KEY POINTS:
I will tell you what I find most distasteful about sport. Money. Not that I have anything against players and sporting bodies making it. Oh, no, no, no ... perish the thought. Money, as the old song has it, makes the world go around.
If I was being
entirely honest, I would tell you that I sometimes think I was born too early and wouldn't I have tried harder in my own rugby career (such as it was) if I'd known I could head off to Europe and make shedloads a year by not being a top player? Well, of course, I would have.
It's just that sometimes, sport seems to be more about money than it is about sport.
Like cricket's wretched IPL, perhaps the most obvious example, followed closely by John O'Neill's drooling courtship of Japan in his proposed reincarnation of the Super 14 and the NZRU's highly smug announcement of the fourth Bledisloe Cup match in Hong Kong, God help us.
The IPL is the Indian Twenty20 cricket league which held those rather vulgar auctions where extreme amounts of money were spent on players to bowl four overs a game and to have a swish of the bat in the fast-food frenzy of the 20-over game.
My lip curls a bit at this because, as was evidenced by John Bracewell, Daniel Vettori and the Black Caps at Hamilton, test cricket is still the business, thank you very much. If this wasn't the highlight of Bracewell's coaching career, it damned well ought to be. No Shane Bond, no batsmen to speak of and plenty of criticism of New Zealand's test capability under Bracewell from writers who should have known better (yes, yes, yes ... including me) and the Black Caps produced a wonderful display of grit, discipline and teamwork to unseat England.
No, I don't much care for Twenty20 as a whole and even less about the IPL. What do we care about a popcorn and candyfloss league in India? Nothing. In terms of sporting endeavour and prestige, the IPL is to cricket what diarrhoea is to dodgy curry houses - an unfortunate by-product.
But it means a great deal when you factor in politics and money. The IPL is being set up to gazump the rebel ICL league and I belong to the school of thought that both leagues will, in the tradition of the Oozelum bird, disappear up their own fundaments once the ICL has fallen over and there is little or no reason for the IPL to exist.
Because, you see, for the money and the politics to make sense, there actually has to be some real sport behind them.
Which leads us to Aussie rugby boss John O'Neill and his plans for the Super 14 to be extended to include a franchise for Japan.
O'Neill is an undeniably clever man but I was reminded of our family's Labrador dogs when I was a child. The dogs were technically not allowed in the house at mealtimes but my Mum sometimes couldn't resist those pathetic eyes and salved her conscience by telling us kids on pain of death not to feed them from the table.
Now, anyone who knows Labradors will know that they are phenomenal gutses. They have an interest in food that transcends all else. Put it this way, if Bill Clinton was a Labrador, Hillary need only have thrown a bit of hamburger on the floor and Bill would never have gone near Monica Lewinsky, let alone a cigar.
The dogs would sit there, ears pricked, with drool slowly sinking to the floor while we kids watched, fascinated, as it eventually formed an unbroken line from jowl to rug.
Mum had decided that the only proper course of action at this stage was to ignore the dogs and the little whimper they made occasionally, while watching food disappearing into everyone's bellies but their own.
Now think about John O'Neill drooling as he looks at a map of Japan. Because O'Neill sees not spreading the gospel of rugby but money.
Australian rugby has been sniffing round Japan (sorry about all the dog analogies, I'm nearly done) for some years now. Remember the NZRU getting all nasty with Australia when they backed Japan for the 2011 Rugby World Cup? And when Australia wanted to include Japan in a domestic "Super 8" provincial championship?
None of this was because Australians naturally love the Japanese (blubber sandwich, cobber?). It's because they love their yen.
With all due respect to Japanese rugby, they are not going to beat the All Blacks or any top NZ team in my lifetime, in my kids' and possibly not until the sun explodes and ends creation. And would I watch a Super 14 match against a Japanese side? No. I'd be off doing something more interesting, like driving nails through my feet.
Fair enough, the Southern Hemisphere needs money to stave off the domination of the evil Northern Hemisphere. That's why the All Blacks are playing the Bledisloe Cup match in Hong Kong.
Having spent a fair bit of time in Hong Kong over the past 15 years, I can exclusively reveal that the Honkies are not the slightest bit interested in rugby. The sport is like a grain of rice lying in the gutter - insignificant; ignored. Honkies will not be rushing off to play rugby as a result of this match.
So it's all about money. And because of that, new Wallaby coach Robbie Deans will have to beat Graham Henry's All Blacks three times out of four to win the Bledisloe Cup, removing any guesswork from a potentially fascinating contest.
I know we need the money and I guess things like Hong Kong have to happen. But it isn't really sport. It's stacking the deck. And we play with the integrity of the sport at our peril.
