By Waldo
July 1 2005

Judith Chalmers continues his tour of New Zealand with his account of the first Lions Test "experience" at Jade Stadium, Christchurch.

So, on to Saturday morning, the day of the first test. Our particular tour has us based in Auckland and travelling out to the games so it was a relatively early start to the airport, where on arrival we boarded our flight to Christchurch. Needless to say, most of the plane was inhabited by Lions supporters. The pilot was obviously aware of this and during the 80 minute flight taunted us by explaining that the weather in Christchurch was pretty suspect, that the game may be called off and that Jonny Wilkinson had sustained some kind of injury and was in hospital, all of which was the Kiwi equivalent of friendly banter! Once leaving the aircraft, we were met by psychological torture - the air ramp (I believe that's the technical term) was entirely black with the legend "All Blacks All The Way" emblazoned along both sides of its length, enhanced by loudspeakers playing crowd noise!<br><br>

It was a sunny, crisp morning in Christchurch - we had been warned about the cold and the fact that there may be snow later but looking at the weather we couldn't have imagined what was to come. Christchurch is a nice, sleepy little town usually, a whole lot more pleasing on the eye that Auckland. It's a rugby town. The drive from the airport took us past numerous playing fields full to bursting with juniors, minis and respective parent spectators. It was great to see. The centre of town was a sea of red. Everywhere you looked, all you could see were Lions supporters and the place was buzzing, Cathedral Square was awash with them. This is where we met up with a few other Saracens supporters who were travelling on different tours. After a few beers and a chat with a very pi**ed local, we decided we should do at least something touristy while we were here, so went on a tram ride around town. This revealed that not only was Cathedral Square overrun with red shirts, everywhere in town was! We began to wonder if any Kiwi's were actually going to the game!<br><br>

Jade Stadium, home of the Canterbury Crusaders. By the time we reached the ground, the rain had started, in complete contrast to the earlier weather. We sought shelter in the Crusaders' Supporters Club, were made very welcome and actually found that yes, there were some locals going to the game after all. After a few beers, it was time to take our seats. The stadium itself is pretty good, fairly large and bright. The pre-match show consisted of the Lions Choir and some Kiwi pop singer. The atmosphere was electric. The rain at this stage was bearable. I won't go into much detail about the game itself as that is well covered elsewhere, but the consensus here was that the game was like the weather - miserable! It didn't seem like we had turned up! When BOD and then Hilly got stretchered off right past us, the mood got more black along with the skies. During the 2nd half, the hailstones started - nowhere to hide. It was like being shot blasted! At this point, my rain jacket had well and truly proved it was indeed waterproof and with great effect. The rain / shot blast just ran straight off it on to my legs, which did not have the benefit of any waterproof clothing! As the All Blacks score went meaningfully ahead and we seemed to have no chance of clawing anything back, we were just waiting for the respite of the final whistle.<br><br>

The prospect of spending the next few hours wearing a pair of jeans that looked as if I had waded through a river in them did not fill me with glee I have to say. In fact the mood on the coach back to the airport was understandably very subdued. Once we were back on the aircraft however, we had reflected on our poor performances and spent the rest of the flight singing "always look on the bright side of life" whilst pondering next week's selection. And so on to Wellington.......