The Orange

.. turn the effing lights on at North Harbour.

What an embarassment for rugby in NZ and with the scary prospect that we’re only a couple of years for the next Rugby World Cup.

Talk about passing the buck (funny that, with Buck being North Harbour and all!):

North Harbour Stadium chief executive Brendan O’Connor said the company would be talking to Vector about future supply. “It doesn’t scare me but it is a timely reminder to all of us involved with the Rugby World Cup that there are things out of our control and the need to have good backup.”

North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams said he was not surprised to hear of the outage. “There has been so little investment by the utility companies into North Shore’s infrastructure that our system is so fragile just one limb on the line can bring down the power.”

Perhaps the Stadium should have a backup plan like a generator?

On second thought, anyone else think it was an outraged Blues fan who pulled the plug?

Thank the Heavenly Pasta that’s over.

Now we can get back to bagging the ref!

I really should let go.

Really.

But this little snippet in the Guardian made my eyebrows hit the ceiling.

Not only did the referee gets his butt kicked into touch, but so did the touchies.

Yes, the All Blacks have to take responsibility for losing but so too do the officials and the IRB for appointing a referee who was clearly not up to the challenge.

All of this is odd – very odd.  There’s something quite surreal about all of this.

Blamestorming is a great corporate activity.

In short, you sit round the table and work out who to blame when things go pear shaped.

Which is just the ticket for the AB’s world cup campaign.

The initial reaction after THAT game was to blame the ref – THAT forward pass, THAT sin bin, the lack of penalties in the second half in the AB’s favour, particularly the last crucial 20 minutes.

The mature reaction to that was to say grow up, you can’t keep on blaming the ref.

Sure there are many contributing factors but this article is not the first to claim we wuz robbed.

Having said that, I’m officially over it.  Time to move on to other debacles like the 2011 RWC.

PS. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.  Thanks Craig for this one!

Frankly, the best reason I can think of for winning the RWC is so we don’t have to go through this official period of mourning.

There is no doubt that the refereee played a part in the result.  The forward pass and the ridiculous decision to sin bin Luke M were key turning points.

Equally key – and more telling – were the individual mistakes.  Rocketman became Cock-it-man with a dumb forward pass that gifted territory and possession to the Frogs who then scored.

Likewise, our insistence on playing attacking atttractive rugby and the expense of a dropped goal is so dumb and so unbelievable it’s almost reason enough not to win.

In a QF of a knockout tournament, noone gives a rat’s derriere who plays the more attractive rugby – it’s all about who scores more points.

And seeing I’m ranting (it’s my blog, I’m allowed to) let’s hear it for the pedantics!  The French were not the best side; they were the better side.

Funny how the post started as anything but rugby but ended up everything rugby.

Continuing the theme of extracting the urine at the AB’s expense … Trade Me gets in on the act:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Sports/Rugby-league/Other/auction-121508570.htm

Sorry but unless you’ve been stuck in a cave for the last 24 hours, you will have noticed that things have been a bit gloomy in Enzed.

Nevermind, even if the rugby is a disaster, the jokes that do the rounds after the event almost make up for it.

Here’s a selection from the last 24 hours (thanks Blair for most of them!):

Q: What’s the difference between the All Blacks and a tea bag?

A: The tea bag stays in the cup longer!

Rugby league has the Warriors and now the All Blacks are to be known as the Rainbow Warriors … cos the French keep on blowing us out of the water!

Graham Henry has been found dead in a hotel in Cardiff. The police have 4 million suspects.

And my favourite:

Q: Hear about the All Black bra?

A: It has loads of support but no cup.

From the ridiculous to the sublime … or is it the other way around??

One day, the northern hemisphere is “hacked off with the haka … the next, they are turning it into ballet!

Where will it end?  Who’s scoring the most pointes??

By jingo, he’s hacked off with the haka!

The interesting thing for me wasn’t so much the comments about the haka – we’ve heard them all before – but the response that the post got.

At the time of writing, there were well over 750 comments.

I’d be happy with one

And some of these blokes and blokesses aren’t happy either.  (You wouldn’t be too if you didn’t have a haka.)

I get a little bit confused when the Poms and those from lands nearby complain about the haka but then claim the AB’s are being a precocious when they do it in private.

The irony of course is that until Buck Shelford ramped it up, the haka was only ever performed overseas.  It does make you wonder who’s being precocious.