TWICKENHAM

So, man, what a weekend this turned out to be!

I left home in the morning around 10am, and walked down to Primark in Kilbirn quickly, cos I needed a black scarf, and a small black bag, and a coffee! I caught the train, got hassled by many English Supporters on the extremly squashed train, was offered beers and ciders on the journey there, and finally made it to Richmond, where I met Ingrid.

We had planned on going to get some food, but that never happened cos we found the cheap shuttle to Twickenham, so we decided to get on that and see what happened when we got to the stadium. We got there, and it was like a massive party, fanzone type area. With a big band, trailers of food and drinks, big promo activities, all kinda of fun stuff! We found ourselves a somewhat less shady looking burger trailer, got something to eat, marvelled at the crowds and the atmosphere before we went into the stadium.

The stands didn't open for another half hour or so, and there was quite a big crowd gathering on the concoursey bit, so we decided to go check that out. Turns out that was where the teams came through. They didn't get a seperate, private entrance like at Westpac, they have to walk a gauntlet of people to get to their changing rooms. So we made a few friends while we waitied for the teams to turn up. It wasn't much, but the band played, and we cheered (but most of the AB's had massive doof doof headphones on) and then we went to find out seats.

I don't quite get why England wore purple

RICHIE

SEE! DOOF DOOF

 We found our seats, which were in the lower tier, so it meant we could pretty much go and stand pitch side while the teams warmed up. Again, somehow we happened to be right down the All Blacks end, so we watched them warm up, saw Justin Marshall, and the Sky Guys do their cross, and were just generally in awe of the fact that we were at Twickenham!

The Sky Cross to Kiwiland

We went to our seats for the anthem and Haka. The Anthems were ok, nothing special, at least they had a decent person singing them and they did both languages. For the Haka though, it was DROWNED out! We couldn't hear anything. The stupid English were singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"....grrr. Also, we need a song to sing back at them. Po Karekareana just isn't quite right (Plus, no one really knows the words!).

This is what was on the field for the anthems.....

And we settled down to watch a game. It was a great game for the first half, of course cos we were down the AB's end. Kieran Read scored right in front of us, yay! We had an equal lot of Kiwis and Poms round us, so there was a lot of banter which was fun. I even saved the spider on the Pom's rugby shirt, much to the digust of many of the girls around!

I went to get drinks at half time, my god the line for the male toilets wasn't even a line, it was like a bloody mosh pit. I didn't walk past the female toilets, but I just hope it was a little more civilised.

Anyway, game pics -

After the game, we went halfway round the stadium, cos thats where they were giving Dan his 100th cap and all the exciting presentations. I thought it wasn't nice that the English team just went straight into their changing room and didn't wait around for the presentations. But we did, and a whole bunch of Kiwis, and thats what matters!

I was pleased with these numbers.

Again, I saw TJ and he was walking back into the sheds, gave him a call and he saw me, waved and went it. Very important for later on!

The bars at the stadium were open for 2 hours past the game finishing, so Ingrid and I went to get a drink and then we went back out to where the teams walked in eariler on.

We were just standing there, chatting away to each other and this guy (Tongan/Kiwi) started to talk to us. Obviously, we started talking back, cos us Kiwis are too cool not to. He was great. And this is where I shall finish this blog, and start the next one, for the real big story starts here........