Retirement – Old fires still burn

Imagine an All Black winger scoring a spectacular try then running up and down the sideline, waggling his ears, arms stretched out to embrace the stadium crowd, winding them up, reveling in the noise. Bring it on.

It would never happen. Not back when rugby was watched stoically. Not even now, in our more exuberant, face painted times.

As life returns to normal after the FIFA World Cup and the only fever threatening Kiwis is bird flu, the memories of those fervent final matches linger on. Have you ever seen fans behave like that around a New Zealand sports field?

Yes, the Warriors’ followers can get carried away; netball and basketball finals get heated, and Auckland FC is working hard to build a high temperature fan culture.

But the way that Kiwi sports followers behave across the codes is subdued alongside anything we saw at FIFA matches. Funereal by comparison.

So what does that say about us? Gordon McLauchlan answered that question with his book The Passionless People. He painted Kiwis as a miserable lot, emotionally repressed, better at fixing things than feeling anything. “If he feels a passion coming on, he goes and paints a roof, plants some potatoes, forms a committee, has a drink..”

But that was about us in the 1970’s and my memory of that time suggests McLauchlan was unfair then and certainly not accurate now. And as a hugely more multicultural and bicultural society now ( yes, you can be both at the same time), any generalization about our national character is a stab in the dark.

We’re not nearly as subdued as we used to be and big public events like music festivals, along with the new additions to our national calendar like Matariki, are lively, noisy affairs. Passionate even. McLauchlan would have to update his book.

Retirement for most of us is not the most passionate season of life. We make do with memories of parties and love affairs, concert highlights, adventures and achievements on fields of work or sport. Old fires still burn slow inside us and we enjoy their warmth with quiet gratitude.

Will Kiwi sports fans ever match the top fervour of their Argentinian, British and Spanish counterparts? Probably not. But that doesn’t make us less committed in our loyalties or less able to succeed.

Kiwi modesty and understatement are still national virtues and the actors and public figures who model those qualities, without making a lot of noise about it, win our enduring respect. (Politicians would too, though they’re harder to find.)

And if you need an example of that respect, consider Sam Neill’s life and the outpouring of affection that followed his death. In the midst of all the World Cup noise, we honour the very model of a man who expressed his passion quietly.