I was amused by the shock/horror expressed in this morning’s papers about the disgraceful behaviour of seemingly large groups of Eden Park spectators at the Four Nations games last night. ‘Amused’ because it’s really hard to imagine a coming together of factors more calculated to result in the sort of mindless bedlam we’ve come to associate with English soccer hooligans – booze, jingoism, testosterone, limited articulateness and low IQ.

Since wild horses wouldn’t drag me to a rugby match of either code, my experience of this sort of simian behaviour – a grave insult, I’m afraid, to the apes – has been limited to observing these morons on holiday in Greece where the lager louts and skinheads drunkenly rampage, effing and blinding, through the streets, repair to a local taverna to swill more beer, down huge quantities of fish, chips, baked beans and/or ‘a curry’ and shout abuse at the huge TV screens showing non-stop soccer matches, then finish off the night by throwing up in the street, verbally and/or physically assaulting passing women and, in the short time we had the misfortune to be trapped in Kavos, managing to knife at least one of their number to death each night – perhaps the only saving grace of our stay. Meanwhile, their Page 3 girlfriends offend the locals by lying topless on the beaches, tracking the sun with their nipples.

And yes, things aren’t as bad as that here. We don’t have the sex element for a start and violence by rugby players and spectators is generally limited to verbal abuse, fisticuffs and throwing things. 

But the ingredients are nonetheless all there for the sort of debacle that occurred last night: arrive at ground already pissed and hyper with testosterone-fed  aggression coursing through body; buy four more Steinlagers – I’d be legless on that alone – before entering ground to watch bruising body contact match against traditional foe;  express jingoistic pride in country by booing foe’s national anthem; express frustration when opposition plays well or own side plays badly by shouting abuse and hurling bottles and other missiles at players and other spectators – all  a by-product of intoxication, low IQ and limited articulateness, commonly evident in domestic violence.  

And it’s rugby, isn’t it? Downmarket, lower-class rugby perhaps, but rugby nonetheless. And I’ll get in first by agreeing that what I’m about to say is a fine example of intellectual snobbery and an appalling generalisation, and that you could probably reel back to me the names of a whole lot of top rugby players from both codes who are highly successful businessmen, or thriving professionals, or celebrated academics or brilliant public speakers. But for the most part the average senior or professional rugby player isn’t  the sharpest  knife in the drawer and has trouble putting two words together. Those, after all, are not the qualities the game primarily requires.  What the game requires is strength, fitness, speed, competitiveness, physical aggression and what I can only call ‘body intelligence’, that natural, often elegant co-ordination that distinguishes top sportsmen from no-hopers like me.  

And since so many New Zealanders, while lacking most of those qualities themselves, live their lives vicariously through their sporting heroes, it’s not entirely surprising that they should react equally badly to success or failure on the paddock by celebrating or drowning their sorrows in piss. The personality of the fans reflects the personality of the sport. I’m not strong on sporting history, but I’m going to lay odds that there haven’t been many scenes at Wimbledon or St Andrews or Lords or any athletics venue you can think of,  like those at Eden Park last night.

As I say: body contact sport, booze, jingoism, testosterone, limited articulateness and low IQ  - what the bloody hell did you expect?

The success of the All Whites in making it to next year’s soccer world cup finals reminded me of my love for ‘the beautiful game’ and my absolute failure to understand the appeal of rugby. 

This is probably an indication that you can live in a country for almost half a century, become a citizen of that country, regard it as home, brook no criticism of it from strangers and yet never fully understand or share the mindset of those who were born and bred there. If I were a Kiwi, I might feel quite differently about the national game.

Then again, I might not. My dislike for rugby can not  be fully explained by my being a stranger in a strange land. I’m quite capable of nationalistic pride when it comes to cricket or netball. And, like most born-again Kiwis, there’s nothing that pleases me more than when the Black Caps or the Silver Ferns humble the Aussies.

No, my distaste for the oval ball has  more to do with the game itself. It is terminally boring to watch.

The core  principle of rugby is that 15 guys try to carry/kick a ball to the far end of a paddock and deposit the ball on the ground across the goal line. 15 other guys are trying to stop them and to achieve the same result at the other end of the paddock.

Up to this point, rugby has something in common with soccer. Both games involve getting a ball from one end of a paddock to the other. But there the similarity ends.

The main difference is that In rugby you’re allowed to pull the player in possession of  the ball down onto the ground. Indeed, it’s positively encouraged. Then a whole lot of other players, from both sides, fall down in a heap on top of the first player, pushing and shoving, until either the ball emerges or the whole human tangle disintegrates. In any rugby match this will happen dozens of times, with the result that the game is slowed to a crawl.

But this was still too fast and exciting for the inventors of rugby, who decided that the disorganised heap situation or ‘scrimmage’ should be followed by an organised heap situation, which they called a scrum.

One might have thought that the combination of dozens of scrimmages and scrums would have slowed the progress of the ball from one end of the paddock to the other enough to satisfy even the most excitement-averse spectator.

But the game’s inventors had one more card to play. Despite the fact that the stated aim of the game was to advance the ball forwards to the far end of the paddock, the rules of the game would say that you could only throw the ball backwards.

In sum, the average rugby game consists of players running a few yards, falling in a heap, getting up again, running a few more yards, falling in another heap, getting up again… well, you get the picture.

There are occasional moments of brightness when the ball is passed from hand to hand in an elegant moving line or when  a player manages to send if flying over the crossbar to convert a try. But mostly rugby is a mind-numbingly tedious stop-start affair.

Soccer, on the other hand, is fast-moving, aesthetically pleasing and requires delicacy, precision and a degree of physical co-ordination that would be largely wasted on the rugby pitch where brute force and speed are the main, if not the only qualifications for success.

And let’s face it – soccer players are much, much prettier.