New Zealand is sport mad. Which is a good, good thing, as I can quite happily nurse a few beverages on the sofa watching pretty much any sport… even found myself watching a little bit of Netball (don’t knock it… it’s big business here!) and Crown-Green Bowls! The latter started to wear thin after about… hmmm… 2 minutes! Overweight OAPS gently rolling the ball down to the jack time after time.
Sky Sports inevitably do a damn fine job in broadcasting all of this sporting sweetness, but there is one nightly sports roundup show which tickles my fancy. And as I promised in an earlier post, my next ‘NZ like’ posting would be non-foody related… so therefore I give you something else I love about NZ. And that is…
The Crowd Goes Wild
Now, I love this half-hour nightly slot of sporting banter, as they don’t take themselves anywhere like seriously. The presenters do a good job of taking the piss out of pretty much everything in a completely unscripted fashion… plus… one of them – Mark Richardson the ex-kiwi cricketer – is a Spurs fan! God bless ‘im!
Like most Englishmen, I can’t go long without feeling the need to watch a live Football match… and when I say ‘Football’, I mean real Football; ‘Soccer’ for those uneducated readers of this blog!
On Sunday, I was invited over by some friends to the Sandringham area of Auckland, to watch Auckland City FC v Waitakere United in a “Roll Up! Roll Up! Winner Takes All” final match in the Oceania Champions League. Waitakere United were top of the table by a point, so needed to avoid defeat in order to keep top-dog status and be in with a chance of representing Oceania in the FIFA Club World Cup. Just getting into this is worth $500,000! Mega-bucks for amateur teams of this size. Auckland City needed to win to grab top spot.
The match finished 2-2… so not really a winner-takes-it-all scenario, rather a draw-takes-it-all! Waitakere duly took the honours, much to their delight… it was kinda a local derby, which added a little spice. I was very impressed by the Waitakere Number 9… a tricky little striker called Benjamin Totori who grabbed both the goals to make it pretty safe for the Waitak’s!
I must say, it was a novelty watching a footy match sitting on a grass bank behind the goal, on picnic rugs. The sun beating down, tropical plants in front of me… and no-one getting their head kicked in by vicious rival fans! The fans sitting literally 2 feet away from the goalposts, were at one stage politely asked over the tannoy to “move a little bit back in case you get hit, as the players can strike the ball quite hard and it will hurt”. Awesome!
Below is a photo taken on me sexy ‘lil iphone as Auckland City are equalising from the spot.
