Dropping the ball

Long-held conventional wisdom, here and abroad, is that New Zealanders are very good at rugby because we take it very seriously.

Successive waves of visiting scribes have repeated the lazy – and increasingly meaningless – claim that the game is a “religion” here, often as a prelude to sharing anecdotes of dubious authenticity about the rugby nous of little old ladies and, inevitably, taxi drivers. (I’ve had many cricket conversations with taxi drivers; precious few about rugby.)

Kiwis certainly take rugby way too seriously when the All Blacks lose. Embarrassingly, this is regarded as a good thing. Even those, like