HK7s! Sunday! "Pass Me the Hemlock, Jeeves!"

"There will be great tears in Apia tonight!"

"Suva!"

"Suva? Are you sure?"

"Yes, the capital of Fiji is Suva."

"Right, as I was saying, there will be great tears in Suva tonight."

Just as the HK7s commentators said this, some people at the table behind us at Carnegies began talking about drinking hemlock and I thought "Yeah, pass me that cup!"

It's quite astonishing what a funk Fiji's loss to New Zealand caused me. Deep, deep sadness indeed.

And it wasn't just that we lost, it was HOW we lost.

It was NZ showing off that bugged me the most! In an earlier game, on Saturday,  a guy in the Kenyan team instantly grabbed the ball the nano-second the whistle blew to start the game and raced it up the field to score a try, and the commentators were all "Oh wow! Seven seconds from starting whistle. That must be the fastest try in HK7s EVER!"

Well, that's what also happened at the start of the Fiji-New Zealand Semi-Final! The whistle blew and within only about five seconds those dastardly Kiwis made a try. It was like the All Blacks had decided to show the Kenyans "That's not a quick try!  THIS is a quick try!" ... and Fiji let them do it!  Oh, the shame!

And then they let it happen AGAIN!

So the Kiwis are 14 to nil and Fiji starts a kerfuffle over some knee injury and it's clearly intended to break the NZ rhythm and the seconds are ticking away on the clock and I'm thinking "Fiji's going to regret that lost time!" ... and it was pointless time-wasting too because the minute after the play started up again, the Kiwis scored a third try!

19 to nil!  The shame, the shame!  But then Fiji got it together and scored a magnificent try and we all remembered at last why they are classed as one of the world's best teams.  

And that's the way things stood at half time.

Second half was magnificent and matched play but several errors or something costing Fiji their tries,  but the game stood at 19-14 and Fiji looked like they could take it easily ... except they ran out of time!

Yeah, that'll teach them to stop their silly kerfuffling!

So I'm there in Carnegies bar, in the deepest and saddest funk, surrounded by hordes of cheering Kiwis and thinking about drinking hemlock!  It's all so annoying I get out of there, refusing to watch the England vs Samoa semi-finals ("Great tears in Apia tonight!"), and lurk around Lockhart Road, sulking for over an hour until I recall it was only eight years ago that I actually thought "Ewwww! Yuck!" when someone gave me free HK7s tickets!

That was shortly after we arrived in Hong Kong and a Canadian woman - I forget her name - who had rooms close to us at our hotel-apartment, had a severe asthma attack after arriving back from HK7s Friday's games, and was on a stretcher being taken to hospital when I walked into the hotel lobby and, despite her respiratory distress, she pulled out an envelope and handed it to me saying "Please don't waste these!"

Her HK7s tickets ... and I regret to say I thought "Ewwww! Yuck! How could she imagine I'd even want these." and so I gave them away!  It was to Keith, but nonetheless I still can't believe there was ever a time I didn't dance with joy at being given free HK7s tickets! 


Anyway, there I was in my deep, deep funk over Fiji's loss and this memory of a time when I wouldn't have given a toss about such things certainly made me feel a little better about it ...

... but then I heard that Christchurch had just had a new series of earth tremors (the biggest 3.9) and recalled that the All Blacks said they were dedicating the tournament to the victims of the Christchurch earthquake and hoped winning the Cup would cheer them up, and were donating any winnings to the victims ...

... and I thought I had to be the worst person who ever lived to begrudge them anything ...

... so I went back to Carnegies to watch the finals for the Bowl and Shield and Plate.  And, yes, to cheer for New Zealand in the BIG CUP FINAL against England.


Congratulations New Zealand on winning the Hong Kong 7s for 2011 ... and let's all pretend I'm sincere about it ... although I am sincere about how nice the All Blacks were to do all this for Christchurch and do hope their win does cheer Christchurch up lots!