What's all this razzing the All Blacks for not singing the National Dirge like angelic choir boys? It's like quizzing a gaggle of beauty contestants about global warming, then mocking their dumb replies.
The beauties are not there for their brains, just as the men in black aren't hired
on their ability to hold a top C.
Some rugby commentators are now trying to link the players' singing problems with their recent on-field performance. Has it not occurred to them that piling the pressure on tone deaf players to sing sweetly at the beginning of a game is hardly going to settle the nerves for the main event?
Why don't they just accept that some people can't sing? Or don't want to?
I sympathise with the ABs. A few nights ago I forked out a three-figure sum to enjoy the singing of Welsh opera sensation Bryn Terfel, and what did he try and make me do? Sing along with him, that's what.
Worse, because our first reluctant effort was delivered with about as much gusto as the All Blacks singing God Defend, he insisted we stand up and try harder. Shuffle shuffle, mumble mumble.
Luckily there must have been plenty of Welsh and Scottish refugees in the town hall audience, otherwise we might still be there, warbling away about high and low roads to Loch Lomond, waiting for Mr Terfel's approval.
Yet there was nothing on my ticket requiring me to sing for my supper - that was supposed to be the job of the big guy on the stage. Same for the All Blacks. They aren't selected for their dulcet tones or their gregarious natures.
They're there to pummel the other lot into submission and hopefully, score more points. If, by chance, they can also belt out Ten Guitars on the bus and the national anthem, then good for them. But it's not why they get paid $7500 a week to wear the black jersey.
Captain Mils Muliaina attributed their less than stellar singing abilities to New Zealanders being "conservative people". I prefer the word "reserved".
Or knowing one's abilities.
A Sunday paper unearthed a vocal coach from deepest Cambridge - how do they find these people? - to babble inanely about "absolutely pitiful" singing showing "no evidence of any pride at being New Zealanders".
How can he say that of a bunch of guys who then go on to do a war dance that proves exactly the opposite? They're just showing that passion is not necessarily about being able to sing a hymn-like ditty, sweetly.
Putting aside whether we're shy, or reserved, or just can't sing, what intelligent person wouldn't be embarrassed having to sing the words of our National Dirge out loud.
Especially when it's being beamed to a huge television audience by camera operators who move up and down the team, waiting to home in on anyone out of tune, or fluffing a line.
It was 19th century doggerel when it was penned and it hasn't improved with age. The All Blacks, in preparation for going to battle with their rivals, are supposed to proclaim lustily to God that they're meeting "in the bonds of love".
They're then supposed to "entreat" him to defend them "from the shafts of strife and war" they're about to unleash on the field. Then they've got to repeat it all in Maori. All at a funereal pace.
The obvious solution is to drop the song and do the haka as our team's national anthem. Let the other sissies warble Advance Australia Fair and God Save and the rest, then let loose with our unique response.
All this singing of anthems is modern candy floss on the game anyway.
When I was a kid, it was all much simpler. The Army band showed off in front of the Eden Park main stand for a while, sometimes venturing across to the terraces for the ritual pelting with grapefruit - a strange Auckland practice that died with the old concrete terraces.
Then the teams ran on, the band blasted out a verse of God Save the Queen, and it was on with the game. Those were the days when the rugby playing world was all part of one empire, and we needed only one anthem.
But now, everyone has an anthem or a national song. And since the 1999 Rugby World Cup in England when Hinewehi Mohi upset the apple cart by singing God Defend in Maori only before the game with England, anthems now seem to be sung in at least two languages to keep everyone sweet.
The All Blacks, as the closest thing we have to a national symbol, have become the reluctant tools of politicians, the Maori Language Commission and other campaigners, who are fixated with the idea that we'll all become one people by singing these banal words in English and te reo Maori.
Ironically, many of the All Blacks expected to be leading this national singalong are of Pacific Island heritage.
If the anthem ritual is to persist, then hire a choir, a singer or bring back the band, and leave the poor players to concentrate on what they're there to do.
'In the bonds of love' does not seem appropriate as the All Blacks go into battle. Photo / Mark Mitchell
What's all this razzing the All Blacks for not singing the National Dirge like angelic choir boys? It's like quizzing a gaggle of beauty contestants about global warming, then mocking their dumb replies.
The beauties are not there for their brains, just as the men in black aren't hired
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