Kiwi dominance

Subject: Fw: Kiwi dominance.

 

 

It's hard to type if your a South African, it's hard to type if you are an Australian, it's hard to type those words if you are a Lions fan. "New Zealand rugby is the best in the world".

How can a collection of tiny islands situated in an angry sea at the foot of the world with a population of only 4.56 million, half the population of London, be so good at Rugby. 

Rugby is a game which, like all games is played to a set of rules, rules which are the same for both sides. Fitness, technique, motivation, are all in abundance within the teams who come to play them and yet they all go home with their tails between their legs well beaten. 

It's not the money such as you get when you gather players from all four corners of the world in the top professional soccer teams to claim supremacy. In fact the money poured into the English club rugby football set up which produced results by claiming the game from the ranks of being an amateur game into one truly professional and yet we still see today the gap, the gulf between the Kiwi's and the rest.

It can be summed up in self belief but that's not to say each of the Lions don't have self belief. It can be summed up in team spirit and cohesion but that's not to say the Lions lack either of them. What is it then. Is it instinct perhaps, that sense of playing a game which comes so naturally that the skills are the manifestation of something within. To adjust to each fleeting circumstance with an instinctive reflex action is not something learned on the training ground. Perhaps it's genetic, perhaps it's learnt because enough of your schoolchildren s are displaying those instinctive skills and, that like osmosis you absorb them, they become second nature, not only as being possible but become that important mental attribute, an expectation.

A bunch of burly burly farmers who rejoice in their collective power to outplay anyone who comes up against them, who relish the awe we all have to watch them and to know in their hearts that this is "their" game and we all better get used to the idea.