KEY POINTS:
Roll back the clock four years. The Brits were superb visitors in Sydney and Melbourne and other Australian venues at the 2003 Rugby World Cup, bringing with them a party atmosphere that brought out the best in the Aussies as hosts.
At the time, with the 'Barmy Army'
and other Britons on the way, there were a lot of jokes about the wave of whingeing that was due to break.
Now the thong is on the other hoof and it is the Australians who are whipping up a whole new crescendo of whining. The problem, apparently, is that they have to play Wales at home.
Yes, that's right. Our neighbours have had a good old bleat about having to play the Welsh in front of their home crowd in Cardiff overnight.
ARU chief John O'Neill sniped at the International Rugby Board and tournament organisers for allowing the game to be played outside host nation France - years after Wales and Scotland did deals with the French to help them gain hosting rights. Somehow, I don't seem to have heard Graham Henry and Wayne Smith wringing their hands about having to play Scotland at Edinburgh. Wallaby coach John Connolly, however, said: "I think it is an advantage to play at home.
"I know in the Super 14 the home team wins 75-80 per cent of the time and that tells you something. I know in test matches we prefer to play in Brisbane rather than Auckland."
This is grade-A effluent of the sort that used to close down Bondi beach on a regular basis, when bathers found they were sharing the waves with some of the friends that Bazza McKenzie used to see off to the coast.
The Irish are also having a crack. Coach Eddie O'Sullivan, who must have honed his whining skills on the 2005 Lions tour of New Zealand, said: "The Six Nations sides have hardly played since March, whereas all of the Southern Hemisphere teams have played throughout the summer. They have had a summer of rugby we haven't had, and we've had to put all our eggs in one basket preparing for the World Cup.
"If we were to play games during the summer in preparation for a World Cup, that's fine, but the problem is that by May or April the players are running on empty."
Much of this whiny stuff tends to come from coaches - they feel the pressure and indulge in all sorts of coach-like posturing, including Get Your Excuses In First and If We Say This, The Ref Might Do That.
Players tend to be a little more phlegmatic as they are the poor sods who have to get out there and actually do the job. Years of triumph and reverses has usually taught them the value of a little dignity.
Speaking of which, Stephen Fleming's dignified response has done him a lot of credit after he was dumped, first as New Zealand one-day international captain and then test captain. The whole matter has been distinctly odd as New Zealand Cricket first seemed to plump for Daniel Vettori as one-day captain and Fleming as test skipper.
When the axe fell on Fleming's test captaincy, he broke a long silence. He spoke quietly and sincerely about the struggle he'd had deciding what to do when he was offered a huge sum - thought to be US$500,000 - to play in the rebel Indian ICL league.
He also foreshadowed that he'd be involved with the ICC-sanctioned Twenty20 league in India, designed to take on the rebel league.
Obviously, there had been a lot happening in Fleming's world and a bit of time and 'no comment' to sort things out was not unreasonable. But his silence seemed to infuriate Kiwi journalists like Richard Boock, formerly of the NZ Herald and Herald on Sunday, now of the Sunday Star-Times.
The usually amiable 'Boocky' wrote a piece which carried a tone which suggested that the author would not have been surprised if Fleming was responsible for the entire ills of the Western world.
He wrote: "There's a name for a creature that feeds off the fat of its host before scuttling away to a juicier alternative just as there's a name for a person who revels in the respectability of public office while at the same time grabbing every cheap buck on offer...".
Yes. Yes, there is. Boock was the bloke who went to the Caribbean this year to cover the Cricket World Cup for the Herald, after New Zealand Cricket stumped up the money for him to go. Not long after his return, Boock resigned for a new job.
Anyone else see any similarities here?
Stephen Fleming has nothing left to prove in New Zealand cricket. The fact that he is staying on to bat for his country some more, under a different leader, while pursuing another interest which might give him a good payday and a new direction in his career only adds to the dignity of the final moments of his cricket career. Good luck to him.
