<i>Come in spinners</i>

Say what you like about New Zealand's top sporting stars, but - as the past week has again shown - you could never accuse them of being interesting.

At a time when you would think we could all look forward to a high standard of duplicity from our headline acts (honed, as they are, from years of media training), we're instead being asked to swallow some of the most inane gibberish ever to be passed off as official comment.

I mean, some of this stuff wasn't just an insult to the intelligence of the ordinary man or woman in the street, it was also an insult to the intelligence of pre-schoolers, the mentally infirm and some breeds of cats and dogs.

If it wasn't All Black Luke McAlister trying to convince us that he was transferring to Manchester for the weather, it was former Highlanders' coach Greg Cooper expressing delight at a demotion, or Graham Henry explaining away the Piri Weepu-Andy Ellis bombshell as a form issue.

And no sooner had we started choking on those smokescreens than along came New Zealand Cricket's re- appointed coach John Bracewell to tell us he welcomed being stripped of his executive selection powers; that he was happy to be relieved of the burden.

Oh yes, of course he was. The bloke who made sole control such an important plank in his initial job application four years ago has now had a dramatic change of heart and has become a keen student of consensus politics.

And never mind that Bracewell underwent this startling transformation about the same time a NZC review recommended his powers be curtailed; oh no - that was just a coincidence.

But it's not so much the denial or the eternal search for a positive that should be annoying most New Zealand sport fans, as the hopeless lack of imagination on display when it comes to the business of fabricating excuses.

We deserve better and we should demand it.

Bracewell, at least, has previously shown strength in this area, dreaming up conspiracies such as Channel Nine Hawk-Eye distortion and speed-ball radar bias to explain the challenges facing his side in Australia.

He's also had a crack at the NatWest Trophy organisers over gerrymandering the draw, and at Gabba curator Kevin Mitchell twice - firstly for allegedly watering the block during the 2004 test match, and again after accusing him of swapping the pitch on the eve of a Chappell-Hadlee contest.

And former All Blacks coach Laurie Mains went beyond the call of duty to blame a waitress named "Suzie" for the bout of food-poisoning before his side's unsuccessful Rugby World Cup final in 1995, and once blacklisted an Otago Daily Times journalist for disclosing that halfback Dean Kenny had a long kicking game.

But you've got to say that, on the whole, we New Zealanders are invariably short-changed by some woefully ill-prepared pronouncements from our sporting elite, many of whom sound about as convincing as David Benson-Pope when asked for a straight answer.

You would think that, if Atlanta Olympics drugs cheat Dennis Mitchell could go the extra distance and blame his high testosterone levels on five beers and four bouts of sex the previous night with his wife, our folk could show a similar amount of leg- work while concocting their own tall stories.

England cricket coach Ted Dexter once went as far as blaming his team's poor performance on the alignment of the planets, Shane Warne blamed his mother for him taking a steroid- masking diuretic, and Ben Johnson's initial excuse for having muscles bigger than King Kong was that someone had spiked his sarsaparilla.

Then there was Olympic gold medallist cyclist Tyler Hamilton, who - after testing positive for a blood transfusion in 2004 - blamed the discovery of foreign blood in his body on a twin who died in utero.

Even the Sri Lankan cricketers seem to appreciate the need to put some creativity into their public comments, as demonstrated in 2001 when skipper Sanath Jayasuriya pointed the finger at his side's less- than-macho uniforms after a loss to Pakistan.

"We had to add extensions to the trousers," said Jayasuriya. "And the shirts looked more like tight-fitting women's blouses."

Former New Zealand cricket coach David Trist once blamed "over- arousal" for his side's defeat against Australia, a description that had Steve Waugh's men looking anxiously over their shoulders for the remainder of the tour, and NBA star Charles Barkley claimed he'd been misquoted (in a comment about team-mate Armon Gilliam) in his own autobiography.

Which all goes to show that, if our top sporting identities were to start thinking about injecting a little more effort into their press statements, and showing a keener appreciation for the absurd or the ludicrous, then they might at least gain a measure of respect for being entertaining.

As it is, however, we're expected to nod our heads sagely at the nonsense statements that are peddled out on a daily basis and make out as if that we believe every word they utter; that we've really got no idea they're talking complete twaddle.

Even when they have the perfect platform to launch something a bit different, they usually retreat, as we saw during the week when Weepu refused to talk to the press following his axing from the All Black squad, apparently because he couldn't trust himself to offer a restrained response.

How much more fun it would have been if he'd taken a leaf out of the book of Zambian tennis player Lighton Ndefwayl, who - after losing a match to rival Musumba Bwayla in 1992 - offered this considered assessment of his opponent's game.

"Musumba Bwayla is a stupid man and a hopeless player. He has a huge nose and is cross-eyed. Girls hate him. He beat me because my jockstrap was too tight and because when he serves he farts, and that made me lose my concentration, for which I am famous throughout Zambia."

That's the spirit, I reckon. If you're going to say something, at least make it memorable.