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Published: March 22nd 2005
Angus here reporting on a sensational sporting weekend that I experienced in Wellington. On Saturday, Jo-Ann and I went to see the Hurricanes play the Bulls in rugby’s Super 12. It’s a league made up of 12 teams from the southern hemisphere - 5 from NZ, 4 from South Africa and 3 from Australia. Each team plays the other once and then the top 4 in the league contest the semi-finals, and then there’s final. The Hurricanes represent the Wellington region and the Bulls are based in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa.
The rugby is renowned for being high pace, very skilled with some seriously hard tackling but usually yields plenty of tries. However, the game we went to was total pants! Defences were on top and with the poor passing, turnovers and lack of pace and flair in the backs, it was a bit like watching Scotland play! Except for the tackling - they have no problems tackling down here whereas most of the Scotland team evidently couldn’t tackle a fish supper. Anyway….the Bulls made less errors and played more as a unit and ran out comfortable winners by 21-12. Not too much to worry the Lions camp
Losing another line-out
Hurricanes are in yellow, by the way..based on what I saw here, anyway!
Then on Sunday, I went along to day 3 of the 2nd test match against the greatest test match cricket team in the world, possibly of all time, those damned Aussie’s! The match ended today in a draw due to the highly unpredictable Wellington weather. However, as you’ll see from the photos, day 3 was a wee cracker!! Factor 30 sunscreen, all the way!
The Aussie’s were miles better and the Black Caps (as the NZ cricket team are known) were very clearly second best, but then most teams are when they play the boys in gold. I met up with some new friends at the game, Graeme and in his Kiwi girlfriend, Anna who we met through a mutual friend back in Edinburgh. I’ve never met a burd who knew so much about cricket - she knew most of the positions as well! I obviously meant fielding positions, just to clarify that statement before you start sniggering and fnarr-fnarring….!!
Back to rugby again and we’ve managed to get tickets for the British & Irish Lions game against the Wellington Lions (the local NPC team - the NPC is the
A maul forms....
...then probably another Hurricanes turnover! provincial league in New Zealand which runs from August to October. Whereas, the Super 12 runs from March to May. In the middle they have the Tri-Nations series (All Blacks, Aus & South Africa playing each other home and away) and this year, the Lions tour. There, glad I cleared that up!!). Anyhoo, this game will be a second string B&I team rather than the test side - there might even be a Scottish player that makes that team!! Tickets for the second test match in Wellington against the All Blacks are almost impossible to come by unless I’m prepared to pay up to $1,000 for a ticket - which I’m soooo not! You never know, something might come up…..
Hopefully, we’ll have some news on the job front soon - so many applications in but so far, they’re only interested in interviewing Jo-Ann…sob, sob….my day will come!!
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