Three months ago today I attended my first rugby match. For a sports fanatic like me, being in New Zealand, the center of the rugby universe, made the occasion special and the expectations high. Most of you will remember my post on the Highlanders game and my strong feelings regarding the Otago fans in relation to their team. The Highlanders finished the season with 19 points, bad enough for 12th out of 14 teams. With this in mind, I suppose it isn't out of the ordinary for people to be cutting off the reflected failures of their team by distancing themselves from it. My expectations were simply too high, and I was viewing the entire thing through a lens that made it extremely difficult to be objective. Support is really no different in the states, and success has a lot to do with turnout anywhere. That is the story of the Highlanders.
The All Blacks are, on the other hand, a completely different story. This is the national team for New Zealand, and is undoubtedly the most recognizable brand in world rugby. The All Blacks haka alone is a thing of legend, and countless other sports teams have tried to copy the Maori war dance and paste it into their own pre game rituals, (I'm looking at you, University of Hawaii football). I knew prior to coming to New Zealand that seeing an All Blacks game was a necessity, and game location and ticket price would not be a factor in my attending a game.
It just so happens that I was lucky enough to be able to see an All Blacks game right here in Dunedin, immediately following my last final exam, and only two days prior to leaving for home. The match was to be played at Carisbrook ("the house of pain"), the stadium I so harshly criticized after my first game, making my second helping of rugby a promising opportunity to witness and judge the best show in Aotearoa. On top of representing the last big thing that I was going to be doing in New Zealand, this All Blacks game wasn't just an All Blacks game, it was the last ever match to be played at Carisbrook. The stadium is only about 8 months from giving way to the brand new Forsyth Barr Stadium, being built right next to my house for the upcoming Rugby World Cup to be hosted in 2011.
Feelings in and around Dunedin are strong regarding the new stadium, with its modern design, roof, and different location. Many feel it is taking away from what makes rugby in Otago so special, eliminating the influence of the elements, and removing the charm that Carisbrook has as one of, if not the most important centers of rugby culture in the world. The game, being played against Wales, was a four month buildup for me, with promotion and excitement for the "Last Test at the Brook" slowly growing in momentum as June 19th grew closer.
Game day finally rolled around and I knew that this was going to be a much, much different experience than that of the Highlanders. The entire city had a sort of calm about it all day, the streets were eerily empty, and the typical drone of the nearby industrial sector and clattering of construction on the new stadium were silenced. No one was there to work. It was the calm before the storm. As night began to fall the silence gave way to cheering and song throughout the city, streets were shut down for foot traffic and the entire downtown became a fan center, complete with jumbo-tron broadcasts of the match. Carisbrook itself was not the same place I remember from before. Loaded to the rafters by an hour to kickoff, the 30,000 person stadium packed more of a punch than its meager capacity would suggest.
The teams took the field at fifteen minutes to kickoff and the anthems were played. These were remarkable in their own right, as two English speaking nations sang anthems in very different tongues, first with the Welsh anthem, followed by the Maori of New Zealand's. After this, the teams gathered on their respective sides, and, for the first time all night, the crowd began to calm. The Welsh lined up at midfield, arm in arm, and the All Blacks created a grouped formation, walking slowly up to the Welsh players. By now the crowd was completely silent. After advancing to within ten feet of the opposition a cry rang out from one of the players, and the other 14 stopped in their tracks. The haka was on. It was one of the more remarkable things I have ever seen, and though I have seen the All Blacks pre game ritual before, being there for the experience yields a much different feeling. No one else should be able to do this.
Following the haka the game bagan, and after a tight first half, the All Blacks exploded, showing why they are the number 1 ranked team in the world, dominating the Welsh with vastly superior speed, conditioning, and more tightly knit physical play that offered up opportunity after opportunity. The passing was crisp, the tackles all solid, and the depth of the team was too much for the Welsh. This raises another remarkable aspect of the All Blacks. New Zealand only has 4 million people, and the talent they put on the pitch clearly shows that the country has the an incredibly talented base given its small size. When all was said and done, the All Blacks defeated the 8th ranked Welsh in a 42-9 blowout, keeping true to the "house of pain" legacy. It was a fitting and inspired way to send Carisbrook off after 127 years. The game was followed by a show with bagpipes, a native Maori performance, and a helicopter landing, where a piece of the pitch was dug up from midfield, loaded on to the helicopter, and flown to Forsyth Barr Stadium in a shower of fireworks. It was a powerful and symbolic changing of the guard, linking the heritage of New Zealand to the modern movement of sports, and was fairly emotional, even for someone who had no previous personal connection to the stadium or team.
For everything the Highlanders game wasn't, the All Blacks experience was. It was exciting, top quality sport, a good glimpse into a peoples' identity through sport, and a poetic end to my life in New Zealand. Overall, the experience at the game was remarkable, made up for my previous complaints of Kiwi culture, and provided a far more personal and emotional end to my trip than I would have ever imagined. The past five months have been very strange, with a constant balancing act between school and travel, greater independence and solitude than I have ever had, and many lessons learned. I have immensely enjoyed my stay here, but New Zealand is nowhere near perfect, at least for me. I am looking forward to getting back home to the states in 2 days, and the only thing that I can really say with certainty at this stage is that I hope and plan to come back here in the future, as New Zealand has become a part of me, and will always hold a special place in my heart.
I want to thank all of you who have been following my blog this semester, and I have learned along the way that there are many more than I even anticipated. I hope this has been something that has provided you with a somewhat effective look into my travels over the past 5 months, and that my pictures and stories may inspire you to one day come to NZ and experience just what it has to offer, it will not let you down. New Zealand is called "the youngest country in the world" because of its late exploration and settlement, but I think it is also because of its immense variety of things to do, the genuineness of its people, and its unparalleled beauty, sense of scale, and wonder. I leave feeling both full of experiences and empty, clean and refreshed, ready to turn the page and begin life again. Thanks again for following my postings, I wish you all the best.
Cheers,
Jake Martin
I am going to post one more time about this trip, and it will not provide final thoughts or anything, as I believe I have let it all out here. The post will instead be very different, with my own personal awards covering a variety of kiwi subjects that I have been adding to over the semester. Look for it soon and enjoy. That will definitely be my last post, but this marks my last official thoughts and feelings in real time.
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