RUGBY UNION – June 1st – British & Irish Lions vs Barbarians (Hong Kong)

It’s a long way to come for a glorified “pre-season friendly”, but  Hong Kong is one of the great rugby stopover destinations. Its home to the most famous rugby 7s tournament in the world and the legendary South Stand has a, let’s call it, unique atmosphere, that’s revered in rugby circles throughout.

The weather however is insane. It is 33C/90F from 8am to midnight and the humidity is over 85%. Even just sitting there you are drenched in sweat. After 2 days on the island, my eyes had salt burn! How the hell this pride of Lions supporters survived the heat, I can only guess. Actually, no guessing required – it was 10 litres of Carlsberg each!

Hong Kong Stadium sells its beer in 2 litre pitchers. The idea is that you are supposed to share – but in the end you are so damn heat ridden you drink it all yourself. But 10 minutes after you finish it, you still want more! Not since I was a student have I necked lager so quickly, not on purpose. I did the 3 pints in a minute challenge once and they didn’t taste very nice on the return leg…… At one stage I went to the toilet and I’m sure all that came out was steam!!!! If I was sitting down, I’m sure I would have blanched my arse!!!

The South Stand is not for the faint hearted. It is raucous, it is drunken and more often than not, raucously drunken. The rugby action plays second fiddle to beer skulling, and the skulling gradually gets more adventurous – first there’s the pints, then there’s the litres, then comes the full 2 litre pitcher and then there’s the straight arm skull.

Protagonists obviously wear more than they consume but when they are at that stage of proceedings, they don’t actually care too much!!!

The Lions playing matches “at home” are rarer than America’s grasp on irony – only 4 times out of 609 games have the team played on home soil. I guess the fact that between all the home nations, they don’t know where that exactly may be so they don’t bother??? The Barbarians meanwhile do not actually have a home, so to play this game in Hong Kong to “spread the word” makes it doubly refreshing. It was quite a novelty in times gone by for supporters to have actually seen the Lions play live, seeing as their tours are 4 years apart and always in far flung reaches of the southern hemisphere. The Baa-Baas are unique in world sport in the fact that players are invited to play in each game and  not, as such, selected. Even in this game, there were club-mates playing against each other.

The players selected are seen to be upstanding citizens that uphold the traditional values of rugby union – so no Dylan Hartleys on show here. The fact that the Barbarians concept has survived the professional era of the sport is strength in itself, but this thrashing and a similar one just 7 days earlier surely questions the future viability of games of this nature.

So it does come as a bit of a surprise when, 10 minutes into the game, the Barbarians hooker, a South African coincidentally named Brits, throws a left roundhouse elbow into the side of the head of the Lions fly-half Farrell (who was holding him illegally, so it wasn’t entirely unprovoked) and was promptly sin-binned. What is even a bigger surprise is the fact they play for the same cub side in England! In any other game he would have been sent off, and in all fairness if that had happened it would have rendered the game totally redundant for both teams.

As it was, the Lions ran out 59-8 winners with Welshmen scoring the bulk of the points for the Lions. Seven out of the eight tries scored were by Welsh players, which bodes well for the Test team! There were “official” water breaks for the players sensibly. It was amazing to see close ups  of the players on the screen, drenched in sweat even after only short stints on the field. I don’t think Adidas quite had this in mind when they designed their “clima-cool” system!!! Bikram Yoga with balls springs to mind!!!!

4 sets of supporters coming together once every 4 years to cheer on one team – in this case it will 5, possibly 6 sets of supporters. No doubt every Kiwi and most South Africans are desperate to see a Lions whitewash of the Aussies!!! I have now experienced 3 of these tours, and the majority of traveling fans are Welsh. We like to watch rugby; we like to drink and most of all, we like to drink at the rugby and sing a few songs. But when your group is made up of 4 certifiably different cultures, what songs do you sing? Bread of Heaven gets a workout, as does Hymns and Arias. Flower of Scotland gets most joining in. It always cheers me up when I see English supporters singing along celebrating their own defeat! Jerusalem is a rugby classic, but it has kind of been adopted by England (& Wales) cricket fans. What did bring the house down though was Oasis’ Wonderwall! I can just see the teams lining up now for their respective anthems…. All together now….. “Today is gonna be a day that they’re gonna throw it back to you……” At least the crowd would sing along!

The game was really a sideshow for the supporters. It was all about enjoying the occasion. The occasion made the crowd and most certainly the crowd made the occasion. It really did feel like an International Day used to feel like. In the build up to the game, much alcohol was consumed by the majority, and the majority had a bloody great time. There was no trouble that I saw, and the partying continued long into the night in the bars and clubs of Wan Chai. Will a fixture like this happen again? I’m not so sure, and in which case I am grateful that I made the effort to go and see it, even if the game itself was a damp squib.

BRITISH LIONS 59 – 8 BARBARIANS

RUGBY UNION – May 17th – Melbourne Rebels vs Stormers

In the previous 43 games of the Melbourne Rebels Super Rugby existence, they had never beaten a South African team (or are they officially franchises now?). I had seen 6 of these games – 5 of which they had either won or lost by less than 3 points (more often losing obviously!). On the whole the Rebels are a competitive outfit but their total of 9 wins out 43 games isn’t going to win any silverware. The Stormers have been perennial winners, and even had the best record in the whole competition last season. I think we all feared the worst.

In a very competitive Melbourne market which is saturated with 9 Aussie Rules clubs, 2 Football teams, as well as a Championship winning Rugby League Team, the Rebels have made a decent fist of getting people to the game. Around 9 to 10,000 people showed up on a cold Friday night – how many actually paid to get in will remain a mystery to anyone though. There seemed to be a massive number of complimentary tickets floating around outside the ground, and there are a number of promotions offering freebies for the remainder of the season, which tells you that the club are desperately trying to get more bums on seats. Empty seats seem to be at a premium at the moment, but economic times are tougher than a Welsh spelling bee!

The Rebels went 10-0 up early in the game, but the Stormers hit back with two tries of their own. The first of which came from poor tackling when the scrum half was tackled, not held, got back up, was knocked down again, and like the Chumbawumba song, got back up again and scored with a graceful swallow dive right next to the posts! The second try came when the Stormers monster number 4, broke through by steamrolling over a Rebel’s prop and the drawing the last defender and offloading perfectly for one of the best finishers in World rugby – the Cuban, Bryan Habana – to score near the posts. All this within the first 25 minutes! The Rebels blew a chance near half time to score another but sheer greed wasted the chance.

The Rebels were awarded a penalty on the stroke of half time, and as they set up to kick for goal, the Stormers all huddled up. At this point the Rebel’s kicker toe poked the ball towards the corner for the winger to chase and score a try. Unfortunately for the Rebels, this is illegal as you have to make a genuine attempt at goal, but fortunately the referee asked them to take the kick again and they converted the kick. Even more fortunately, the referee was completely wrong as he should have awarded a scrum to the Stormers for the misdemeanour!!! 14-13 at half time.

The Rebels looked a much better outfit, but surprised a few people by substituting the instrumental “Ginga Ninja” scrum half and replacing him with Wallaby Nic Phipps. He was involved with everything the Rebels created, although that could have been a trick of the light as you couldn’t really not notice him with that scon! Both teams tackled their guts out and there were some very hard hits throughout the 80 minutes.

Tries from two blokes totaling over 13ft between them kept the Rebels in touch but neither team were ever out of sight at any stage of the game, and when it was in the balance, only a late dubious penalty try awarded by a bloke that only watches the game on the telly that won them this game. It was a huge call and one that could have gone either way. The penalty try has largely disappeared from the game as referees opt to go with the less controversial decisions and rather sin-bin offenders rather than reward the attacking sides. Nic Phipps was held back as he hacked the ball towards the try line. He still had men to beat, and there must have been some doubt as whether he could outrun two international wingers to get to the ball, but he was infringed against and the rest is history.

The Stormers turned down at least 6 kickable penalties during the game which they will rue

A penalty with the last kick of the game sealed the win and denied the Stormers a losing bonus point, which to be honest they probably deserved. As the final whistle (hooter nowadays) came the Rebels’ players celebrated as though they had just saved one of their relatives from death row such was their jubilation. The question is though, will it be enough to keep the punters coming back through the doors. Does the Melbourne public want excitement or winners??? Only time will tell, but I can tell you immediately, if you start losing, then as quick as they come, the quicker they will go!!!!

Super XVs

MELBOURNE REBELS 30 – 21 STORMERS

Number of Events	TBC
Number of Sports	TBC
Gigs (Bands: Headlines + Support)	TBC