All Blacks vs Springbocks

Saturday 10th July saw the All Blacks take on South Africa in the opening game of the Tri-nations. We were seated just behind the posts at one end of the stadium - in amongst some SA supporters. There was one lady who on the train-ride there was joking with the Kiwi fans that she had plenty of tissues for them to share round on the ride home and the New Zealanders responded by trying to trick them into getting off the train at the station a couple of stops before the stadium.

After getting a beer and a burger as our pre-game supper, we went and found our seats and watched the teams warming up and, when they eventually took to the pitch properly, the ABs came out to thunderous applause, cheering and some amazing pyrotechnics. The Boks came out to booing and jeering!!! The anthems were short and sweet, followed by the Haka. It was quite impressive, though, just as I had predicted, there were guys with microphones not far away from the boys who transmitted the Haka round the stadium via the sound system - making it sound louder and more impressive than it would have been otherwise. It was not the usual Haka, but another one that I'd not seen before, which was both good and bad.

The game got off to a crunching start, with big hits going in from both teams, and sly punches a-plenty. This climaxed with one of the SA boys tackling the AB scrum-half, and as he took him to the ground, following up with a head-butt the the back of the AB's head!!! A few minutes later the same Springbok was sent to the sin bin. As the game went on, as did the big hits, but it was the ABs who came out on top, eventually winning approx 32 - 12.

On Sunday we hopped on a bus to the local Takapuna Sunday Market. We got onto a bus which took us on rather a convoluted route and eventually arrived at the market with only 20 minutes until closing time! We had a nice walk around the town and on the beach before heading home for preparing ourselves for the week ahead.