Today I had a very interesting sporting experience – I went to my second ever professional rugby game. If you remember, during my New Zealand trip – while I was in Queenstown I went to the National 7s rugby tournament that was being held there. The game was pretty fast, but they only played for like 15 minutes total and that was just not enough time for me to get into the game and see how it developed. This time I went to a full 15 man rugby match featuring Manu Samoa (the Samoan rugby team) vs. The Junior All Blacks Team (the second best team in NZ, behind the "All Blacks" team). So how did this come about?
Well a friend of mine from church, Glenn, asked me about a week or so ago if I would like to go to a rugby match. And while I am critical of the sport, I was willing to give it a shot so I accepted the offer. At that time I didn't know who Manu Samoa was playing – so I was just going to have the experience regardless of the outcome of the match. I was picked up from my house at about 1:30pm and we drove over to Paul/Viv's house (because their house is located directly across from Apia Park – where the game was taking place) and as we were driving through town, you knew something big was going on because usually downtown Apia is pretty dead after 12:30pm on a Saturday (everything closes at 12:30pm). I also noticed that a lot of people were wearing blue shirts and I asked Glenn what was up with that. He said that Manu Samoa has recently released their new team uniform (which is a lightweight shirt, not like the uniforms we use in Football) and everyone was buying them up. That answered another question I had which was the fact that about a week or so ago, I saw a lot of stores start selling the Manu Samoa Jersey after not seeing it sold in stores for the past 18 months. Even though the shirts run about $200WST I may get one just because it's a nice shirt and not something I could get back in the states (easily).
Anyway, the folks going to the game was an all guys crew – Glenn, Genius, Zonder, Pati, Paul, Lati and myself. After parking the car safely at the Phillips house, we walked over to Apia Park (the newly renovated Apia Park). This would be my first time back in the park since last year – the only time I was in the Park before was when my school had a rugby match then. The biggest addition to the Park (which is more like a stadium) was the fact that they have real seats now in the grandstands – before you had to sit on the concrete floor. So obviously, it was a lot more comfortable and seemed more like a real sporting event to me then some third-rate event. This was also the first time I saw a sports atmosphere that kinda felt like home – people wearing the team jerseys, folks wearing face paint, the requisite drunks – it was all there. After a bit of waiting around, they finally got around to singing the New Zealand and Samoan national anthem (unfortunately, neither one of them ended with the words 'Play Ball' so they didn't have quite the same impact as the US national anthem at a sporting event).
As for the game itself, they played two 40 minute halves with a 10 minute intermission so there was enough time for me to understand and get into the groove of the game. I did realize that one of the problems I have with rugby is the fact that it's kind of hard to maintain that fan momentum that can kind of build up in a Football game. While losing the ball is common in football, it happened almost every 3 minutes in this match. And for about a good 5-7 minutes it was nothing but a kickfest as the players kept kicking the ball away from each other. Just from a fan perspective, it was hard for me to really get excited about anything because there was just a bit to much back and forth of the ball between the two teams for me. As for the two teams themselves, the Junior All Blacks had a gameplan and executed it throughout the entire match – for the most part, they wanted to isolate the Manu Samoa players on their side of field so it would be easier for them to score – and they accomplished that goal. As Glenn told me, it just appeared that the Jr. All Blacks were a more cohesive team and worked together, while the Manu Samoa team acted more like individuals (and as NBA players know, doing that doesn't win you a lot of games) and thus they were just clobbered by the team work of the Junior All Blacks. But this is the first time that any All Blacks team has played in Samoa, so it was a historic occasion just being there to see the match. While the overall game was one sided, Manu Samoa did score on a try and the place just exploded with excitement – you would have thought Samoa was going to actually win the game (had they won the game – wow, I would have liked to see the aftermath of that). But alas they didn't – I believe the score was Manu Samoa 10 / Jr. All Blacks 31.
At the very least, I can now say I've seen both versions of rugby – the 7s and the full 15 versions – and I still like Football more. Just seems more organized and I can get into the momentum of the game easier. But like I said, this was a good experience and I'm definitely glad I went. Now, if I could only watch a professional soccer match here I would have given all the 'Worlds' sports a chance…. L8r.
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