The Kiwis
New Zealand crowds aren’t big on singing, so it wasn’t until the last minute of the Rugby World Cup final, when Beauden Barrett dotted down under the posts to make victory sure, that the crowd of about 200 packed into the Cornerstone pub in Tauranga broke out in a chant of: “All Blacks! All Blacks!”
In a mixture of All Blacks jerseys of various vintage, as well as some Halloween dress-up dregs, supporters gathered at the pub, one of several along the Strand, the hospitality strip in the North Island coastal city, for a 5am kickoff. Inside, punters steadied their nerves with jugs of beer, bad coffee and bowls of undercooked chips.
The Cornerstone, along with hundreds of other establishments around the country, had shut its doors at 3am, as required by law, only to open them again an hour later, thanks to special legislation enacted just weeks before the tournament began that allowed licence-holders to open up at any hour, just as long as they were screening a Rugby World Cup game.
By quarter to five, the Cornerstone had shut its doors again, packed to the gunnels with about 200 fans. There was no sign of any Wallaby supporters. “We had a few Springbok jerseys in here for the semi-final,” said one bouncer.
Most had risen early for the big game, others had persevered through the night. One young man, wobbling on his feet, was having trouble keeping his eyes open. “I’m steamed, bro,” he told me just before kickoff. “Come on the ABs!”
The first roar came when the Australian captain Stephen Moore appeared, blood streaming from his nose. One of the bar staff was bleeding, too, having swept up a broken glass with his hand. Another man had blood creeping out of a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. It was Halloween face paint. I think.
There were sharp intakes of breath when All Black fly-half Dan Carter, who had been injured during the last two world cups, was left prone on the grass like a lame puppy after tasting Sekope Kepu’s forearm. But Carter recovered and he, along with the beloved captain, Richie McCaw, were cheered every time they were involved in play. There was a lot of cheering.
At half time, with the All Blacks leading 16-3, the mood was buoyant. “Never in doubt,” said Steve, who had been up all night celebrating his 33rd birthday. “I’ve lost my hat, my mate fell asleep and got kicked out, all my other mates left, but I don’t care. No way I’m missing this.”
When Ben Smith was sin-binned and the Wallabies came back to within four points, some doubt crept in. As a bright, low sun beamed through the windows, some folded their arms, others watched through their fingers. Even a policeman on his rounds stood by the door starting nervously at the screen.
The public mood in 2015 may have been less fretful than four years ago, when, as host nation, New Zealanders reminded each other at every available opportunity that they had not won the World Cup since the first tournament in 1987, but nonetheless there has been saturation media coverage.
All Black stars, most often McCaw or Carter, have graced the front pages almost daily since the squad was named at the end of August. The Friday night news on the main broadcaster, TVNZ, featured an interview with a cheese maker who had managed to perfect a black mozzarella. “Everything in New Zealand this week is coming up black,” the reporter enthused.
Supermarket shelves have been coming up black, too, filled with endless All Black branded, silver-fern emblazoned products ranging from chocolate and cereal to energy drinks and nappies. The country’s biggest milk brand, Anchor, has been temporarily packaged in completely blacked-out plastic bottles.
At the Cornerstone, itself festooned in black flags, breakfast celebrations went up a gear as Carter fired over a dropped goal, followed by a penalty kick from beyond the halfway line. Hands drummed on tables and feet stomped. When Barrett scored the room erupted.
The Aussies
Australian Eastern Daylight Time, kick-off for the Rugby World Cup final was 3am: a neither-here-nor-there hour that presented a challenge for Wallabies fans. Too early to cruise through into Sunday without a nap later in the day; too late to tag on to the end of an all-nighter. Or maybe that’s loser talk.
Judging by the spooky costumes and lederhosen among the crowd packed into Sydney’s Marlborough hotel, the sprawling garden bar was the final destination of a long night beginning either at a Halloween party or an Oktoberfest event held in a park in the central city. (One All Blacks supporter had hedged his bets as a zombie Richie McCaw.)
The Marly, as it is locally known, was one of the many pubs along the main street of the inner-western suburb of Newtown to be screening the final. Its capacity just about exceeds 500 people and it was close to that at kick-off, with at least a couple of hundred in the front room, a betting lounge given over entirely to the game.
With New Zealand supporters outnumbered by at least four to one, the typically lascivious, festive mood of any bar in the small hours of Sunday morning is tempered by good-natured but earnest rivalry.
“Hey, Kiwis,” remarks a Wallabies supporter, passing a young woman with ferns painted on her cheeks on his way to the bar just before kick-off. “You’re really attractive, but fuck you guys.”
All Blacks supporters started out with a low profile.
“I came here with my Australian mates, and I’m like, ‘Come on, tidy Kiwis’,” says one woman at the bar, somewhat apologetically. She goes to order a drink just as Advance Australia Fair concludes, to overwhelming applause; the bartender shakes her head wordlessly, with a one-shouldered shrug.
Wallabies supporters restrain themselves from sledging during the All Blacks’ traditional haka, but from God Defend New Zealand onwards, the rest is fair game. A boo starts up as Dan Carter approaches a penalty kick at the seven-minute mark. But the ball sails through and pockets of New Zealanders in the room, emboldened, begin to make themselves known. A bouncer wearing a hi-vis vest is particularly jubilant – but the bigger cheer is still heard at the cut, immediately after, to the Wallabies captain with his shirt off.
The first points to Australia are met with ground-shaking applause and a palpable sense of relief. A young man holds his hands aloft in victory as he is frog-marched out the door by bouncers.
“This is the best game ever,” says a man wearing a curly blond wig under a sweatband and a Wallabies jersey – immediately recognisable as Nick “The Honey Badger’” Cummins, despite his glasses and dark beard – to the stranger next to him. “Beautiful.”
He introduces himself as Billy “The Thump” Thompson of Sydney. He doesn’t introduce his “new friend” by name because he doesn’t know it, but they’ve graduated to back-slapping by the 29-minute mark.
By 34 minutes, there’s some grumbling about the referee. The feeling amongst Wallabies supporters – and even a few of the more clear-eyed Kiwis – that “every 50-50 call seems to be going New Zealand’s way”.
“Could the ball be further forward? You fuckwit,” The Thump’s friend, who refuses to give his name to either the Guardian or The Thump (“There’s absolutely no way”), yells with genuine anguish at the television monitor. As Carter approaches the penalty kick, he repeats in an undertone, almost pensively: “Could the ball be further forward?”
“Miss. Go on, Carter. Miss. Miss.”
Another supporter, hopefully: “He’s gonna miss!”
He does not miss. One man, wearing neither black nor green nor gold, shows his colours in his ear-to-ear grin. But the confident, conclusive try by Nehe Milner-Skudder at 38 minutes flushes out every All Blacks supporter in the room and even those outside of it: a woman calls her brother in New Zealand on Skype and rallies round those decked out in ferns.
The mood is turning tense. “They’re just the better team,” says a Wallabies supporter wearing lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat despairingly.
But at half time, The Thump remains “absolutely invigorated” and cheerfully confident. “Dead set – we’re good. We’re covering defence; we’re strong; there’s no tries scored. We’re going to come back.”
And if you do not, you can blame the referee, already referred to by some as “Mr New Zealand”, right?
The Thump’s expression turns suddenly serious beneath his platinum curls. “No, not at all. That’s not how it works. During the game you can blame him. But once the decision’s made, the decision’s made, and you’ve just got to accept it.”
Australia beat Scotland, and they are going to “beat the fucking All Blacks – ‘scuse my language, we’re going to beat the All Blacks as well”, says The Thump.
It doesn’t look likely, Thump.
“You just don’t understand the game well enough to understand the nuances,” he says good-naturedly. “My confidence levels are high.”
His new friend doesn’t feel the same. “But it could be worse … We’ll get there. We just need to … I don’t know, like – we’re kind of there? We just need a little bit of luck. It feels like the game’s started and now it’s half time, and nothing’s happened.”
The Thump laughs. “Wow, incisive commentary there, mate: ‘It feels like the game’s started, then it got to 40 minutes, then it stopped going, and then it was the end of play.’”
In another corner of the bar, Ellen Henrich – described by her friend as a “mad Wallabies nut” – is wearing a stony expression beneath her Día de Muertos facepaint. “I’m not too happy. It was a good start, but we just fell apart at the end. It’s a disgrace.”
It all rests on a strong second half, she says: “I have not gone to bed yet. I’m hoping it’s worth it.”
But the try by Ma’a Nonu minutes into the second half seems to dispel Australian fans’ hopes for good, setting in motion a steady stream of them out the door. And it goes from bad to worse.
As Carter converts for a second time, The Thump’s friend closes his eyes and shakes his head. At 75 minutes, most of the noise from within the bar is from the television.
Then it’s all over, and the New Zealand woman who Skyped her brother is crying, and the house lights come on, and there’s a rush for the door.
The Thump is no less cheerful for the loss. “What can I say. What happened, what happened. Both teams put up a good defence, both teams put up a good attack. It was a wonderful game. You can’t blame that on the ref like the Scottish did. It just is. It just is. It is what it is.
“It was a beautiful game. The stronger team won, and it was fantastic. What a game. What. A. Game.”
