NICE to see cricket boss Justin Vaughan and soccer boss Michael Glading reaching out across the sporting divide to condemn the “drinking behaviour” of New Zealanders at sporting events.
Of course, I’m kidding. These two wowsers have put the hype back in hypocrite with their comments.
“The way I read it is that as a nation we need to be conscious of the image we are projecting by drinking too much alcohol,” said Glading.
Yep, that’s right Michael. Ask any foreigner the first thing they think about New Zealand and they say “pissheads.”  Not clean and green, or at the bottom of the world, or All Blacks, but drunken boors galore.
He does have a precedent for this. English football fans reinforce the image everyone has that England is populated by skinhead drunken violent oafs. Ask anyone. England is widely acknowledged in tourism research as the Somalia of Europe, streets riven by violence, gangs of football hooligans everywhere you look.
Obviously, once again, I’m kidding.
Glading’s comments came on the back of the Holiest One, Justin Vaughan, saying, amongst other things, this:
“The reasons for such unpleasant behaviour may be complex and far broader than sport, but it is time for the leaders of our country - political, sporting, corporate, media and educational - to be open about the issue and start looking hard for solutions.”
Oh how I laughed. That’s rich, coming from a bloke whose five-day sporting version gives spectators a whole day to booze up in the sun.
Would Vaughan go so far as to ban booze from one-day and Test cricket matches? There’s a Tui ad in that. Forego revenue? Nah. Cut attendances at least in half? Nah. It’s not going to happen.
Both NZ Football and cricket are sponsored by fast food giants, whose products contribute to obesity and other health issues.
Obesity is becoming a major issue across the population. Is it “…time for the leaders of our country - political, sporting, corporate, media and educational - to be open about the issue and start looking hard for solutions” to obesity as well? Should we ban fast food sponsorship of kids’ sport?
And of course picking on rugby fans is an easy target, because cricket and football fans are so well behaved, aren’t they?
The two temperance advocates ignore the real issue here. There is a wee thing we still have a smidgen of in New Zealand called “personal responsibility”.
Rugby isn’t forcing these people to drink. The event managers aren’t firing alcohol at them. It’s just what they do.  And like anyone with a skinful, there’s the two poles – you’re either boozed and aggressive, or boozed and sleepy.
But placing the blame for drunk New Zealanders on the nation as a whole ignores the whole responsibility issue.  
As I have noted before, education won’t do it – research shows that when people are told not to do something (like drink and drive), even though they know it’s wrong, their brain gives the sermon two fingers and parks it somewhere in the outer medulla.
The only way to stop the behaviour Vaughan and Glading are so worried about is for stadium staff to get tougher on public drunks. They do it very efficiently in English football, so there’s no reason why it can’t happen here, if the behaviour is as bad as Reverend Vaughan found it to be.
On the other hand, will that damage our international reputation if we start turfing out drunk Irish fans next year?
God only knows. I’ll ask him at the next NZ Cricket council meeting.