All Blacks Game!

This past weekend was the 2nd test match of the Iveco Series, a rugby challenge between New Zealand, Ireland and England. We had watched the New Zealand All Blacks beat Ireland on TV at the Wellington game last week, so we were really excited to actually go to the New Zealand vs. England game in Auckland this weekend.

The All Blacks Rugby Team is New Zealand's pride and joy and from my understanding, gets about as much hype (and probably even more) than football in the US. So needless to say, we were all pretty excited about having the opportunity to see them play in person.

We took a bus to Eden Park, where the stadium was, and got to ride for free just by showing our rugby tickets. The bus was packed and there were people everywhere. The whole city was buzzing and it seemed like everyone was out for the game. I do have to admit though, that I was surprised how many England supporters there were at the game.

We made sure that we were at the game and in our seats in time for the preshow. We didn't want to miss the haka. The haka is a Maori war dance/chant thing that Maori people use to intimidate their opponents before battle. We have seen it performed in several of the maraes we have visited. At one marae we went to, they called some of the boys from Loyola up on stage to teach them part of the haka, which was quite amusing. Anyway, it is tradition that the All Blacks do the haka before every match and basically the other team just stands there and watches. So as much as I was looking forward to the game itself, I really wanted to see the haka as well.

I tried to get it on video. It's pretty far away, but once the cheering dies down, you can kind of hear the chant. (And watch their faces on the stadium screen!)

We really enjoyed watching the game (and even more so because the All-Blacks won 37 to 20)! Since rugby is such a big thing here, we really felt like we were getting a true New Zealand experience being at the game and cheering for the All-Blacks. There was one point where the whole stadium was doing the wave and apparently it was pretty cool. (Unfortunately, I missed it because I was buying fries.)

We wanted to show our support by wearing all black and also by decorating ourselves with face paint (some more than others). I stuck with simple
black and white stripes on my cheeks, but some people went for the whole face (like Cate and Brian).Ed went ALL out and painted his whole upper body black and then Steph drew a really good fern on his chest. People kept stopping Ed and asking to take a picture with him!

After the game let out, it was crazy trying to get back into the city. There were buses and trains, but there were just so many people. We wound up on a couple different buses, but we all did make it back. Since the bus dropped us off on Queen St., we decided to head to the Vulcan, where they have a cover band playing on Saturday nights. It turned out that the other group of Loyola kids showed up there as well. Plus, some Loyola people who had been studying abroad in Australia just happened to have a long layover in Auckland and were visiting some people, so they were there too!