Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Rock You Like a Hurricane




This past Friday, the Wellington Hurricanes played against the Waratahs (from New South Wales, Australia) at Wellington’s Westpac stadium. Rugby in New Zealand is of fanatical proportions, and the Hurricanes to Wellington are like…well…like the Yankees to the Bronx.


Add to that this being the semi-final round of the Super-14 tournament, and Friday night was quite an exciting one.
I didn’t go to the game properly (am trying to save my first live rugby game for an All-Blacks game against South Africa in July), so I decided to watch it on the telly (yeah, see, I didn’t even say that intentionally. I think I’ve turned a linguistic corner!).
One of the coolest discoveries that I made was how close I am to the stadium. Not too close, of course, but I can see the lights of the night games from my back deck. At one point at the beginning of the game, when the Hurricanes made their entrance, a massive fireworks display was set off…I realized that I could actually hear the fireworks from my living room. I ran out to the deck just in time to miss it all…but to also see the glowing stadium with the firework smoke hovering over it. It was pretty cool to feel all of the excitement emanating from the stadium, and I’m now determined to try to catch the next set of fireworks at the next game.
It was a great nail-biter of a game, and the Hurricanes won 16-14, which means that they’ve now advanced to the finals. Needless to say all of Wellington was celebrating that night.

My personal MVPs:

Tana Umaga (recently-retired captain of the All-Blacks, and one of the most esteemed rugby players in NZ)

Jerry Collins


Lome Fa’atau


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