Duck in Wellies: Rugby World Cup travels

Another long hiatus since my last post. The last month has been absolutely full of rugby. The pool stages of the Rugby World Cup have meant games almost every day, as well as pre- and post-game analysis and a myriad of other activity linked to the tournament.

It's also meant a couple of trips over the last two weekends to see England play in pool matches.

The first was to Dunedin, to see England play Romania. I travelled down there with Helen, Harry and Angela. Dunedin is towards the bottom of the South Island and it's the further south in the world I've been (45.9°S).

We arrived Saturday lunchtime and the match was on that evening. After a pretty big night out we had a gentle start on Sunday morning. We headed out of the city to visit Larnach Castle, the only 'castle' in New Zealand, built by a politician in the 19th century. Later in the afternoon, we took a tour round the Speight's Brewery, one of the major breweries in NZ. The tour guide was quite a character and strangely proud of the fact that the brewery had been bought up and was now part of a global conglomerate, it ended on a high note with a self-pouring opportunity to sample the whole range of brews.

We had taken Monday off work, giving us a nice relaxed and extended weekend. In the morning we took another tour, this time of the Cadbury's factory. Helen, Harry and I then had to hit the road as we hadn't flown directly to Dunedin, but instead to a town a few hours away called Timaru. On the way we stopped off to see the Moeraki Boulders, which are a surreal site. They are spherical boulders of different sizes dotted along the shore. I won't try and explain how they formed, wikipedia has an explanation.

After a short 4-day week I was off again, this time to Auckland. I'd visited Auckland before back in July with Tyra and we hadn't been that excited by the place. The atmosphere was much livelier this time round due to the World Cup. In the morning I met up with an educationalist and Aucklander who I'd been put in touch with, he kindly showed me round a few hidden gems including a great coffee shop and the art gallery.

Then in the afternoon I met up with Kris, a friend from the Department in England, who I was going to the game with. We were staying at a backpackers hostel in town and in the random way of hostels as we walked in we ran into a couple of Germans and an American who were going to the game and demanded we tell them the British national anthem so they could write it on their hands before the game.

This time I was flying back on Sunday afternoon. In the morning we did have time to walk down to the waterfront and visit the giant rugby ball. This is a travelling exhibit that has been round the world advertising NZ and the World Cup. Inside a show is projected onto the interior of the ball along with a live presenter, it was really pretty impressive.

Rugby

I've deliberately left any description of the rugby to the end so anyone who isn't interested can skip over it.

Dunedin has a new stadium build for the World Cup. It's got a permanent roof and is really impressive. The seats are banked steeply meaning you feel close to all the action. Because it's enclosed the atmosphere was great during the match.

The Romania game was an easy 67-3 win. In fact it's the only game in the pool stages where England actually looked in control rather than under threat. It was great seeing 10 tries scored. Although they still made too many errors there were a few nice touches to the English game.

The Scotland game in contrast was torture to watch. All England needed to guarantee qualification was to lose by less than 8 points. Seemed like an easy task against a Scottish side that looked dreadful in their first three matches. But oh no, we couldn't make it that easy. Scotland took an early lead and their defence held firm against anything we could throw at them. At every opportunity we gave Johnny the chance to kick for a penalty and his kicking was dire, missing even straightforward kicks. It wasn't until the last 5 minutes, with Toby Flood on, that Chris Ashton broke free and got a try to shift England into the lead, with the final score 16-12. An incredibly close game and hardly a good omen as we go into the knock-out stages.

This weekend is the quarter-finals. England is playing France on Saturday. The other three matches are Wales v Ireland, Australia v South Africa and All Blacks v Argentina. I'm staying in Wellington this weekend. Then next weekend I'm off to Auckland again to watch the semi-final between the winners of the third and fourth quarter-finals - I'm guessing this will be Aus and the All Blacks and it should be an awesome game.

Dunedin photos