So the All Blacks came back yesterday and New Zealand welcomed them with open arms. I was there for it all. From 5 in the morning at the airport to 2 in the afternoon in a city park. It was joyous, uplifting and thoroughly worth the effort. Christchurch today. Wellington tomorrow. Get amongst it - it's fun.

Paying tribute to success is something New Zealanders can be loathe to do. The All Blacks are teaching us to get beyond the “aww shucks” shrug and embrace satisfaction. The statement of the campaign. Job Well Done. I'm hearing it everywhere. Actually it's the sentence of the year, if not the age. If you've got a job to do then why not do it well. And then enjoy the success. Not because you're amazing and need praise but because the job needed doing. So you do it and you do it well Why not?

So “Job Well Done” and now people are talking knighthoods and some say do mere rugby players deserve such honours?  After all they were professionals doing their job. Others ask have they really performed a community service? Well ask the 25000 happy souls yesterday. A community seemed pretty well served to me.  I have no problem with knighthoods being bandied around for our rugby heroes.

Andrew Little and Annette King have confirmed that if Labour got control of the treasury benches then knighthoods are here to say, despite scrapping them in the Clark regime. And this while a Liberal PM in Australia gets rid of them.

Knighthoods are here to stay I reckon, and good job I say. Not because I'm some establishment lackey subservient to our masters in England. Not because I lack some imagination of a world we can call our own and an honour system we can call our own. But because I'm a simple pragmatic man in a small country in a big world.

Nations honour citizens. We all do. From the Legion d'Honneur in France to the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the States. But it is only the British system of knighthoods we have inherited that bestows a title of Sir or Dame. It is a simple calling card to everyone in the whole world that this is a significant person worthy of paying some attention to.

I'd go for a New Zealand honour system if it had a simple Sir or Dame in it's structure. But it can't. So we've inherited this system for free which acknowledges our best, who we choose and the world understands the language. So what's the problem. Arise Sir Steven, Sir Richard and Sir Daniel. 3 simple letters in front of their names that instantly tell the entire world that these are significant New Zealanders to be reckoned with.