Lords, Twickenham, Wembley, Wimbledon and some other stuff

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Hello again. Time for some more pictures and words.

This edition of our blog features details of our visits to London's 4 big sporting grounds.

Firstly, we went to Lords to watch the 4th day of the 1st cricket test between NZ and England. I remember sitting up late one night by myself back in our flat in Dunedin during the last test match NZ played at Lords during the 2004 tour, and thinking 'Wow, what an amazing ground. I can't wait to go to London to watch some cricket. And how cool would it be if it was a NZ game?' Well my wish came true and it was a dream to watch the Black Caps do battle with the Pomms at the home of cricket. I’m sure most you would have heard/seen the results and will be aware that the tour thus far has been anything but a dream one for the rebuilding Black Caps. I think possibly we were fortunate enough to see one of the best days of the tour so far. English captain Michael Vaughan hit some form and played some beautiful shots on his way to an impressive century, but the Black Caps bowled reasonably well and managed to finish off the English innings, giving us a chance to see the Black Caps top order get their second innings off to a good start in the final session. You might also have been able to tell from the coverage of the cricket that the weather hasn’t been all that flash, and that day at Lords was freezing. Not really cricket watching weather but we had a good day all the same.

The week after the cricket we were off to another sporting event wearing our NZ colours to support a kiwi team. This time it was the London Sevens at Twickenham. Twickenham is also an amazing ground, and although only the bottom tier of grandstands were open, they were still able to put 30000 people in there to create a fun party atmosphere. Unfortunately it was another disappointing NZ performance against the Brits, losing the quarter final against the home side. I think we have become something of a curse to touring NZ sports teams in the UK. First the A1 Team NZ did poorly at Brands Hatch, then the cricketers got throttled in the test series and to finish it off both the NZ men and womens sevens teams lost matches to England. Hopefully the curse has been removed come the Abs end of year tour. Thankfully we didn’t arrive at the ground until late so we just missed the loss to England, but we did manage to see NZ win matches against Portugal and South Africa. And even though NZ didn’t do so well in this tournament, the result at Twickenham meant they once again won the Championship. Some consolation I suppose. But the whole day was actually lots of fun, particularly watching the smaller teams like Kenya, Russia, Spain and Moldova. Later in the day as people became more and more affected by the alcohol the streakers and pitch invasions began coming thick and fast. The best one was the group of 10 or so guys dressed as monks who all took to the field at the same time. There weren’t enough security guards around to stop them all. One poor guy was running around in the centre of the field waiting to get taken down but there was nobody there to catch him.

The third big sports ground we visited was of course the one and only Wembley Stadium. Usually known for hosting big football matches, we were there to watch the Foo Fighters. Wembley is only allowed to hold 1 concert a year and after putting on such an entertaining set at Wembley during the Live Earth concert last year, the Foo Fighters were determined to come back and play their biggest ever European show at the famous stadium. Both Emma and I rate the Foo Fighters as our favourite band and after seeing them in Wellington back in 2005 we were determined to see them at Wembley. We got the tickets online last year in Canada and were quite fortunate to get them for the added Friday show as the first show on Saturday sold out in super quick time. Wembley is quite a large stadium. It dominates North West London and sticks out like a sore thumb when you fly into Heathrow. Its recently been refurbished and is looking rather sparkling and new, with that new stadium smell. The Foo Fighters were the first band to headline their own show since the refurbishment, with Live Earth being the first concert. We chose to stand rather than sit and were about ¾ of the way to the back. Not ideal in terms of view, especially when the three largest guys in the stadium came and stood right in front of us. The stadium was pretty much full and was an amazing site. I can only imagine what an experience it must to play football there in front of a full house. The show was amazing. Great sound, great light show and visuals and leadman Dave Grohl was at his comical best. They played all their big hits as well as a number of songs off their latest album. All good stuff. We were even treated to a Triangle solo (as in the instrument). At one point Dave disappeared off the stage and popped up above the crowd about 20m from us. Emma was hysterical (as was I if I’m being honest). The show finished with a sizeable fireworks display which would have been heard right over west London. The only complaint was being showered with all sorts of shit throughout the whole show. It was alright when the liquid was cold as you new it was only beer or water, but when the liquid was warm, we were a little concerned about what it might have been. After the show, the big worry was getting home. How do you get 90,000 people out of the stadium and safely on their way home? Well quite easy apparently. The stadium is served by two tube stations and was cleared pretty quickly with most people heading to one of the tube stops. We joined the sea of people to one of the stations and it was literally like a sea of people. I have never seen so many people in my life, all heading for one small tube station. I don’t know how they managed it so well but we managed to get on a tube (we even got a seat) and were pretty much home within 45mins of the end of the show. Amazing how they can move so many people so fast and without any notable disorder.

And the final big London sports ground we visited was the famous All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon. We hadn't intially planned on going to Wimbledon this year as we had missed out on the ticket ballot and, not being big tennis fans, were not all that interested on queing for the 6000 ground admission tickets they give out each day. But Simon is huge tennis fan and convinced us to go along for a look so we got up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and made our way down to Wimbledon. We arrived at Wimbledon Park at around 6:45 and there were already thousands of people there in the que ahead of us, many of whom had camped out over night. We joined the back of the que and were given que cards in the 3900s. After hanging out in the que for about 4hours, they finally opened the gates and we headed in side. Simon almost got arrested for walking through security with his camera out, apparently a violation under ant-terrorism laws, but managed to convince the bobby that he hadn't actually taken any photos so it would be a waste of time arresting him. Inside we made our way to court 11 and met up with Mark and Ingrid and co. Fortunately we had picked a day when the only NZ player in the tournement, NZ No.1 Marina Erakovic, was playing her third round match against some Thai chick. Apparently this is the farthest any NZ woman has played in Wimbledon for years and it was good actually having someone to support. The match got underway and Erakovic managed to fight back from 4-1 down in the first set to win it 6-4, but then proceeded to drop the next two sets and lose the match. The curse continues for NZers we support in the UK. It was a thoroughly enjoyable match to watch though and everyone agreed that 20 year old Erakovic was probably the better player, but by her own admission had let the nerves get to her and made to many unforced errors. She had the fastest serve of any of the women we watched that day, including some ranked alot higher than her. The next match on court 11 was between womens No.9 seed Safina and some other bird. We left not long after the start of that match to go for a look around some of the other courts, returning an hour and a half or so later to find them still at it. We watched the end of the game and it was drawn out to something lke 3 and half hours. It was a really good game, with Safina being knocked out of the Championship at the end of it. The next game on court 11 was a mens singles game between 14th seed Mathieu and an unseeded Croation called Cilic, who went on to win the match in four sets, the game eventually finishing at 9:30pm when it was almost impossible to see the ball through lack of light. The main matches of the day on centre court involved No.2 seed Raphael Nadal, Venus Williams and great British hope Andy Murray, all of whom won their matches with reasonable ease. We didn't get to see any of those games as our tickets wouldn't let us on to centre court, but we did see Venus Williams warming up in the morning which was quite exciting. We eventually left the ground at about 10pm after what was a very long but throughly enjoyable day. We will definately be putting our name in the ballot for tickets to next years tournament.

Continuing with the earlier musical theme, we also scored ourselves tickets to the Coldplay gig at Brixton Academy. Coldplay have just released a new album and as a warm up for their world tour and promotion of the album, they gave away free tickets to their show at Brixton. Friends of ours from work signed up to the fan club and managed to pick up four tickets, gifting Emma and I two of them. We were stoked. I’m not a huge Coldplay fan but I think they’re just one of those bands you have to see, and hey, you’d have to be stupid to turn down free tickets to see them. I think most of you will know there music as they have a large number of well known songs that get lots of airplay. They played most of these songs as well as some off the new album which I quite liked. Chris Martin is very entertaining to watch and has a flawless voice. At one point he gifted the guitar he had just finished playing to some lucky person in the audience. The show lasted only an hour but was very good for what was essentially a show that had been designed for large arenas but was being played in little old Brixton Academy.

Next up in the music scene is two of my other all time favourite bands (yes, I have a lot of all time favourite bands) Iron Maiden and NZ’s own Shihad. I have been hanging out to see Shihad again and was really looking forward to seeing them play stuff off their new album. They are playing just around the corner from us at the Shepherds Bush Empire which would have been ideal but unfortunately they are playing the same night as we’re going to see Iron Maiden. I’m gutted as I’m sure it would have been an amazing show and a pleasant taste of home, but all is not lost. They are playing a festival show at Guildford south of London the next day so we’ll hopefully catch them there. It won’t be anywhere near as good, but beggars can’t be choosers. And I would be insane to give up tickets to Iron Maiden. They are the one band I was absolutely determined to see while overseas as it is unlikely they will ever return to NZ shores, so I’m not about to pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity. They are playing a show at Twickenham featuring mainly their old stuff, which should be grouse. And they have Avenged Sevenfold opening up form them which is a band I would pay good money to see on their own. Should be a good weekend. Can’t wait.

Other stuff we have been up to includes a trip to the zoo (nothing to write home about really, so I won’t) and the Tower of London which was well worth the entry fee and 4 hours we spent there. We also went to the pub for breakfast the other morning to watch the ABs play England, and guess who was on our tube carriage on the way? Former All Black captain Taine Randell. He is still a big bastard, but looks like he’s lost shape a bit.

Simon and Anna have also arrived after a couple of amazing months touring through South East Asia. It sounds like they had an amazing time and I can’t wait to go there myself now. They stayed with us on our fold out couch for their first two weeks in London, but have since moved in to a flat about 10mins walk up the road (that’s very close by London standards). No luck on the job front yet but I’m sure they’ll have something lined up in no time. We’ve been doing a bit of stuff with them and Mark and Ingrid etc so it has been fun to see some familiar faces and catch up with people we haven’t seen for a long time (its been even longer since we’ve seen most of you though).

We are still a little short on the continental Europe travel adventures so far, but the bank balances are slowly building so it won’t be long now. We have in fact just booked our first trip. Well the flights anyway. We are going to Finland for 5 or 6 days, mainly to watch the Rally of Finland (another one of my dream events to see, poor Emma). Still working on the details but we’re flying into Helsinki and then driving a few hours to Jyvaskyla where the rally is based. Haven’t sorted out accommodation yet but I am hoping to go camping. Then at the end of the rally we’ll head back to Helsinki for a couple of nights. Simon and Anna are hoping to join us on the trip, but with no jobs yet it may be a little difficult for them. Fingers crossed.

Beyond that there are other trips here and there planned but who knows what ones are actually going to workout. We are terrible at getting off our ass and actually bringing all these plans to fruition. We’ll let you know as we get things booked.

Ok, I think we’re pretty much up to date now so we’ll leave you to it. Hope all is well with everyone. Keep in touch.

Gaz and Emma

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Photos

Cricket
Lords in all her glory

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Pavillion

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Kyle Mills hurling one down the wicket

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Chris Martin returning to the third man boundary after another over

Sevens
Twickenham in all her glory

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Emma showing her support while boozing it up

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The NZ boys warming up. They were definately not crowd favourites and got booed as they were warming up, as did the Aussies.

Sevens
Portugal after scoring their opening try

Sevens
NZ getting one back

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28-14 final score. Come on NZ, you're better than that.

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how original

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NZ women score the opening try

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But they lose the game.

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Some crowd antics

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Its probably a little hard to see, but the front row of the crowd are holding this long white snake like thing, which is actually a large chain of plastic beer cups.

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Kenya making a victory lap after beating Spain in one of the finals

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one of the first streakers, a Scotsman with nothing on under his kilt

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The best pitch invasion of the day. Can you count how many monks are on the field? I get 10.

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And one guy left running around on his own

Foo Fighters
Excited Emma

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Wembley