Top 10 transtasman feuds

Ruben Wiki. Photo / Getty Images

1 Who is responsible for Russell Crowe?

Technically, when he wins an Oscar, Russell Crowe is "the lad from Wellington ... or Eketahuna ... or Mangere Bridge or wherever".

But when he throws telephones at hotel staff or mangles his way through his lines like a pompous drunk with a mouthful of porridge (see: Master and Commander) he's the idiot from Illawarra, the dickhead of Darling Harbour and, obviously, the boofhead who owns the Bunnies.

With two cousins who captained the New Zealand cricket team, Crowe clearly has strong ties to this side of the Ditch. But Rusty's own professed sporting loyalties leave the matter unclear. Crowe declares himself a passionate supporter of both the All Blacks and the Australian cricket team - so he likes to have his cake and eat it, too.

Why not back Brazil at soccer, the United States at basketball and the Russian chess team for good measure? Such flexible loyalty is reminiscent surely of the rural MPs who successfully sold their backing to Julia Gillard this week. So there you go: it's an Australian national personality fault. Conclusion: Russell Crowe is Australian.

2 You bastards elbowed us out of hosting the 2003 World Cup

In all honesty, we probably had this coming.

The NZRU was behind the pace in preparing for the 2003 event while our Australian cousins planned for it with military precision and an eye for a gap that would put Stephen Larkham to shame. We duly showed them the gap.

Officially, it was a contractual dispute over ground signage rights that saw us shut out of hosting the event, but Aussie rugby's chief executive John O'Neill was never likely to share this ball. Hosting the event put about $38 million into the Australian Rugby Union's coffers and the slick-suited O'Neill was the playmaker who put the big fend on New Zealand.

Did it make him unpopular on this side of the Tasman? Just a little. "I'm probably a better known face there [in New Zealand] than I am here - which is terrifying."

The Rugby World Cup hosting feud popped up again when the 2011 tournament was being sorted out, the Australians lending their vote to that renowned stronghold of the sport, Japan.

3 Handing out the gongs at the league World Cup

New Zealand are the World Champions of league. Top dogs. Better than the Kangaroos.

So you might reasonably expect that the player of the tournament and possibly the man of the match from the final would be wearing Kiwis jerseys. But that would be to reckon without the Australian panel tasked with finding the individual stars of the 2008 Rugby League World Cup.

In their wisdom, they named Billy Slater - who gifted the Cup-winning try to Benji Marshall - as the player of the tournament and Darren Lockyer - who spilled a dead-set chance to score a winning try from an unmarked position - the man of the match.

From this side of the Ditch, it all looked a tad begrudging of the tournament's hosts. It seemed as if, the Kiwis having stolen the big prize, the organisers felt the need to rummage around in the spare trophy closet to dig out something for their boys.

4 Underarm? Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!

Realistically, war between New Zealand and Australia has probably always been a shade unlikely. But if anything was going to kick it off then the Underarm Incident was as close as we've come to an antipodean Gulf of Tonkin.

Australian captain Greg Chappell and his brother Trevor, who was bowling the final over of an ODI in 1981, conspired to roll the last ball along the ground to prevent New Zealand tailender Brian McKechnie tying the match with a six.

In the commentary box, Bill Lawry said it was "possibly a little bit disappointing", as the RNZAF scrambled at Ohakea.

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon took things to Defcon 2 when he called the Aussies out. The Chappell brothers, he declared, were responsible for "the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket".

"It was an act of true cowardice and I consider it appropriate that the Australian team were wearing yellow."

It's a gem of a line; a passionate call to arms that - for all Muldoon's well-documented faults - could have come from no other New Zealand leader. Can you imagine this Churchillian taunt coming from John Key? Helen Clark?

5 Banning our apples

In 1983, when Robert Muldoon got us into the Closer Economic Relations free trade agreement with our convict-descended neighbours, the thoroughly un-neighbourly ban on New Zealand apple imports into Australia had been running for 62 years.

Despite New Zealand winning a legal battle at the WTO, it may be years before our top-quality braeburns finally breach the Australians' tight defensive line.

The ban was introduced in 1919 when the bacterial disease fire blight was found in fruit from New Zealand.

While Australia agreed in March 2007 to end the ban, strict quarantine limits were put in place.

Never mind the fact that the fruit being banned didn't carry fire blight.

6 Phar Lap's stable

A real bone of contention, this one.

The debate about whether Phar Lap was a Kiwi or a Convict has raged for generations. Timaru's champion thoroughbred captured the imagination of racing fans around the world during the Great Depression, winning the Melbourne Cup, two Cox Plates and 19 other weight-for-age races.

With Te Papa home to the bones, his hide on display at Melbourne Museum and his heart stored at Australia's National Museum, in Canberra, there is clearly a lot of parochial pride at stake.

Debate about Phar Lap's nationality was the first controversy to feature what has become the standard source of inter-Ditch disputes: Convict efforts to claim New Zealand success.

It's an attitude encapsulated neatly by the Aussie newspaper headlines mooted for his last great race: Australian champion beats the world, or New Zealand horse fails in Mexico.

7 Paul Carozza headbutts Richard Loe's elbow

(Ahem ...) Poor, blameless Richard Loe was trying merely to knock the ball free from the arms of the Aussie winger (cough, cough) as Paul Carozza dived to sco ... nope, sorry, we can't keep a straight face while stating the case for Loe's defence.

The All Black prop was bang out of order, planting his forearm in the Wallaby winger's mush. And the All Black management were out of order in trying to defend his actions.

As Carozza's nose went east and west, the All Blacks lost the moral high ground and the Bledisloe Cup, the 19-17 victory confirming the trophy's place alongside the World Cup in their cabinet.

Oddly, Men in Black, with its forensically detailed account of every All Black match, records two Carozza tries, but doesn't mention Loe's forearm.

8 The penalty count against the Warriors

Sure, all fans feel maligned when the referee's whistle doesn't toot their way. But the toot just seems to be a little bit more shrill when it's against the Warriors. And the club feels it too.

Having had their backs to the wall for much of the 2010 season, Warriors coach Ivan Cleary said earlier this season that the lack of penalties awarded to his side in the second half of tight matches hurt the most.

"A penalty when you are doing it tough is just gold and again at the weekend we couldn't get one - I find that a bit hard," Cleary said.

But the coach sees no conspiracy, just a subconscious favouring of more prominent clubs. "My theory on that is that it's just easier for referees," Cleary said. "We are the only team that is not an Australian team. The media machine is bigger over there."

So, the solution seems to be that the press on this side of the Ditch needs to whinge more about it. We'll take it from here, Ivan ...

9 Kiwi suspensions

Ruben Wiki's career record for international league matches - 55 tests played, with one or two of the Aussie bruises only just fading - would have been even greater were it not for the cunning of the NRL's judiciary.

Wiki was the hardest hit of Kiwis in the NRL, finding the judiciary particularly venomous in the weeks before transtasman test matches.

And Steve Matai is clearly innocent of the high-tackle charge from last weekend that has ruled him out for the duration of the Four Nations tourna ... nah, we're only kidding.

10 'A bunch of scrubbers'

When Norma Plummer became coach of the Australian netball team, she immediately slandered New Zealand's gorgeous female population. "They're just a bunch of scrubbers," Plummer declared of our virtuous and beautiful Silver Ferns.

This from the nation that gave the world Lara Bingle, Clare Werbeloff and Charmyne Palavi (not to be confused with pavlova, the wholesome pud that represents all that's good about Aotearoa).

Plummer claims Scrubbergate was all a bit of a mix-up. "It was totally off the record and the next thing it was front page. You learn never to trust the media," she told, er, a journalist. "I had done an interview with a reporter in Canberra. He shut his book and we had finished and I was seeing him out the door. He said, 'Thanks and good luck' or something like that. I said, 'Oh yeah, they're just a bunch of scrubbers'.

"The fact is it meant you were always playing the bottom team.

"My daughter rang me up and she said, 'Oh Mum, why did you say that'? I said, 'What's wrong with that? It's just saying you're playing the bottom team'.

"She did say it means something different these days."