By Nemoquin
June 24 2005

Here's another article from the the Lions tour to New Zealand. Having written last time about the popularity of rugby over here, I think that I may have slightly overestimated its influence:

1. On Thursday evening we were invited to the Poneke Rugby club in Wellington. Again there was a fine clubhouse and there were pictures on the walls of members who had represented New Zealand, going back to the nineteenth century. However, the club played on pitches owned by the local council and the council had told them that they could not practice on them that night. The wet conditions meant that the playing surface might be damaged.
   
   
2. On Sunday we flew from Hamilton to Wellington, a 50 minute flight, but because of fog in Auckland, the plane took off 90 minutes late. Even the fact that Steve Hansen was on the flight made no difference to this.

Going around New Zealand one quite often comes across famous names - at least famous in rugby terms - as people are basically following the same route around the country following the Lions. To avoid any accusations of name droppping, I will not be writing about them, even though I am sure that there is a real difference between my fascinating anecdotes and other people's name dropping. There may have to be an exception to this as Sir Jason is expected over here soon.

We are now in Wellington. again it is quite clear from walking around that rugby is in town. However, because Wellington is the Capital of New Zealand, it is not the only thing going on. The city is beautiful, built on hills surrounding the harbour. Apparently there about 150 cable car systems here. Many houses do not have road access. So a group of homeowners get together and pay for their own private system.

After a day in our hotel, there was another letter from the hotel management referring to a stay by the English and Irish Lions and asking that they not be bothered. This time, there were even tighter security measures with the pavement outside fenced off and guards at the door checking everybody coming in. We hear over here that the British press are writing about ridiculous security measures for the team. For what it is worth, according to locals, the same sort of measures are applied when the All Blacks are in a hotel prior to a match.
[Did you immediately spot the error by the hotel in the reference to the "English...". If you are English, give yourself a pat on the back.]

On Tuesday I was sitting in the hotel lobby having a drink when a bustle of activity started with security men patrolling outside, sundry porters waiting around and the hotel manageress hovering. It was a bit of an anti-climax when a group of scruffily dressed individuals started arriving - the rugby press. Still, I must not be too hard. It may not be a coincidence that with the press there on Tuesday, the hotel bar stayed open a lot later than it did on Monday.

The game against Wellington was wet, and at least we had seats out of the rain. I suppose that it is some support of improvement that the Lions are now playing badly in the opponent's half, instead of their own. Three things about the match are worth further comment.

1. I saw the thread about abolishing the haka, and the suggestion that the English should "retaliate" by doing a morris dance. There was morris dance before the game - not by the team but as part of the pre-match entertainment - and it doesn't stir the blood. Because it was a Lions game, we had to have Scottish, Irish and Welsh dances as well. So there was a Highland Fling and a "Riverdance", but what is the national dance of Wales? In the end the organisers provided a Shirley Bassey and Catherine Zeta Jones impersonator gyrating to "All That Jazz".
   
   
2. I was sitting right behind one of the goals, and so had to watch the match with one eye on the pitch and one eye on the big screen. The one advantage of such a seat is that I could see the alignment of players across the pitch. With modern defensive systems there were very few occasions when one team appeared to have a clear overlap. When Wellington seemed to have created a bit of space to move the ball, it was encouraging to see how quickly the Lions cover defence got into position to nulllify the threat. However, when The Lions made some space, the players did not seem to recognise this and spin the ball wide. Rather it was back to crash ball again.
   
   
3. After the game, when the players made it back to the hotel , for the first time I saw evidence that there were enjoying themselves. The fans outside had started a chant praising Gethin Jenkins, and some of the other players were taking the mickey out of him and pushing him to go outside to greet his admirers.

One new thing that I have found about here is 80/80 rugby. This means that only players weighing less than 80 kgs can play. This is to prevent the smaller players being crushed by the larger ones. I find this a bit depressing as it used to be said that rugby was a game that could be played by anyone, no matter their size and shape.

Finally, as I was putting my thoughts together about this, with the TV News on in the background, I heard the Mehrtens story. This being New Zealand, it was the top sports story on the main news, but somehow I doubt that the BBC gave it such prominence.

According to an interview in the papers:

" I'm really looking forward to playing for one team throughout the whole season.

It's been tough going through 10 years of the Crusaders, All Blacks and Canterbury, all with different regimes and people rightly expect you to peak for each one, week in and out.

I like the thought of planning out one whole sason with one team and knowing when the breaks are rather than going into the New Zealand season with a reasonable amount of uncertainty.

A number of things about the move appealed to me, including the lifestyle thing.

There are a lot of perippheral things in rugby that I don't enjoy.

I chose Harlequins because I liked the feel of their club....a good history steeped in tradition. I do want a challenge in rugby.

My contribution has dwindled in teams I've been in in last few years with a lot of younger players coming through who are faster and stronger.

Bit I still love the opportunity to get in and play week in and out.

I am looking forward to being in a new environment and not anticipating being under the spotlight.

I'll hide myself away and it depends what the media is like at Exeter and Rotherham who Harlequins will be lining up against next season.

I'm not saying that I've had a bad run here, but there have been people who had a lot worse dealt out to them from the media.

I don't want to sound uncharitable, its just that I think these days the rugby scene is a lot different to 10 years ago. Its a lot harder to get away from rugby. It's part of it, I guess, and guys coming in as youngsters nowadays are more used to it.

We are competing for the entertainment dollars and there's some aspects of it I don't like.

Being judged by people who I feel have no knowledge of rugby and in many cases have no knowledge of sport has been pretty annoying.

Being in a team game, its about relying on your mates to help you out and trying to help your mates out with the way you do things and the way they do things. To be judged individually is pretty annoying and shows again a reasonable lack of understanding of the game as well, so that's been pretty frustrating.

But I guess you get that everywhere and shows the interest New Zealanders have for rugby. Everyone's got good and bad aspects to their job.

There are lots of fantastic things I will miss hugely but some things I won't but I guess that's natural."