It gives nothing, Campbell must know now, other than an extra cause for already committed opponents.What works in the corridors of Westminster and some corners of Fleet Street, the All Blacks have declared with an intensity of shocking but cleansing force, is doomed to failure in the truth test of sport. Here there is simply too much respect for the idea of sport and its deepest values.First in Christchurch, then here this last weekend, Campbell's professional conviction that in sport you can twist something as basic as crushing defeat into the status of victimhood - and that anything other than a brief blurring of reality can result - has been shattered. There would be no public appetite for their blaring self-interest. There is a degree of competitive respect and analysis which is stunning Pizzagate couldn't happen here Nor the Ashley Cole affair.
Nor the Mourinho style of shaping events - and the career of a leading referee.If Sir Alex Ferguson and Ars? Wenger conducted their arguments here in the way that they do in England, they would have to do so in a back room. But it is one which is conducted in terms that are a planet away from the broiling controversies of, say, the Premiership. Here, over the last week or so, truth has been as rampant as the All Black heroes, Tana Umaga, Daniel Carter and Richie McCaw. Truth has mauled and rucked and run into the ground the idea that sport can be manipulated like a political campaign, that somehow the spin doctoring skills of an Alastair Campbell had any place in the Lions tradition that down the years has been about so much of the best of our sporting life.In New Zealand, the sporting life does not lack a serious debate. One was that if sport is indeed the playpen of life, it is one where truth has a way of wriggling - or in this case roaring - into the open.
It was probably no more than a pretty idea that its freshening effect might reach all the way home but, if that was too much to hope, there were at least one or two certainties to pack away in the baggage. Speculation that London has done a deal with Madrid to transfer votes if either city find itself going head-to-head with Paris was dismissed by Craig Reedie, head of the British Olympic Association.. A high wind was blowing down Cook Strait when the Lions left town. He is believed to have held talks with influential "kingmakers" from South America where London hopes to pick up votes in the likely event that the ballot goes beyond the first round. Lobbying is expected to become frenzied today but if the pattern of this week continues, bid cities will be clutching promises without any clear idea of a winner unlike the last IOC vote in Moscow where it became clear at an early stage that Beijing would triumph. Mr Blair's Singapore diary also included a visit to a local school and his schedule, according to officials, was as busy as any two-day period of his premiership.