Actually, we WERE robbed

JOHN SELKIRK / Fairfax Media

BAD CALLS: Wayne Barnes will go down in history for all the wrong reasons to New Zealanders. And we're right - he had a very poor performance.

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If anything positive is to emerge out of this latest World Cup disappointment, hopefully it will have something to do with New Zealanders worrying less about what the rest of the world thinks of us, and more about what really pushes our buttons.

Maybe it's because of our desire to appear mature on the international stage, maybe it's a fear of being accused of sour grapes, but it seems that ever since last Sunday we've been walking on eggshells in an effort to seem reasonable in defeat.

Faced with British rugby writers psychoanalysing our nation, IRB officials launching pre-emptive attacks on our judgement and opposition coaches saying "I told you so", New Zealanders seem to be feeling a tad sensitive about speaking their minds.

If this is what folk mean when they tell us to grow up as a country, you can only hope that we remain young and naive.

I mean, fair enough. We always knew the All Blacks would have to be better than a poor northern hemisphere referee and it turned out they weren't. But in their defence, I doubt any of us imagined someone as fundamentally awful, as sickeningly incompetent, or as blindly arrogant as that English goof, Wayne Barnes.

People say he wasn't the reason for New Zealand's quarter-final loss. I'd argue he was the biggest, single influence. His bias in the second half was so profound that few teams could have survived, and most would have been buried. The All Blacks are good, but they're not that good.

It's about time we were frank about this. Barnes' performance was appallingly bad, and the more you study the replay the worse it seems to become. To demonstrate the point, one French television channel, after analysing the video, calculated that the referee could have penalised the hosts 24 times in succession late in the second half.

Which brings us to referees' boss Paddy O'Brien now firmly ensconced in Kiwi rugby folklore as an IRB lapdog who told TV3's John Campbell that, apart from a couple of mistakes, Barnes had enjoyed a good game.

What a complete dickhead.

It's one thing asking us to accept that the All Blacks were beaten on the day by a desperate French outfit, it's another entirely to claim the blundering Barnes was competent, and New Zealanders simply had to "grow up" and accept his decision-making.

All this should suggest to rugby-loving fans is that O'Brien has crawled so far up the IRB's back passage that he can't detect a stinking, rotten performance, even when it's directly under his nose. Also that, if anyone needs to grow up and learn to think for themselves, it's O'Brien.

Broadly speaking, we New Zealanders know our rugby. We know that if a referee is halfway decent it's almost impossible for a team to dominate territory and possession for an entire half without winning a penalty. We understand what the advantage rule means. We know about the "gate" when players arrive at the breakdown, and the rule involving obstruction at the ruck.

Which is another way of saying that we know a crap refereeing effort when we see one.

The other thing we can sense from a million miles is a sycophantic arse-coverer like O'Brien, who should have ensured that a more experienced official was in charge of such an important fixture. His response when it all turned to custard to blame Kiwis for over-reacting rather than his organisation for getting things so wrong should win him an immediate place in the New Zealand Sports Hall of Loathing.

Yes, the English papers might crow about our insecurities and perceived rugby superiority complexes, and the Aussies will no doubt be chuckling about our failure to win what has become the Holy Grail of our sporting existence. But so what? They do that most of the time anyway.

It's not as if the English are much different. They agonise over their injustices so much they even give them titles like Diego Maradona's "Hand of God" goal at the 1986 World Cup, and David Beckham's "One Stupid Boy" routine in 1998. And that's not even mentioning the continual wailing over their cricketers, and the annual hopes for Tim Henman.

As for Australia, if anyone had been across the Tasman at the time they lost the 2005 Ashes, they would have seen what true mourning and despair looks like. There were calls to axe Ricky Ponting as captain, and one of the world's best batsmen Damien Martyn was sacrificed, seemingly to keep the lynch mobs at bay.

But coming back to Barnes, it's now increasingly apparent that the Final Whistle should probably start eating its words and offering abject apologies to referees such as Paul Honiss, Steve Walsh and Stu Dickinson all of whom seem relatively proficient in comparison.

On the other hand, if prizes were to be handed out for Rugby's Biggest Fraud of the Year, or for the Most Fatuous Comment made at the RWC, then you'd imagine O'Brien would win both categories at a canter.

When it came to the business of presuming that everyone was as dumb as himself, O'Brien went beyond the call of duty to demonstrate his prowess, not to mention his suitability for an organisation that specialises in organising cock-ups and fiascos.

Not that I'd hold my breath, but what this former copper needs to remember is that New Zealanders can accept their national team being beaten by a better side, or being unlucky on the field, or even losing at the hands of a deranged referee.

But what we can't accept is some nut bar trying to deny us the facts just so that he can ingratiate himself with his IRB paymasters.

With that in mind, maybe it's time O'Brien became a little more familiar with that old Mark Twain saying: "'Tis better to remain silent and have people think you're a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

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