There's plenty of us who aren't the biggest fans of New Zealand rugby. There's an arrogance there that we find tough to take. There's the constant favourable refereeing. There's the all-out moaning on the rare occasion when something does go against them. But above all, there's their complete and utter domination. They are the big bad wolf of the world game, the team everyone wants to beat and the team nobody can.
They are the best and because of that, we don't like them. That's sport, and the way it should be.
But problem with the Lions is that it puts us in the same bracket as some of those we also may not have too much love for. People like Sunday Times' rugby correspondent Stephen Jones, for example.
Jones is never the most popular man among Irish rugby fans. Having a crack at Peter O'Mahony this morning is par for the course. That's what he's there for, to be controversial and to annoy us. But when he manages to get steam from our ears on behalf of a completely different country, you know he's gone a step further than normal.
Jones, who has plenty of history in his ongoing war with New Zealand rugby, has an incredible go at the country in general in this morning's paper and does so in a horrible, superior, colonialist way that will grate not only with Kiwis, but with Irish people who are all too aware of this kind of superior British attitude.
And above all, there is New Zealand’s motivation. It is more than sporting, way more. It’s not so much Ireland that bugs them, even though the Irish crushed them in Chicago. It’s the old country, you see — Britain and especially England. It’s their problem, their dark secret. They hate the idea of the mother country ever getting one over on them on the field, the rugby field, that is. They are mediocre at most other major sports.
And yet, is there something more going on? Is it all a veil to hide an abiding love? The Kiwis are madder on the royal family than the maddest royalist at home. They are obsessed with England, the English, and what appears in London papers. They recently voted to retain the Union flag on their own flag, bless them. They will be voting to bring the empire back next.
Jones, a old fashioned rugby writer, a man of the Empire, is very comfortable about the fact that "Britain", which has a combined population of 65 million, might not be able to match New Zealand on the rugby field, but are better than them in everything else.
The problem his point doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.
They are mediocre at most other major sports
Firstly, New Zealand are a country of four and a half million. Britain has nearly 15 times more people.
New Zealand are the undoubted leaders in one major sport. Britain is not.
In two others in which they compete, rugby league and cricket, they are about on a par. England are ranked 4th in the world in Test cricket, one place ahead of New Zealand. In Rugby League, New Zealand have been ranked 2nd for years, always ahead of England.
In the last Olympics, New Zealand won 18 medals. That's a medal per 255,316 persons in the country. Britain's 67 medals equal one per 972,212 of their population.
In basketball, New Zealand rank ahead of Britain in the FIBA World Basketball Rankings.
So other than football, which it would appear is all Jones is actually talking about when he says "most other major sports" (We hope that makes him feel dirty), New Zealand more than hold their own in world sport.
But that's colonialists for you. Why let facts or evidence get in the way of a chance to be superior?
