Timing is everything. Now our attention has been distracted by cricket, transtasman bubbles and the America's Cup, everyone's forgotten about Pablo Matera, Guido Petti, Santiago Socino and their racist tweets from long ago.
The lack of serious punishment brought to mind times, when watching a test match that does not involve the All Blacks, that the phrase "if that'd been an All Black…" is uttered. It usually involves foul play, like a high tackle, a bad cleanout or someone played off the ball. The context? Sometimes those offences didn't even rate a penalty, especially in the Wallabies-Pumas clashes in the recent Rugby Championship.
But had an All Black been involved? Cynical fans might think the punishment meted out would be greater; many referees scrutinise one of the foremost teams in the world even more carefully.
If Matera, Petti and Socino had been All Blacks, the tweets they sent many years ago, dredged up in the aftermath of Diego Maradona's death (some passionate fans felt Matera's Pumas hadn't marked Maradona's passing as well as the All Blacks), would have meant only one thing - they would have been gone; never to be heard from again.
This is no exaggeratedly woke response; no fashionable outrage. The subject matter of these tweets is not hard to find online even if we don't give them more air here. Suffice it to say that among the targets were blacks, Bolivian and Paraguayan people, fat people, Jews and a Puerto Rican-Argentinian actress.
The defence, before unreserved apologies from all three players, was that these were young men who had not matured, light years away from the men they had since become.
Sorry but, even accepting many of us say and do things in our youth we wouldn't say or do now, there is no excuse for racism. The line offered at first was that Matera was 19 when he sent his texts, in 2011 and 2013. Matera is 27 now, so he would have been 18 or 19 in 2011 and 20 or 21 in 2013, depending on the date the texts were sent.
The real insult is that the Argentina Rugby Union reinstated these guys. Reports of a player strike preceded the UAR reinstatement (though the three players did not appear against the Wallabies in the final match of the series).
Pablo Matera in action against the All Blacks in the 2020 Tri Nations. Photo / Photosport
The UAR said it "strongly repudiates the discriminatory and xenophobic comments" before saying: "The three players expressed their deep regret, reiterated the apology, ratified that it is not what they think and that it was a reckless act typical of immaturity. The disciplinary committee...understands that they have not repeated similar actions during these more than eight years."
What a message to send the world. It's okay to make vehemently racist remarks if it was long enough ago - and if your players threaten to strike. They should have been fired, never to return, even if Pumas players had boycotted the final, meaningless Rugby Championship test with the Wallabies.
To go back to the theme of "If that'd been an All Black…" there is no doubt what would have happened in this country. The public, political and player outcry would have been enormous. There would have been no player threats to strike. The door would have been very publicly slammed on careers, no matter how glittering.
You wonder, too, how this episode will affect Argentine and World Rugby. Already former England back Ugo Monye has said rugby doesn't know how to deal with racism: "Racism seems to be this outlier forever because no-one wants to own up to it. If you've got the union saying it's immature, that's what they think it is. Just so we are clear, [the comments] are not immature - they are racist and they are vile.
"[The UAR] are more interested in protecting their player than they are in dealing with the issue of racism which affects millions of people every single day."
New Zealand may be far from perfect but our sport goes a long way to crossing racial divides, particularly contact sports. When you train, eat, drink, socialise, shower with and rely upon teammates, you cannot help but get to know and respect them, their views on life, their families and the like.
There will always be racism – it's part of the human condition, sadly. There will always be differences between the races. That's why it is so important to keep the anti-racism pedal pressed to the floor.
