All Black hooker Anton Oliver ensured a fiery reception for his teammates at Twickenham on Sunday when he labelled English rugby crowds arrogant, ignorant and living in the colonial past.
”Twickenham is one of the ultimate arenas,” the veteran hooker said in comments reported by the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.
”It’s the arrogance and hubris of the English crowd. After we beat them there last year, when you read the papers the next day you’d have thought that they had won the game.”
Oliver traced the attitude back to England’s imperial past: ”It’s that kind of blind ignorance and arrogance that really gets up the noses of Australians and New Zealanders.
”It’s not the England players at all, who actually get quite embarrassed about it. It’s the wider rugby folk and harks back to the old antipodean attitude with the colonials.
”We are all basically a large penal colony down here and we’ve got no right to assert any dominance in world rugby.”
But Oliver insisted that the match on Sunday would be keenly contested although he added that New Zealand might face more problems from the French, whom they play twice in the two weekends after the England game.
”It will still be a great Test on Sunday. Even if England had lost 10 Tests in a row they would still think they were going to win,” he said.
”But it is France who seem to reserve their best performances for the All Blacks. They can play the most dour rugby against other foes, especially the English, but when they face us it is as if a switch has changed over in their sporting psychology and they want to throw the ball around and have a go.” – Sapa-AFP