You’ve got your lead actors (Ruby Tui, Portia Woodman) drawing the bulk of the attention, getting ample support from the rest of their cast (the other Black Ferns). When the Black Ferns started to get the ball down our end (the end it needed to be for the team to score points, I understand), I finally got it.Īfter the Black Ferns started scoring, the game was, to my theatre-addled brain, like watching an extremely well-rehearsed show get back on track after a few actors fluffed their lines and missed their cues. We were pretty close to the ground, but the ball spent most of that first half down the Australian end. Thankfully, I had someone next to me to patiently explain the stuff that I needed to know to understand what was going on. I know that the teams have to touch the ball at either end, then kick it through the posts, I know that they’re not allowed to tackle each other above the shoulders, and I know that if the ball goes out of the pitch, it’s not great! It took me some time to get into the game! It’s hard to fully engage with something you don’t know the rules of, no matter how impressive or amazing the people playing it are. At this stage of the match, equally devastating. I dropped one of the cans of rose I bought. To be clear: the Black Ferns dropped the rugby ball. What I understood happened is that we dropped a lot in the first half of the first half. After watching bemusedly for a few minutes, I leaned over to ask what was going on. The Black Ferns play Australia play rugby in front of 34,000 fans at Eden Park (Image: Hagen Hopkins/Getty)Īlas, that was to wait until halftime. When we eventually sat down, after what I assume is the time honoured tradition of texting people who may or may not be at the event where they were, it was in exactly the place I didn’t want to be: a terrible spot for the Rita Ora gig. Eden Park is big! It seemed even bigger from the inside somehow, as we struggled to find our seats (stopping once to watch the tremendous haka, and another to get some canned wine for our journey) among the thousands of people milling about.
When me and my better informed plus-one arrived at Eden Park, we went to the wrong gate. It is not an exaggeration to say I’ve spent more time in my life watching Hannah Gadsby perform comedy than I have watching sport, but at least that evened out this weekend. Jokes on me, because I managed to miss the bulk of the Rita Ora gig (as in two songs out of three) thanks to my previous engagement, Hannah Gadsby’s 5pm gig, running a leisurely 90 minutes. It’s not that I don’t enjoy rugby, it’s just that I haven’t enjoyed rugby, and it seems like a time-consuming pursuit. I’ll be honest and say that my reason for taking the tickets was absolutely the chance to see Britain’s most consistently fine pop star in the flesh, and then to watch some rugby on the side. The fourth time was this past weekend to see the opening day of the 2021 Rugby World Cup, specifically the match between the Black Ferns and Australia.īefore I went I joked that I had tickets to the Rita Ora gig.
The third time was to see the Nelson Mandela exhibition a few years ago. Another time was with co-workers to see the Black Caps play against a team whose provenance I cannot remember. The first was in intermediate school to see the Auckland Blues. I can count the number of times I’ve been to Eden Park on one hand. Sam Brooks gives the Black Ferns’ opening match of the Rugby World Cup two thumbs up. He reviews theatre, video games, television, books… and now, rugby.
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