Having read through some of the threads about your win in the Games and some of the responses, i have a question for you.
Could any of you please go into the site records and find for us a few examples of where you have said anything negative about NZ, it's rugby, its politics, its economy, it's wildlife or any of its people.
I've spoken to a great deal of people, including my partner's daughter who visited NZ recently and there was a common theme that seemed to arise from their trips.
The majority of them said that it's a beautiful country and that they had a good time DESPITE being told by almost every local they spoke to about how wonderful NZ was, multiple times.
Nobody is saying that one should not love your country, stand up for your country, be willing to defend your country with your last breath or even partake in the unsolicited promotion of your land. Of course you should. It's natural to be proud of where you're from, to want to defend it and talk about it.
But here's the thing...
Cricket is the second biggest sport in NZ right? Don't most kids play it during the summer?
Why is there never a peep about it on the cricket part of this board? Why, as Mike mentioned, have no Kiwi poster made any contributions regarding sevens rugby until now?
If you enjoy rugby then sevens is the T20 version of it and despite it not being anyone's favorite version, surely you'd still make the odd post about it. Right? Especially in NZ where rugby is in the blood.
All we hear about here is the positives and the wins. Never any discussion on the negatives of NZ sport. Never any discourse when the national team in any sport is doing poorly.
I'm not saying that you should cry into your beer like us Saffas do all to often. But for the love of all that is holy can we just once in a while be real and break through the perfect facade that you guys seem adamant to promote? You, like us, are not perfect, neither is your country, so can we just come at things as imperfect equals from time to time?
Lets hear about why your cricket team is struggling. Lets discuss why despite being the present masters of the 15 man game, your sevens team has not been so hot for some years.
Any Saffa poster here, Beeno included, and i'm not defending him outright but the truth is that he is capable and more than willing to discuss the difficulties, issues and mistakes in South African sport and its society. You'll actually struggle to get him to shut up about it.
The most we get is self-praise disguised as a concession.
Any example of this would be Cloudy saying something along the lines of "We don't generally do well at the games, because we are a small country but we punch well above our weight.
I'm sure most of us have met that person in the office, at the gym or somewhere else, who just has the perfect life, wife, house and cleverest children you can imagine. The last time he had the flu was in 1985 and he still weighs the same as he did when he was 16. He never drives a car past 50 000kms and gave half his liver to a random stranger on whim. His parents wanted to call him Jesus, but it didn't quite do him justice, so they settled on John.
How enjoyable is the time one normally spends with that guy? Not much at all because he is constantly inferring that he is just better than you in every way possible.
Lets try an experiment...
Saffa posters on here, myself included, often accuse NZ teams and refs of cheating, when most of the time these claims are unfounded. We are also often rude, insensitive and unappreciative of the Kiwi "contributions" to the board. See, i just did it there via my clever use of inverted commas. It's probably pretty obvious that this negatively affects the site and scares posters off.
We also fight amongst ourselves...often, very often.
Many people think of South Africans as being rude, arrogant, under-educatued and often times that we have an unjustified swagger about us that is off putting. Guess what, it's very often true. Half the people i know fit into at least one, if not all of those categories. Not only that but many of us are racists too, on both sides of the fence. Imagine that!
You don't even need to go into the records because on the main page here you will find threads where we openly talk about the negative things about our rugby, people and country.
At the same time that we celebrate our wins we'll bemoan our losses, often times blaming the ref or the cheating kiwis.
So now i ask you, why is there never a negative word about anything NZ from the mouth of a Kiwi on here?
See, i listed some of the negatives about Saffa posters and i did so easily without feeling like i was betraying anyone or my country. Despite my truly unpatriotic lamenting of my countrymen, there will be no witch hunt. Why? I don't know. But i think in part because many know it's true and also because we don't see critical self-reflection as national betrayal.
Are you guys able to do the same? It really doesn't seem like it. And i'm not picking on NZ. It's just that i've never encountered a nation so unable to criticize themselves.
It's a serious question.
And it just seems counter productive because it's like the more you pro mote your own perfection the more incentive people have to try and drag you down.
But i'll make a prediction here.
Instead of admitting that your patriotism is a bit overboard, you'll attack this post, make fun of it and ultimately dismiss it out of hand without actually answering the very simple question that i have asked, albeit in a rather roundabout way.
I eagerly await that the deafening sounds of crickets that is surely to follow.
Despite my sarcasm i am actually interested to know what the Kiwis think.
Look, if the worst thing someone is accusing you of is being overly patriotic, and you take that as an insult, then you really are overly patriotic.
Ultimately, i think that if you never critically evaluate yourself, then it shouldn't surprise you when others do it for you.
Fuck it, maybe NZ is perfect.
