it is playing in Rotorua. It’s the centre of Maori culture and it was such a privilege to play New Zealand Maori here last year. It ended up quite a good game, we were about a score off it and the crowd got right into the game too. The benefit of playing here, like some of our own places at home, is that if you play good rugby, the crowd will respond to you. That’s what we’re hoping to do. We’re hoping to go out and play good rugby. We know we have a job to do to get a win. Hopefully the crowd will enjoy themselves the same way they did that night. It’s a smashing venue, a real rugby venue and we’re looking forward to it.”

Perhaps most excited will be Ireland scrum-half Isaac Boss, who grew up just 40km west of here in Tokoroa. He learned his rugby at Forest View High School, where he was head boy, and he was not the only one for that little town of 16,000 inhabitants that has been grabbing headlines at this World Cup for producing no less than five players for four different countries at this tournament.

Richard Kahui and Keven Mealamu are the real heroes as members of the All Blacks squad but Ireland’s Boss, Fiji’s Nicky Little and even Australia’s Quade Cooper are also remembered fondly and Russia’s backs coach Henry Paul, a former England centre, is also from Tok.

Forest View High School sports coordinator Denise Hein told the local Waikato Times that she remembered Boss and Kahui as “bright kids” but described Cooper as “your typical crazy year 10”.

Cooper is doing his best to live up the reputation. When asked before the Ireland game if there might be something in the water in Tokoroa to have produced such an array of rugby talent, he managed to enhance his public enemy number one moniker by invoking a water-borne parasite.

“That’s what everyone’s been saying,” said Cooper in reply to the enquiry, “but I remember a few years back when I was living there, there was a lot of giardia (a microscopic parasite) in the water.”