Back In Black

Gary Lineker once famously said, about football, that "Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and, at the end, the Germans always win"

To some extent, the same blunt summation can be reapplied to "rugby union", "thirty men", "80 minutes", and "New Zealand".  As I have mentioned previously in this blog, that sport is synonymous with that nation, so it may be somewhat surprising to some people, to learn that, until earlier today, the All Blacks had never won a world title outside of their homeland.

I wasn't lucky enough to obtain tickets for the final in the ballot, but I was in attendance at the semi final game with South Africa.  When purchasing tickets for a game in the knockout stages some months in advance, it is never possible to fully predict the identities of the combatants - Team A, Team B or Team C could play Team X, Team Y or Team Z.  Although I had traced the draw through to the final four, and had a fair idea that NZ vs SA was a very plausible combination of teams.  The Springboks' surprise defeat by Japan in the group stages threatened to throw a spanner in the works, but, in the end, those two great nations got to meet once more, in the sport's biggest stage.  And I got to see the contest in person.

At Twickenham, despite the supposedly random nature of the ticket allocation process, there were some very visible pockets of both NZ fans and SA fans.  My seat was in the middle of a group of NZ fans, which pleased me somewhat, because I do have quite a soft spot for the All Blacks team.  The family sat immediately beside me told me that they had flown from NZ to the UK 10 weeks previously, and had stayed in this country for all that time, to cheer their nation on to glory - quite some commitment of time and effort!!

I'm not old enough to remember any Springboks games from before the years of isolation, but I have learned about the amateur pre-RWC rivalry between these two nations.  I know about 1976.  The tour.  The controversy.  The resultant Olympic boycott of 25 African nations.  Also, as covered earlier, I remember 1995.  The story of Madiba.  And Francois.  And Jonah.  And...... Suzie...

The 2015 semi final did not disappoint.  This was not a game of flair and exhuberance, with dashing tries scored by comic book heroes in neatly starched collars.  Rather, this was a war of attrition, fought in Twickenham's muddy trenches.  With the sound of each brutal tackle that I heard with alarming quality through my £10 referee earpiece, I became more and more cognizant of how much this rivalry truly meant to the current generation of men in Black and Green shirts, as they battled, mano a mano, for each and every ball.

So, for my final picture, in this, my last blog entry, I give you a shot I took at the final whistle, as the All Blacks secured passage to today's final.

To summarise and conclude this blog, the Rugby World Cup Experience has provided me with a great insight into this fine sport.  The Rugby Southern Hemisphere Experience has far surpassed anything from north of the equator.  We saw a strong Argentina team comfortably beat the supposed leading light of the Six Nations, to reach a second Semi Final in three tournaments. We saw South Africa recover from an initial calamity, to achieve a respectable final position.  We saw Australia battle with 13 men to hold off Wales, and run rampant with 15 men, to rip the wheels of England's sweet chariot.  But, in the final reckoning, the New Zealanders deservedly won a first overseas World Cup.


I would love to go to the Olympics in Japan in 2020.  But maybe, just maybe, I could be tempted as well by Japan's big 2019 sports offering, which will be the next edition, of the Rugby World Cup.

Ka Mate, Ka Mate, Ka Ora, Ka Ora

An Englishman walks into a bar...  He doesn't find any Scotsmen, Welshmen or Irishmen to partake in the joke with him, because they are all still at the Rugby World Cup, whilst the dear Englishman is not...

This has pretty-much been the state of play, since the Australia debacle 2 weeks ago.  It has been 16 years since the World Cup final was played on our final island.  24 years since the final was played at the home of rugby.  As anti-climaxes go, England's failure to negotiate the group stage is quite notable.

Although, in very recent times, English sporting failure has been endemic.  In the past 16 months, Men's World Cups have been played at Football, Cricket and Rugby.  In all 3 cases, the England team's burning dreams of ambition were extinguished by the end of the preliminary group games.  Compare and contrast with Team GB's 29 gold medals in the London 2012 Olympics (I may have mentioned that I wrote a blog at the time of that event, as well)... ;) and with the recent successes of our Women's teams, on the football and rugby pitches.

As for an inquest into what went wrong, I couldn't help noticing a current England player (and rather an arrogant chap at that, I might add) strutting around the Twickenham pitch prior to one of the group games with his dearly beloved selfie stick.  In this age of enhanced social media, it is all too easy to dedicate much energy to appeasing one's Twitter and Facebook devotees, at the expense of a tough training session, or of some quality team-bonding.

Anyway, onto the topic of the latest two games which I attended, where the pre-match rituals thankfully did not involve selfie sticks, but rather involved the traditional war dances of Oceania.  I'm sure we are all familiar with New Zealand's Haka (one of which, Ka Mate, has always been my sentimental favourite), but the below video, which I shot in Newcastle, represented an extra-special rendition of the Haka, intertwined with Tonga's own Kailao dance.  The obvious passion, togetherness and brotherhood of the two competing groups of men really is a sight to behold.

I also had this great view of the Samoan Siva Tau at last weekend's other game.

Amazingly, I only have one more live game to attend, which will be the first Semi Final.  This was originally billed as "Winner of Quarter Final 1" versus "Winner of Quarter Final 2", which has now manifested into New Zealand versus South Africa.  As I said in a previous blog entry, the previous World Cup which I remember with the most nostalgia was from 1995, and this game will be a rematch of that edition's epic final (Invictus and all that...)  Speaking of which, at the Samoa game, I was sat this close to World Cup legends Francois Pienaar & Jason Robinson (plus Ian McGeechan & Mark Durden-Smith)