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Published: October 12th 2011
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NZ v Japan
Gareth supporting Japan, his minnow team. Day 7 (Friday 16/09) Today we made our way back to Auckland for the weekend's action of Rugby and partying. We said farewell to Napier and arrived in Auckland mid-afternoon and checked into the Nomads Fat Camel Backpackers. This backpackers is much closer to the Queens Wharf Fanzone and the Viaduct, which is full of bars and restaurants around a harbour area built for the Americas Cup.
After checking in and getting settled, we headed into the Viaduct for some drinks at Degree 0 which was full of Aussies, before heading over to the Fanzone to watch the New Zealand vs Japan game. The Fanzone was the busiest we had seen it with the massive Heineken World Bar shoulder to shoulder. We managed to get a spot in front of the big screen and watched New Zealand tear apart Japan. Funily enough the biggest cheer came when Japan scored their runaway try. After the game we had a few more beers at the Fanzone before finding this great rooftop bar just down the road from our backpackers. This turned out to be a late one, finishing up at 5.30am which in hindsight was a bit foolish the day before the
Aus v Ireland
View from our seats during the player warmup. big Aus v Ireland game.
Day 8 (Saturday 17/09)
Australia vs Ireland Today was a day we had been looking forward to all week. We woke up at about 11am feeling very sorry for ourselves after the previous nights' antics, and immediately got ready to go for the game. I once again donned my Wallabies jersey, yellow afro wig, Australian flag cape and Wallabies flag, and headed out for some lunch with Danger while Gareth went to collect all of his match tickets from the ticket venue. Doppo, mind you didn't get out of bed all day and ended up meeting us at the game, earning him a Shirt of Shame nomination (an All Blacks jersey we have defaced and must be worn the following day by the recipient), but more on that later.
We ended up having 4 spare category A tickets to the game due to us doubling up on the pool stages in order to secure 4 finals tickets, so we had to find a way to sell the tickets. There were plenty of Irish around but all had tickets already. We then came across a scalper who offered to buy them off us and
After Aus v Ireland
The Irish guys at the rooftop bar. offered $100 per ticket. The face value was $360 but we cut our losses and got rid of them as we figured $400 was better than not being able to get rid of them at all.
We then started our game-day pub-crawl at The Right Choice sports bar which was underneath the rooftop bar from the previous night. Here we met up with T-bag (mate from rugby in Perth) and then moved on up Queen Street stopping in at each bar we could find. We chatted to plenty of Aussies and Irish along the way and everyone was pumped for a big game. We got to K'Road which is essentially Aucklands equivalent of Kings Cross with lots of bars, strip clubs, street vendors and prostitutes, and then decided to jump into a cab rather than walk the rest of the way. The taxi dropped us off at the Kingslander Hotel in Kingsland which is close to the stadium and similar to Caxton Street in Brisbane with pubs and cafe's lining both sides of the street. The Kingslander was full of Aussies, including all those on the Qantas Great Crusade campervan tour. Unfortunately Miranda Kerr wasn't with them, but it
Aus Beats Ireland
The Irish guy I beat in the Pint Scolling comp. was a great venue to have a beer and watch the earlier games of Argentina v Romania and South Aftica v Samoa before heading over to Eden Park for Australia v Ireland.
As you would all no doubt know, we lost the game to Ireland much to all of the Aussies' surprise, but the biggest surprise was the number of Kiwi Irish who were there booing Quade Cooper and just going for Ireland because they were playing against Australia. In the streets afterwards, the Irish were in full party mode, so Gareth and I made our way back into town and decided to go to the Wallabies team hotel and have a few drinks at the lobby bar. All the Australian officials were there including John O'Neil, and we started chatting to a couple at the end of our table who turned out to be the Aunty and Uncle of Anthony and Saia Fainga'a. They then introduced us to the Faingaa's parents, as well as Adam Ashleigh-Cooper's mum and Drew Mitchell's mum. The team eventually arrived to a slow clap from the crowd before heading up to their rooms. Only a few players came down to briefly say hi to their families. We then continued drinking with the parents of the players and then joined them at Karaoke in the city before they slowly started heading off to bed.
Gareth and I then headed back to the rooftop bar where we drank with some Irish guys and talked about the game. I was challenged to a pint scolling competition by one of the Irish, who beat me by a matter of miliseconds in the first race. I then won the second and third (even with him having a spew between the later two) and finished up the night at about 5am.
Day 9 (Sunday 18/09) As we were all once again rather hungover today, we figured the best medicine would be a lazy sunday session down at the Viaduct. We got out of bed around lunch time and slowly walked down there while throwing a footy around. We walked past a few places which all looked a bit too much for us and ended up settling in to a bar called Provedor overlooking the harbour and ferry terminal. There we watched the days games of rugby including Wales v Samoa, England v Georgia and France v Canada before calling it a night at about 11.
Day 10 (Monday 19/09) Today I was feeling very under the weather after a week of solid drinking and partying and had a quiet day in. The others went for a game of golf at a local course while I did some washing and updated my first blog. We were leaving the next day for Rotorua so decided to have a quietish evening, going for dinner and then having drinks at the Right Choice down the road and playing cards. Eventually getting to bed by about 11pm.
We're off to Rotorua tomorrow, so check back regularly for more updates. If you want any more details of anything, please let me know. I can also send any photos etc.
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