Cars with an infeasible number of flags on them. People having fun. Irish blokes at the petrol station. Murray McCully acting like a tool. Campbell Live using their caravan of whinge for something positive. After all the carping and moaning (which some people should get fuck over), we are finally well into this world cup, team.
We’re constantly told we’re a rugby mad nation, and now our real appetite for the egg shaped ball code is being put to the test, with rugby and rugby related material dominating all the channels, all the time. And it’s great. On Sunday of the opening world cup weekend, the conversation at our place went like this:
“OK, so we’ve just watched Australia v Italy, Wales v South Africa is later on… do you want to watch Ireland v USA?”
“Um, yeah?”
“The real question is, do you want to watch six hours of rugby in a row?”
The Tron
I used two of the tickets in my ‘Hamilton’ ‘pack’ to attend live matches. The first was the third of the All Blacks not horrendously injured taking on Japan on Friday night – we had seats in the temporary stands and had an excellent view. The All Blacks played like they wanted to be in the team for next week, mostly. Poor old Colin Slade played like a guy in a Stephen Donald tribute band playing at the Donald’s home.It’s the old cliche, but Hamilton was going off – we had a big night out in a pub right in the middle of town, next to the fan zone, we had no trouble getting to. It was brilliant. Equally brilliant was Wales v Samoa. Where I was expecting our Taro-reared south pacific brothers to put Wales to the sword, smashed-him-bro-wise, Wales tackled the crap out of them – and won it. It was a tense match, with a great ‘atmosphere’, in no small part to two fantastic sets of supporters from opposite sides of the world bought together by the love of the rucking code and the big fucking tournament. Awwwww. My only quibbles were the stadium DJ, of course, who squashed any chance of a sing-song from supporters renowned for their singing ability. I heard the same happened at Eden Park with the Irish. The other quibble is the twats starting Mexican waves about ten minutes into the matches – get over it people, I hear Mexican waves are totally uncool even in Mexico these days.
Public enemy
When you see a battered station wagon with ‘Quade Sucks’ written in electrician’s tape on the door, you know NZ has a new public enemy #1. But I put this to the nation – is Quade Cooper the best we can do? A little chicken-legged bleeder from Tokoroa? For throwing a few handbags at Richie McCaw? Really? It all seems a bit forced to me. Surprisingly, Richie seemed up for it in Brisbane. He got involved where a Colin Meads, say, would have ignored Cooper on the field, before marching into the Aussie changing shed post-game, throwing Quade over his shoulder and taking him back to Te Kuiti to shear him in an unnecessarily rough fashion. Bitch slapping, or indeed shearing, should take place behind closed doors, team.
Other stuff
The star of the cup so far has been the madder-than-a-mad-woman’s-shit Queenstown bouncer, on youtube and outside the Queenstown court. Incredible. More unhinged than a DIY gate I’d have built. Fantastic performance, get him alongside Dobbo or Saviloy.
The rugby world cup Flickr stream is worth a look
If you want to talk opening night ‘debacles’ – Fundy Post is all you need
Haydn is giving away Adidas jerseys with rugby world cup stories – most of mine, unfortunately involve getting shitfaced
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