The Last Word: National pride

Picture two rugby players dreaming of playing for Ireland.

One is named Liam Patrick Fitzgerald, son of Seamus and Siobhan, from County Kildare.

Young Liam is a red-haired scamp (he will occasionally let slip a ''feck'' when his beloved Leinster loses) with posters of Brian O'Driscoll on his wall, an iPod crammed with the Pogues and the Chieftains, and a taste for soda bread and Guinness.

He grows into a strapping man, and his ma and pa are in the stands the day he makes his Six Nations debut for Ireland.

The other young rugby player is called Bundee Aki.

He is a New Zealander, born in Auckland to Samoan parents.

He has heard of Brian O'Driscoll - but that is about the extent of his Irishness. Yet he plans to play international rugby for Ireland.

... becomes a joke
Only one of these young rugby players is real. And it's not the one you might think.

When Chiefs midfielder Aki this week openly declared his desire to play for Ireland, despite having LITERALLY no connection to the country, it revived the issue of national allegiance in rugby.

Bear in mind international rugby - like all international sport, really - exists only to allow fans to beat their chests and declare how proud they are to be (insert nationality here). It is not some play-thing for the professional athlete to use for career advancement.

Yet this is what Aki told Fairfax this week:''I put a lot of thought into it, looking at my options in terms of international rugby.''

Always good to think. But I find it a little crass that a rugby player can be so calculating when it comes to choosing an international pathway based on pure cash.

Then there was this:''If I play three years over there and it doesn't go well, I can always go back to Samoa.''

Ah, right. So if your passion for wearing the green jersey diminishes (read: if you don't get picked/paid by Ireland), you will lower yourself to playing for one of the islands.

I thought the dark days of Shane Howarth (played for Wales despite not being eligible), Irene van Dyk (played for South Africa, six months later was a Silver Fern), Nathan Fien (Grannygate) and the like were over.

There will always be some blurring of the lines, but to hear a New Zealander talk of playing for a completely foreign country is quite jarring.

One team, one nation
The Last Word has had enough of sports teams trying to rally their fan base using the ''nation'' hashtag on social media.

Warriors Nation, Blues Nation, Mystics Nation.

Usurpers, the lot of them!For the record, the ''Nation'' concept in sport was developed by, and belongs to, only one team: my beloved Boston Red Sox.

Wikipedia - which is NEVER wrong - reports the phrase ''Red Sox Nation'' was first used in a Boston Globe article in 1986.

Mind you, I did enjoy it a couple of years ago when some Southland rugby fans jumped aboard.

''Stag Nation'' was the call. Priceless.

The line on Leo
Leo Bertos. Discuss.

The Wellington Phoenix has let Bertos go after 127 games in the black and gold strip, and it is unlikely he will play for the All Whites again.

Where do we rank him?Bertos was certainly talented, and quick, and versatile - and plenty of coaches showed plenty of faith in him over the years.

But for me, he never really lived up to his potential. And it got harder and harder to watch his ineffective delivery from crosses and dead-ball situations.

Crikey, it's a croc
Turkish football club Bursaspor has begun construction on a new 45,000-seater stadium that has ''a real architectural bite'', the Stadia Directory website reports.

Bursaspor - the ''Green Crocodiles'' - will play in a stadium with a roof that looks like a giant green crocodile wrapped around the ground.

The website said it would provide ''a rather different way to intimidate opponents''.

The game has spoken
The New York Times this week asked the geniuses who develop the Football Manager game to run a simulation of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Results were:Quarterfinals: Brazil beat England 2-1, Spain beat Uruguay 4-2, Belgium beat Switzerland 1-0, Argentina beat Germany 3-0.

Semifinals: Brazil beat Argentina 2-0, Spain beat Belgium 2-0.

Final: Brazil beat Spain 1-0.

The only result I don't like is Argentina v Germany. I think the Germans may make the final.

Show me the money
Remember the good old days, when Manchester City was a relegation battler crammed with immortal footballers like Paul Dickov, Shaun Goater and Kevin Horlock?They were fun. But a study released this week by Sporting Intelligence, in association with ESPN The Magazine, confirms the old City has very much been banished.

The oil-rich blue side of Manchester now officially pays the highest wages in world sport.

Its players earn an average annual salary of 5.3 million. You heard.

Left in City's dust are two baseball superpowers, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Spanish football giants Barcelona and Real Madrid.

So, the message to the Manchester City support base (which in New Zealand, as far as I can tell, consists of a lanky teacher in Central Otago) is clear: you bought the title. But you won't buy another one this season.

Good news?
Exciting times for hockey. Sport New Zealand is investing $2.5 million - of our money - into redeveloping North Harbour's Rosedale Park into a national hockey centre.

It will become home to hockey's high performance programme, and ''a venue that will allow New Zealand to attract more world-class hockey events''.

Great news. For Auckland.

For the South Island, which hasn't seen a Black Sticks test in five years?Yeah, not so much.

Another IPL
Cricket, hockey, tennis - now football is to get the Indian treatment.

It was announced this week that eight franchises will make up the inaugural Indian Super League, to be played between September and November.

No word yet on what sort of innovations the ISL will offer. Cheerleaders, no doubt. Possibly a net that glows when a goal is scored.

As with Indian Premier League cricket, the football league is being backed by some heavy hitters from Bollywood and Cricketwood.

Indian actors John Abraham (Guwahati), Salman Khan (Pune) and Ranbir Kapoor (Mumbai) are major investors, and a couple of decent cricketers - Sachin Tendulkar (Kochi) and Sourav Ganguly (Kolkata) - are also involved.

Each of the winning bidders paid about $US25 million for a 10-year franchise.

Birthday of the week
Dickie Bird is 81 today.

That's still the greatest name in cricket, right?I bet almost none of you can instantly think of the great English cricket umpire's real name.

Harold Dennis Bird.

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