After a few days rest and relaxation at the Brown household, some excellent stories about the antics of my old man in his heyday, including pictures and THAT video from the 2005 Lions tour of New Zealand and me developing a new recipe for ginger chicken, I was prepped for some more rugby action. Neils son Gareth and his mate Jason picked me up around 3pm and we got ready for a long night in Hamilton for the New Zealand Vs Japan match. We parked our stuff at Hamish’s house and marched in on a pub crawl that included Keystone and the Quadrant, where we met Neil and Linda and Gareth’s cousin Rhys who used to play rugby in the Crawshays with my brother Nick. We watched the All Blacks game, and predictably it was a demolition, and soon after we joined the boys in several drinking establishments.
Not soon after I started to lag and decided to walk home, incredibly pissed, and only having seen Hamilton for about 45mins before it got dark. Amazingly I put my homing beacon on and managed to get back to Hamish’s via Mcdonalds and break into his house. This earned me the reputation as the golden lion (probably based on the hair). I passed out around 3.30am and heard the boys get in around 4.30am.
We woke to a tremendous story of confusion. Although all the boys had crashed in the same bedroom Jason had somehow woken up stark bullock naked in the living room and was so disorientated he didn’t know where he was and started opening doors and going into rooms, starkers. He went into our hosts housemates room before finding ours and re-clothing, total hilarity. I was charged with making breakfast and whipped up a good feed before we started thinking about setting off to Auckland. Hamish, a resident of Hamilton and ‘expert’ on roads to Auckland, kept giving us timings that were just so inaccurate it became a running joke ‘fifteen minutes or less’. We got to the apartment Jason and Gareth had rented and got a cab over to the Kingslander, right next to Eden park and drank our way through the first two games, I lagged but alcohol soon cleared that up. I met Chris from Fiji and we had a few cheekys before I set off with Hamish to the game.
We were luckily under cover as the rain came down hard especially in the second half. Ireland came out with a great game plan patience and heart to turn the world cup on its head and banish Australia to the runner up spot and a quarter final with South Africa. We sat next to Graham, a welsh fan from Llandudno who was about as die hard rugby fan as you’ll get, and generous with the beers.
After the game we all met (except Gareth, who went missing) and got the free train into central Auckland, which went off in a Sea of Irish triumph. We tried the Munster and Father Teds, Irish bars that we ridiculously rammed out. We ended up in bar one which was cheap, on the street so got a great atmosphere and for me superb as it had a hot tub.
So of course I got in. We hit BK and watched Jason almost get run over trying to get us a taxi back, where an Aussie fan was talking shit about getting mugged by cops. Of course we all laughed at him, to which he replied ‘wait till you come to Australia’ and Gareth replied ‘I’m not going to its shit’. Shenanigans over I crashed on the floor.
We had breakfast just out of town and then headed via the back roads to Hamilton for the game. I managed to see my old rugby coach Mugsy and his wife before heading to the ground to watch the game in a corporate box. I was gutted as I didn’t get to see Ieuan Morecraft, Rob Pierce and a few other of the boys, but did catch up with Adan dressed as a whale after the match. Being a Wales fan is tough and the game threw out all emotions and tension I could handle.
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