Semi Finals...when boys become men
Trip Start
Jan 18, 2011
1
27
28
Trip End
Nov 05, 2011
Auckland, North Island, New Zealand
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Famous people met along the way: Gavin Hastings (yes, he of Scottish fame)
First, it was nice to be back in a house. Out of the van, and into a real bed – what a luxury! And a nice settee, a lovely kitchen with what you'd expect from a normal kitchen…it was so nice to have a break from the van for just those few days :)
Saturday came and off we went into Auckland city centre, ready for the match which had a stupidly late kick off of 9pm (well, stupid for us but not so stupid for you guys I suppose…) so we deiced a little bit of a later start would be better this time – getting into to town at about 3pm. Eden Park, the stadium in Auckland and the national stadium in New Zealand is 4km away from the city centre and although a fan trail had been set up the whole way there to walk, there were also shuttle buses set up to ferry everyone over there. We found out that the 'place to be’ this time would be O’Hagans, in the Viaduct on the Auckland’s waterfront, so we headed down there when we arrived and the atmosphere was pretty awesome – lots of people wandering the streets of the city centre which had been pedestrianized, street musicians and entertainers everywhere and people trying to sell last-minute tickets. It was like those few hours before a match in the Millennium Stadium – a real buzz was spreading across the place. After waiting in a queue for a while, we got into O’Hagans and started on the drinks and singing and I even got my face painted with a dragon, after waiting in another queue for about half an hour…the things I do for the country!
About an hour and a half before the match, we decided to get the bus – didn’t want to be running to the stadium again! We leisurely walked around the stadium and found our gate…oh no. A temporary gate. Then our seats…oh no. Temporary seats. It started to rain. We didn’t have coats, just a woolly hat and a daffodil between us, the rain was driving down on us, our seats were in the gods up a temporary frame and about 500 stairs – I mean, we couldn’t have been further away from the bar even if we’d tried! Those first 20 minutes of sitting in my seat, surrounded by people with common sense who’d brought pac-a-macs and plastic ponchos with them to sit in an open-air stand, were pretty damn miserable. The daffodil was pulled over my face so that the red paint didn’t run and end up all over my clothes and I was pretty miserable as I looked on jealously at the mostly Kiwis and Irish around us that had a bit more sense than us! But luckily, the rain decided to drench another part of Auckland just as the match started and we settled to watch (well, crane our heads to watch) the biggest match yet.
Well if my nerves had been wrecked in the other matches, it was nothing compared to this one. Before we knew it, Adam was off, then Sam had been sent off – not that we saw it really, we couldn’t believe it when it came up on the big screen. It flashed up after Sion shouted out "Welcome to Wales bois bach!" after seeing THAT tackle…then it was just a shocked 10 minutes for us and the players by the looks of things as we sat and took in what had just happened. Not only were we down to 14 men, but one of our best players had been sent off. Not only one of our best players, but our captain. Could things get any worse? Well, turns out it could and you all know what happened in the end. 9-8 to France. Another game of 1 point, 1 POINT!! It couldn’t have been any closer, but I truly think we deserved to win and we could have. Life is full of what if’s, and this was one of them. We were absolutely gutted – not so gutted that we didn’t go out of course, but we were just so devastated. We met up with everyone a few hours after the match, and we were glad at that point that we hadn’t splashed out on finals tickets as a lot of the Welsh had done – now we were the ones to be over-confident maybe! But it wasn’t though was it, we were doing well. We did do well. Who would have thought before the start of this tournament that we would get as far as we did? The performance that our team gave during the second half of that semi final was nothing short of amazing and we could still go back to the centre of Auckland with our heads held high, and that we did. In doing so, we had an awesome night back at O’Hagans and some other places along the viaduct, and Sion got to meet one of his heroes – Gavin Hastings. What a nice bloke!! Sion had a bit of a chat to him, and Gavin actually chatted back which was nice and posed for a pic…it was all I could do to stop Sion from going back to ask him so more questions though, so I just let him stare at him instead. We ended up back in Maia’s at the frankly ungodly hour of 7am…just as dawn was spreading over the city and those weird morning people were taking their dogs out for walks and going for jogs...
But ultimately, we were out of the competition. It was the end of the road, bar the bronze game which turned out would be against the Aussies the following week. The Monday after the game was such a horrible day for us – I have never felt so down after a game of sport! Actually I don’t think I’ve ever felt so down, full stop. It was depressing not only to think that we didn’t now stand a chance of winning the Cup, but that the whole thing was…over for us. End of the road, and almost the end of our trip. We decided to change our flights to come home a week earlier than planned, a lack of funds in the bank being the main factor for our change of plan.
But hey, I’m not here to depress you all. It wasn’t quite the end – there was still a corner of North Island that we hadn’t explored, and so the very next day, we left Auckland and headed north, to Northland (bit of an obvious name if you ask me) and the sun at last!
Enfys & Sion
ps. Another lack of photos...blame the camera this time, battery ran out. Got a photo of Sion with Gav but on another camera which will be sent to us in due time, so you'll just have to wait for that one. I know you're excited already!
