Generation Next: Rowdy revelry just part of game

I'm going to be honest. When it comes to sports, I am a pathetic New Zealander.
In a country where athletes have demi-god status and the only sure-fire way to sell anything from energy milk to undies is to put Dan Carter's face on it, I feel somewhat anxious admitting my ignorance.
Sport is New Zealand's not-so-unofficial religion. An encyclopaedia-like recollection of every tackle in Tana Umaga's career is equivalent to a PhD and a lifetime Mensa membership. It shows your dedication, your passion, your value as a true Kiwi. By sporting standards I'm barely a citizen. And yet while my knowledge of all New Zealand's trademark sports barely extends a few fun facts retained from the odd Tui cap, league is the worst. I don't know the rules, I don't know the players and up until just before the game I thought the All Blacks were going to be playing at the Four Nations Tournament last Saturday. Thankfully there was enough screaming and general intoxication among the 44,000-plus crowd to make "Go ABs" sound deceptively close to "Go Kiwis."
It was my first league game and I didn't understand a second of it. And yet, I don't think I've ever screamed harder. I had never really understood watching sport. The notion of sitting in uncomfortable seats to hurl abuse at a gang of overly muscular people while they fought over an inanimate object for 90 minutes always seemed to me something of a return to Neanderthal-ism.
I was the biggest Neanderthal there. The sheer ability of a deranged crowd, lights, music and a hazardous amount of bottle flinging to make you care about something that never even registered on your personal radar of importance never ceases to amaze me. I expected the male nudity, the lines for the bathroom and the terrifyingly overpriced drinks. I didn't expect to be insulting the mother of the referee for a judgment that I didn't understand. A combination of sports reviews and various heckles from people who looked like they knew what they were talking about tell me defence was weak, the Kiwis didn't complete nearly enough of their sets and Marshall's trademark back-handed passes failed to deliver.
All I know is that we were winning, then we weren't and it was incredibly upsetting for me and almost every other person in the stadium. I think the power of sports games isn't so much the sport itself; the rules, the tactics, even the final score, but what they represent. Getting together in hoards to scream at a bunch of glorified strangers gives a sense of purpose, an escape. It creates something almost outside reality, a place where businessmen can let their guts hang out and the passive can beat the daylights out of each other just because Boyd missed a pass.
Sport makes you bond with people you'll never see again, hug large intimidating men and pay for food you probably wouldn't give to a homeless person. It's an exception to life's rules and it's glorious.
There were bound to be "concerned" comments about Saturday's behaviour. Fingers have been wagged and words like "disappointed" and "terrible" thrown around by officials and ambassadors, some even suggesting a complete re-work of Eden Park's security to keep the boozers, streakers and bottle-flingers at bay.
They'll never succeed. Take away the rowdy and the rule breakers and you take away the game. Banning the naughty ones would leave every major international game with a borderline empty stadium but for a few supportive family members and polite tourists giving an appreciative clap in the corner.
So although I emerged from my first-ever league game none the wiser in terms of the players, the lingo or anything actually related to the game itself, it taught me a few important lessons. You don't have to like sport to like watching it; the game itself is only a tiny chunk of the collective experience of rowdiness, spontaneous friendships and terrible food that makes up our national creed.
Even though the athletes get the glory, sport of any kind is really about the fans. The streakers and screamers make the game what it is and, health hazard or not, they're not going anywhere. The game has converted me to fan-ism.