Daniel Carey’s Rugby World Cup Diary: Leaving it all behind at just the wrong time

Leaving it all behind at just the wrong time


Our man in New Zealand had divided loyalties last Sunday

Postcard
Daniel Carey

LAST Friday, the New Zealand Herald ran a story about a half-goat, half-sheep that had been found in Taieri in the country’s south island. The animal had the head, legs and bleat of a goat, but the body of a lamb, and was probably the result of a union between a feral buck and a ewe. Such creatures are, apparently, known as ‘geep’ (goat-sheep … geddit?), although one presumably could make a case for ‘shoat’ too.
I felt a bit like a geep last Sunday while watching the second Rugby World Cup semi-final between New Zealand and Australia ... unsure of which camp I belonged with. The All Blacks have played the best rugby and I’ve wanted them to win the tournament since it became clear that Ireland wouldn’t. But knowing that I would be in Sydney for the World Cup final, I figured a Wallabies victory would make next weekend more interesting for me. So I was torn.
I watched the game in the pub equivalent of a geep, an English-Irish pub called The Rose and Shamrock (“sounds like an Old Firm derby,” my uncle commented when I told him the name). It was there I had witnessed France struggle past 14-man Wales the night before.
Leaving Auckland to go to New Plymouth on the day the competition kicked off, I felt like I was leaving the world’s biggest party. The fact that I’m heading for Australia four days before the Kiwis aim to bridge 24 years of hurt has underlined my penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, it was fun while it lasted … and if France somehow win the Webb Ellis Cup, I might be as well off out of the land of the long white cloud!
The last of the ten places on my self-devised tour of New Zealand was Palmerston North, home to the New Zealand Rugby Museum. The British comic John Cleese was less than impressed with the town, noting with a Basil Fawlty-esque flourish: “If you ever do want to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick.”
That had me worried until I read about Palmerston North’s response: Cleese’s name now graces a compost heap at the local landfill. Crossing the road on my first night there, I pressed the pedestrian light button, and as well as a little green man, I was also greeted by what sounded very much like the sound of a referee’s whistle. Or maybe the beer had gone to my head.
Despite John Cleese’s impressions, it seems the people of Palmerston North do have a sense of humour. In the window of an outdoor store, a t-shirt carried the words: ‘There’s no crying in rugby (unless you’re Australian)’, while another clothing shop contained a black all-in-one intended for a baby. “I’ve been inside for nine months,” it read. “Now let’s play RUGBY!”
The next major tournament on my to-do list is Euro 2012, so it was no great hardship to get up at 6am last Wednesday morning to see Ireland-Armenia. (That’s a lie. Of course it was a hardship. I set three alarms, then sprinted down the street as a mini-skirted reveller popped into McDonald’s on her way home from a night out. I am not a morning person.)
Like Giovanni Trapattoni’s side, it took the man sorting out the TV signal a while to get the job done, but we got there. I’m due home two days before the first leg of the play-off in Estonia. Fancy a trip to Tallinn?