Saturday - Back in the Ruck and Maul

Well, a comfortable, if less than convincing win for Australia over the USA on Friday night.  It was a shaky start and the injury toll is definitely worrying.  However, it was good to see Berrick Barnes back in action and a good performance from Nathan Sharpe.

Mike emerges with veggies

The fabulous Havoc Pig Farm stall

Saturday started off sunny and clear and we headed down to the Otago Farmers Market at the railway station for our weekly supplies.  Sunny and clear it started, but it didn't last long, as the skies clouded over and an extremely cold wind chilled all extremities.  This speeded up the shopping process signficiantly and we loaded our goodies into the car and headed home.

Romanian squad warming up

Some REAL Romanian fans

We had coffee and cake at Starfish at 2 pm, carefully avoiding the seat where the Queens grandaughter, Zara Phillips, had eaten yesterday.  Then down to Pirates at four for a quick pint of Buccaneer with multitudes of English fans and on to the Ritchies bus for the short hop down to the Park N Ride area at the stadium for the England v Romania match. The England team bus passed us at a pedestrian crossing area and not a single person on that bus waved or even smiled despite the enthusiasm of their fans on the street. It was bitterly cold and raining as we thankfully got under the stadium roof, but we both froze over the next 150 minutes as the ambient temperature hovered around two degrees with nighttime snow forecast on the hills. Apart from a streaker in the second half, the match was a fairly turgid, lopsided affair with two English players scoring hattrick tries (final score 67-3). The English fans were underwhelming, managing to raise only three tepid choruses of Swing Low during the match. We had excellent seats in the ground floor block, ten rows back from the edge of the pitch, but the scoring passages of play were always elsewhere.

 

Young and trainee pirates

In the "stadium" at Pirates

We left ten minutes before the end of the match, gratefully hopped on the bus back to Pirates and were back in time to score front row seats in the "stadium" for the massive All Blacks v France clash. The club was packed to the rafters with kids, teenagers and hordes of fans in white. Some of the English fans were only too happy to accept the hospitality of the club while quite vociferously supporting the French (poor form says Fi). The Blacks trounced the French from the start so the English didn't have much to celebrate (NZ 37 - France 17). The French were flattered by that scoreline.

Based on what we saw last night, the All Blacks are the form team to beat.  However, it will depend on how they go on the day.  They had a couple more injury worries after last night's game, with Adam Thomson, Richard Kahui and Israel Dagg leaving the field injured. 

So we went home about eleven, put our clocks forward an hour and went to bed  in the bitter cold awaiting forecast snow and hail on the morrow. There are three matches tomorrow back-to-back starting with Fiji v Samoa at 3:30 and ending with the Pool B blockbuster second place decider Scotland v Argentina at 8:30 and it will certainly be a good day for Buccaneer sales at Pirates.