The All Blacks

The All Blacks are New Zealand's national rugby team. On Saturday night we went into Auckland to watch them play the Wallabies (Australia’s national team). The match was part of the Tri Nations tournament which includes South Africa in addition to New Zealand and Australia. The Rugby World Cup is being hosted in New Zealand starting in September, but we decided to go to this match instead because the price of the World Cup tickets is much higher. We read up on rugby rules before we went to the game, but there were still a lot of things that we did not understand.

We got into Auckland early on Saturday and walked around the Mt. Eden and Kingsland sections of Auckland before having our pre-match meal at a local alehouse with some good beer. Mt. Eden is an old part of town that has not experienced much redevelopment so most of the houses were original homes and had a lot of character which made walking interesting. The match was held at Eden Park, New Zealand’s largest stadium, and there was a modern rugby record crowd of just over 50,000. The large crowd made it easy to get into the game even though we didn’t understand all of the details.

After the match we tried to join the crowds at the local bars, but the queues were so long that we ended up having a late-night burger and going back to our hostel to fall asleep. The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast at a local coffee shop in Mt. Eden Village before heading back to the farm.

The All Blacks won 30-14.