The Rugby Game

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The other night Fern voiced some slight discontentment over constantly being the headlining character in my last couple posts so for the sake of appeasing her I’m going to refer to her as “NotFern” for this next one.

Tonight we went to my first rugby game! It was Waikato vs. Canterbury and whether or not NotFern intended to, she dressed me in the opposing team’s colors. (Apparently I didn’t pack warm enough attire for cold nighttime stadium seats.) It turned out just fine though because the other team’s colors were red and black and our team’s were red, black, and yellow. Not much difference.

Before we left for the game NotFern’s flat-mate, Sarah told me all about the tight, short shorts the players would be wearing. Apparently “those blokes are cut as!” (rough translation: “Those dudes are really ripped!”) Well they weren’t too shabby if you like the kind of guys who use their buddies as human battering rams and who drool a little while breathing through their mouth guards.

So even though I didn’t really fallow everything going on, the game was heaps of fun! At one point when the score was 6 to 0 I turned to NotFern and said, “Wow! We’re really kicking their ass!” She contested with, “nah, not yet” but then not even a minute later when the score was 16 to 0 she agreed and said, “now we’re kicking their ass!” We finished up the game with a twenty point lead. Now the Waikato team must look pretty intimidating despite their mascot being a Jersey cow. I laughed when I discovered that this was the case because of all God’s earthy creatures the Jersey cow is surely the most docile and domesticated. Yep, a Jersey cow’s just about as intimidating as Eeyore.

What is a little more effective at appearing intimidating are all the Maori carvings around the stadium. Great big towering statues of wooden warriors sticking their tongues way out. They even come adorned with anatomically “correct” parts. (I put quotations around the word ‘correct’ because I don’t feel it was so much a realistic portrayal as it was an artistic representation. I guess the phrase “anatomically artistic” would be better)

The whole evening was brought to a close when we piled out of the stadium gates into a crowd where a man (one of NotFern’s dancing partners, actually) threw candy from atop a cherry picker down at gleeful children below. The man kept yelling “What’s my name?!” as the children screamed back, “POSSOM!!” at the top of their lungs. Wow, what a night! How often is it you get sweaty man thighs, intimidating Jersey cows, a winning team, and a man who goes by the name of “Possum” all in one night?

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