I am not really a sports person, but even I love going to games to soak up the atmosphere/drink beer outside. When we told people we were moving to New Zealand, we had a couple people tell us that we had to be sure to go to an All Blacks game, which google told me was New Zealand's national rugby team. Apparently there are different leagues and unions and whatnots, but all I absorbed was that the Tri-Wizard Tri-Nations games are the best and that something called a Haka happens. Also, the All Blacks play all around the country, so there are only a few matches in Auckland each year - one of which happened to be about a month after our arrival.
So we bought our tickets and picked up some All Blacks gear and headed to Eden Park to watch some rugby! Eden Park can hold a little over 47,000 fans, which doesn't sound like a lot by American standards, but that's over 1% of the population of the entire country!
Rugby is a strange hybrid between American football and soccer - all the tackling and none of the padding. All Blacks fans told us that it was one of the most brutal games they've seen in years, but it left us wondering how many original teeth/fingers/toes professional rugby players have.
Here is everything I know about rugby:
- A match has two halves that are 40 minutes each
- The clock only stops if someone gets injured, which happened a lot more than expected
- A goal is called a "try" and is worth 5 points. You get it by crossing into the endzone.
- There are also field goals - no idea how much these are worth
- Players can only pass the ball backwards, but can kick it forwards
- Most players do not wear a cup!!
Our seats weren't bad, and I was able to get a pretty good video of the Haka. For some reason I was expecting some kind of pre-show with people in traditional Maori costume, but it's performed by the players themselves. It's a traditional Maori war dance the All Blacks perform before Tri-Nation games to intimidate the other team.
This is awesome!!
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