Kudos Kiwis!

I have no fingernails. They are bitten down to the red, raw quick!  It's all France's fault.

You have undoubtedly already heard that the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup. 8 to 7!

 Friend Luce took this photo. Isn't it wonderful!

Oh yeah! Go All Blacks! Great feasting at the marai last night and for many days to come.

But here's the curious thing: We all knew that France only got into the Finals literally by "luck of the draw" - previously pitted against such weak teams in the earliest matches - and only two weeks ago they were stomped into the ground by the All Blacks, and it seemed like they were being called The Worst Team ever to get into the Finals of RWC for good reason ... so this really should have been a shoe-in for New Zealand!

However you should have seen that match.  Ahhhh! Never has there been a game so closely contested and so ... FRAUGHT! I know I'm never usually generous and fair-minded where the French are concerned - Remember Muaroa!! -  but I really have to hand it to them because this was a wonderful game which could easily have gone either way, always so close that I doubt there are fingernails left anywhere in the rugby watching world.

We went out into Lockhart Road looking for a seat in a sports-bar a full hour before the game started but ...

... there wasn't one to be had anyplace at street level, all packed in like sardines in a tin and already spreading out into the street, so we tried the basement bars ...

... and they were the same, so then we tried the upper storey bars and it wasn't until we got to the 5th floor that we found a single unpleasantly located table still vacant in one called Trafalgar. Yayyy! Since the Haka was about to begin we realised beggars can't be choosers and we were definitely ready to beg.

And it wasn't until we were seated we realised we were packed around with Frenchies ...

 In the middle of our own French scrum!

... but the line-up had started and we weren't moving anywhere.

"Why would any French person come to a bar named Trafalgar?" says Keith, because, as you know, The Battle of Trafalgar had them entirely routed.  "They're already admitting defeat!" I sniggered because I was still then full of confidence ...

... so full I hadn't even lit a candle to Kwan Yin this time.

 During the All Blacks and Wallabies match,

before I realised that the tassels were green-and-gold -

the sporting colours of Australia - so 

I took them off and replaced them with 

black ribbons!  Go All Blacks!

Quickly regretted it. The game started and, right from the start, it was so close and the French were so on fire, there were a great many times when I considered racing home to light that candle.

Prior to the game, in all our excited chatter, we were guessing at a 30-5 win to NZ, but not Keith. He was predicting a hard fight with either team to win and in the end it'd just come down to luck and didn't he nail it!

But the highlights?  What leaps out was just how gorgeous the French captain was. Like, such a seriously beautiful man! Both those team captains were.  It was like they could have been voted into their post on their eye-candy-ness, but then that French captain scored their only try, so there's obviously so much more to him than just that and I felt so mean-spirited that I'd been judging him on his looks alone.

The other big thing for me was that big sookie Frenchie breaking down and bawling his eyes out when he was pulled out of the game, and the other benched French player giving him a comforting cuddle.  Oh for heaven's sake: THIS IS RUGBY, GUYS!!!! THERE ARE NO TEARS AND CUDDLES IN RUGBY!!!  Watching that outrageousness, I kept thinking of that new Graham Norton game where you have to decide if a metrosexual-looking man is "Gay or French?" Close call here but either way it ain't rugby!

What else?  Oh yeah, when they played the National Anthems all the French sang along with theirs but no one really knew the words so there were lots of Lalalalalas until the chorus, which everyone knew and they threw their arms out, with waitresses dodging, as they loudly sang along.  And Keith and I decided we'd stand up to sing the Kiwi Anthem, just to be provocative, but then Hayley Westerna sang the Maori version and we didn't know the words ...



 ...  and although it was so very beautiful, we then and there decided that someone had to tell New Zealand that singing a National Anthem in Maori may be all very well and good down there on the marai, but it really does make NZ look provincial and negligible when they take it out onto the world stage!

Oh, and the only other thing of note among the highlights is that the various Chinese girlfriends of Trafalgar's Frenchies,  all cheered when the All Blacks made their try!  Yeah, you GO girlfriends!

But it was such a good afternoon!  And my fingernails will, now that the Rugby World Cup is over, grow back!