The New Zealand All Blacks. This country has some serious rugby fever. And with good cause. They’re playing France in the finals of the Rugby World Cup this Sunday. A and I were lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) enough to catch the semi-finals last week on our stopover in Auckland. It was a total madhouse. People were screaming, honking horns, climbing on things, getting drunk—basically anything they could possibly do to show they were pleased. And I was pleased, too, until it was time for me to go to sleep. And then my pleasure quickly evaporated with the ever-rising volume of the revelers.
But now I’m back to being pleased again. It’s nice to see people so excited. Just walking around Wellington (yay! we made it!), we could see the extent to which rugby is engrained in New Zealand’s culture. Kids are playing it in the park. Dads with their sons. Friends goofing around. Guys tossing the ball in the middle of the street. And almost every store window is devoted to black and white clothing only.
Ashley and I haven’t yet decided where we’re going to watch the big game. There’s a fan zone down by the water, but we did that for the last game in Auckland, and it was freezing. But regardless of where we see it, we’ll both be backing black.
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