Scotty Donaldson wonders if New Zealanders are narrow minded poor sports and wants to know what overseas readers think?
New Zealand rugby fans are in trouble again for their racist claims made about the struggling Blues coach Pat Lam's Pacific Island background, are New Zealand fans narrow minded poor sports?
It is difficult to know as a New Zealander what being an overseas fan is like in New Zealand, but it seems that the racism pointed at Pat Lam's heritage affecting his ability to coach the Blues effectively seems crazy. I haven't seen or heard these statements to know the context or sources of such tyraids by fans. New Zealand is a small country where due to our isolation and relatively conservative nature there is a tendency to be afraid of change and have a rather narrow minded stance on issues. Rugby is something we take very seriously and so when a team full of talent like the Blues is underperforming we demand answers. The media often piggy-backs on these issues and adds fuel to the fire.
There have been other well documented outbursts from fans. The recent Rugby World Cup 2012 saw thousands of visitors come to New Zealand and Australian fans were the target of plenty of verbal abuse from New Zealand fans. This probably stemmed from some rather unsavoury on-field incidents involving a certain Quade Cooper and some cheap thugish acts on New Zealand captain Richie McCaw. Quade Cooper received plenty of stick from New Zealand fans and so did plenty of Australian fans.
I also heard of South Africans who couldn't believe the racism of New Zealand fans despite coming from a country with so much political strife. I think that the isolated nature of New Zealand in some ways has so much to answer for. I found that even moving from provincial New Zealand to urban New Zealand saw a complete change in open mindedness.
Australia and South African fans who follow rugby tend to be white middle class punters and were probably unfortunate victims of New Zealand fans wrath. Many kiwis have been on the receiving end of Australian yobbo cricket fans across the tasman and probably dished out some overly harsh banter to undeserving respectable Australians, while the Australian yobbos were still in Bay 13 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. In New Zealand, rugby is the peoples game and so you get all sorts attending matches, especially in the provinces. I found overseas fans to be very sporting last year during the Rugby World Cup, but there was the unsavoury incident when an Australian fan confronted us in the pub and tried to tell us his team was better than ours. It happens everywhere in my view. We are used to our All Blacks winning and so don't settle for anything less than victory. Any loss is not good enough, even though the All Blacks have one of the highest winning percentages of any sports team in the world.
Isn't it amazing how Piri Weepu (pictured above) was a hero in New Zealand in October last year at the Rugby World Cup and is now one of the main villains at the struggling Blues?
So how have you found New Zealand fans? The interesting thing is that it is often a minority of fans who give a group a bad name with the help of some media exaggeration. Attending sporting fixtures often sees alcohol fuelled fans getting often crossing the line of good banter. While I think our fans are narrow minded, I don't think our fans are any worse than Australian cricket fans.
http://www.superrugbytips.com/2012/04/are-new-zealand-rugby-fans-narrow.html |