Rugby World Cup Ended

We thoroughly enjoyed watching the Rugby World Cup matches, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final games with friends. The snacks were pretty tasty too.

It's pretty cool that the New Zealand All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup when it was hosted on home territory. They beat France by one point. That game certainly had us on the edge of our seats. The last time NZ held the Rugby World Cup had been in 1987.

On Wednesday, I took Dennis and a friend to the Victory Parade here in Wellington. The turnout was amazing--100,000 people. (That's about 1/3 of the people in Wellington.) It was challenging finding a place to park the car. We ended up not too far from Parliament. I got to see the backs of the All Blacks from a distance when they were receiving their handshakes from the Prime Minister and others. We were treated to an impromptu haka on Parliament's steps. The All Blacks perform a haka before their games, basically saying to the other team that they're going to "kill" them.

Here's a link to last Wednesday's bonus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGVp52af36U&feature=related

YouTube has other videos of the parade as well.

The next Rugby World Cup will be in England in 2015. We are now rugby fans so we'll be watching plenty of games between now and 2015.

Today we spent a half hour tossing a rugby ball with Dennis. The rugby leagues will probably have an increase in enrollment due to kids' new interest in the game.

We've Got Ours

I bought tickets today for the Rugby World Cup. We will be going to the Australia vs. USA game on Friday, September 23. It will be here in Wellington.

We have received fliers in the mail and seen signs at bus stops reminding us to buy our tickets. So now we've got ours.

All Blacks!

We went to the All Blacks game at a friend's house yesterday.  Andrew (of halloween and Stanley Cup fame) has a standing invite for us to see major video events.  

We arrived around 7:00pm and managed to get the food and drinks out in time for the 7:35 kick off.  The only thing good about the game was the All Blacks winning 27-6.  They played very poorly (all the stats were for the Italians) and after the game I found that the Italians are a tier two team which should have been soundly beat by at least 50 points!

That led to an interesting education about the All Blacks and Rugby in general.  There are only about a half dozen teams which are reasonable contenders for the Rugby world cup.  With three that are at the top - All Blacks, Australia, and South Africa.  The rest of them well they are like Italy and best described as practice fodder.

Westpac Stadium for

To see France and the All Blacks play! It was an awesome game in beautiful football weather. Cold southerly was in rare form. The field was wet, the football was rough, the half time was entertaining, and the All Blacks won!

I have never seen so many Wellintonians in one place!

The best part of the evening was that I went with a good friend Jeremy. He texted me in the morning asking me if I was interested. For the sake of the friendship I said yes!

Jeremy is typical of my experience of kiwi's. Open fun and generous.

Thanks for a great evening Jeremy!

Rugby!

We went to our first Rugby test Saturday the Wellington Lions hosted the Bay of Plenty Steamers. There were over 10 tries at this test quite the game! With my US football background (yes dad I did learn something all those years) I understood the basic Rugby rules. However there was plenty to keep me guessing.

The vocabulary is quite similar to US Football with only a few noticeable differences. For instance 'try' referees both to the line between the field and the equivalent of an end zone; and 'try' referees to scoring a goal, it took about 20 minutes for me to figure that out. Most everyone who knows Football can guess 'scrum' if you can't guess I will keep you wondering. A 'test' referees to a match. There are 'mauls' and 'rucks' as well, but more on those later.

The basic setup of the game is the same. A bunch of full grown men trying to get a odd shaped piece of pig skin over an arbitrary line on either side of a field. A 'try' is worth five points with a two point conversion. A notable rule addition on the conversion attempt is that the ball is placed on the 20 yard line at the same place (left or right) that it was downed for the try. There are field goals in Rugby and they are three points as well. Two notable changes in Rugby. It does not bother with with pads or helmets, and the play doesn't stop at each tackle instead that is where the fun starts, a ruck.

Once the player is down either team attempts to get the ball by piling on and "rucking" at the ball with their feet until one side has control. The rules around the rucks are strange, the hardest for me to grasp was that you can only enter the ruck from your side of the field. Once a team is able to control the ball the player who has done so becomes the 'quarterback' and the process starts all over.

The play is basically a bunch of lateral passes until you try or are tackled (Remember to try is to score.) The lateral passes are great fun to watch. They throw the ball (underhand only) half way across the field. If the offensive team is not able make sufficient progress they will punt, remember this happens without a down. Someone just drop kicks the ball while running. Once a punt occurs the ball is fair game for anyone to grab. I was shocked the first time someone punted the ball about 15 yards over a defenders head sprinted caught the ball on the bounce and ran in for a try, it was a great play!

The crowd at the stadium was just as crazy a crowd at any major US sporting event, jerseys, painted faces, big signs etc. They screamed and hollered with the best of them. As most fans they are quite passionate and talkative about their team. I asked two of them a bunch of questions which made the whole experience much more interesting for us. Of course the kids wanted hot dogs, french fries, and cokes. We obliged for it is all part of the fun.

Here is a close-up of Dennis and his soccer buddy Tivan. They had a great time!