Field Theory: Four Years Ago
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I'd also like to add that the festivities had started hours earlier for me - Avondale Primary ran their own opening ceremony, every class had chosen a team and dressed and face-painted accordingly. The hall echoed to the massed chants (a little oddity "U S A, U S A" was an especially penetrating one!). Zane's eyes boggled at the sight, and Marcus chanted "Go, Canada" with gusto. Then the Principal gave an address that put John Key's to shame, the kids were well rarked by the end, as he introduced the guest speaker, a veteran from the famous Manu Samoa team, who shared the motivational secret that had preceded their famous victory over Argentina. He then did the challenge dance of his team. I noticed lots of wet eyes amongst the Samoan parents.
Then the main event began, two senior classes clashed in a game of "ripper rugby", a version of touch. One of the classes did a haka at least as spirited as the one given by the All Blacks last night, the other class stood their ground on halfway, as the tension mounted.
In a curious parallel of last night's game, one team was clearly dominant, with at least 5 very talented little athletes, but the other team had resolve. So whilst red scored try after try (I got a fantastic full field length one on camera), the white team worked hard for one try, capitalizing on a knock on, and the pressure eventually got the smallest boy on the field over the line, and he was patted on the back by friend and foe alike, as the whole school cheered.
I then attempted to find a decent flag, having the 2-dollar shops of Avondale at easy reach. But no, they had done roaring trade, and no All Blacks, nor even just a Silver Fern, were to be found in 10 shops I tried. I had to settle for the tedious old Jack&Stars. Wearing my All Blacks shirt, I enjoyed trash talk from locals the entire time, with the exception of the Chinese, who would seem to be All Blacks supporters without exception (if they support any team...I expect they don't care much, but were enjoying the festive mood).
My favourite trash talk was from one of the Red team, wallowing in his victory, who said to me "Marcus's Dad? I'm sorry to tell you this, sir, but your team will be thrashed tonight, that's just how it is!". His Tongan friends all smiled and nodded, and I smiled and wished them well.
And they did very well. I had my fist in the air for their try, a very well earned culmination of nearly 20 minutes of pressure and control. Well done, Tonga! Good luck against France, then it's the quarters!
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Whilst I think of it, one person who would have been spectacularly pleased was my friend, Pulusea, who won the ANZ competition to make an ad for them to welcome the world to the RWC, which they are screening on TV. That's him in the front row, with the glasses, beanie, and beard.
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recordari, in reply to
Woah. I don’t think Jack was saying that.
Yeah, I didn’t think I was either.
Great morning for end of season Football. 700+ junior plays at Three Kings after another perfect season. We do this sport thing well here, overall.
I tend to look on the positive side as a rule, and there was lots of that. It would also seem that anger and finger pointing isn’t going to make things better, so a calm retrospective analysis would likely be a good thing. The weather tomorrow might be more conducive to quiet reflection. Or the Romania Scotland game this afternoon.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Bloody hell Ben, that’s a bit philosophical (and correct).
I've gone all melancholic.... for a minute
Then I recalled the fireworks of last night, with the skyperdermic exploding with a rainbow of colourful explosions, the crowds and water below, the wormos all dayglo like, the faint echo as the band played on, then, I realised, I had a bit of fun. Oh and yes ,there was a game of rugby in a field up the road. ;) -
bmk,
I'm hoping the Argentina-England game tonight will be a good one. I'll be hoping for Argentina to provide the first upset of the cup - but certainly not expecting it.
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BenWilson, in reply to
It would also seem that anger and finger pointing isn’t going to make things better, so a calm retrospective analysis would likely be a good thing
Yup, if you actually used MSM news as your source, you'd think that the mood at the wharfs was ugly, when in fact it wasn't. I'm pretty sure everyone there got that the numbers pressing in were unexpected, and that meant plans had to change. Furthermore, it was a change for the better, that such a crowd is just never seen outside of a rock concert, and is a real spectacle of its own.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
SNAFU
Actually if we weren't all treated like Neanderthals and had been left to our own devices, buses, trains and autos would I believe have managed ok. By telling the country to use public transport caused many an unnecessary problem. Our roads were almost carless (don't get me wrong, I found a car park easy near Victoria Park) making driving easy and pleasant. The only road problem we experienced was where one of our main arterial routes (not supposed to be) was blocked and closed off, leaving cars with no alternative but to uturn and/or watch a few fans leaving the game early.
Also my view of the Queens Wharf for I was not far from it, there looked like there was lots of room, and I could see a bunch of people crushed up against the fence on Quay St, of which I opined it was good to be where we were, and then I forgot about them. Sad but true. -
That was a brilliant (armchair) spectacle, all of it. O for awesome.
But yes, there could well be issues with slick brand marketing culture and government agendas dominating over an operational preparedness focus in the Auckland RWC organising effort.
Encouraging people to all come on down and stroke McCully's cloud was always going to overstretch a transport network that can barely cope with just a big game on its own. Waterfront crowd control seems to have been hopelessly undercooked, with only a couple of hundred police for the whole area. Our tolerant national character has been a blessing.
Frontline staff did brilliantly on the night with what they had, but notwithstanding Craig's hurt feelings the train operators continued a long trend of not communicating adequately with their customers. Part of the failure of the contracting agency to hold them accountable for resolving that ultimately goes back to government policy decisions over the last couple of decades about the power relationship in contracting PT services (felt more in Auckland's buses actually).
Anyway, let's make damn sure that it's fixed in some way before the final. Also that people also see this as a dry run for what the city will be like in a couple of decades time and take the larger political lessons. There are some big decisions being made about priorities that lock us into a particular future which is unsustainable and resembles some mythical quarter-acre past. However, one commenter on the AKT thread probably has it right on that front:
[Steven Joyce] is not even going to BLINK at this minor mishap. If he cares at all, he’s grinning, not feeling embarrassed. He’ll turn this to his favour with the ease of the political pro that he is. Watch him spout the “events like this show that we will always need a good road network, because PT can’t do everything” line for the forseeable future.
Will be some interesting manouvering by Len Brown and Auckland leaders (Mayoral statement coming soon). This is a golden opportunity for the national political oppostion to step up and coherently communicate how their vision for transport, urban design and economic development is better for New Zealanders and our guests. If they stuff that chance (or tell us to 'wait for the election campaign'), then they richly deserve oblivion.
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if you actually used MSM news as your source, you’d think that the mood at the wharfs was ugly
In all fairness it all seemed to be a huge success from offshore, Sure there were a few niggles, that's par for the course when hosting. Personal inconveniences aside, New Zealand represented. Nice writing Ben.
That was a brilliant (armchair) spectacle, all of it. O for awesome.
Indeed
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Len Brown announces investigation.
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Brown said stoppages occurred because people feeling unsafe or constrained repeatedly pressed emergency safety buttons. In older carriages, this brought trains to a halt.
He said the performance by trains was "not satisfactory at all" and improvements in reliability and communication would be needed.
For those who did not make events, Brown said he would not want travellers left "out of pocket".
Mr Brown expressed confidence in train operator Veolia and blamed Auckland's ancient rail stock.
He praised Eden Park and said the public behaved with good-humour and patience. There was a "fabulous atmosphere".
Veoila head Graham Sibery offered his second public apology in three days for failures on the service.
Sibery said huge numbers of passengers added to a regular Friday commuters presented an exceptional situation. He said weekend matches would present fewer problems and trains would be able to move "manageable numbers" of people.
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A friend just texted, she is on a girly road trip to New Plymouth, to watch Ireland beat USA. Go Ireland ! :)
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Setting up to fail, much? Los Angeles went further with the Great American Streetcar affair, but not by much.
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Sacha, in reply to
Setting up to fail, much?
which aspect?
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AKT gives more detail about what went wrong.
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You know how tightly the All Blacks have prepared for the RWC when you see a haka as clean and intense as this one. Sent shivers down me watching it last night.
And because it's there, the second try of the night.
Tonga were outplayed, and really didn't have much in it, something which has a lot to do with the nature of rugby as it's played at the highest level. Ordinarily I'd be happy with a win, but it was disappointing, really. If you wanted to show the world what rugby was about - asymmetry in teams meaning that upsets are rare and the stronger team almost always wins, this was a pretty good example.
Still, more than enough to be happy about at the moment. I might pick up my camera and take a few photos of all the Tongan flags I see fluttering outside my window.
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All in all, I had a pretty good night-didn't watch the game, stayed on the Shore and watched the fireworks from Mt Victoria. It felt like a pleasant night was had by all.
I'm confused by the focus on the mishaps with the trains, though. Yes, there does need to be an investigation because these aren't new issues, only issues occurring on a greater scale. But the fact that both ferries and buses from the Shore to the city were suspended for a while seems to have rated scarcely a mention, as is the fact that buses were also overloaded and not picking up passengers.
I left work at 4:30 pm (I would have loved to have left earlier, but my boss was having none of it) and spent more than two hours struggling to get back home via bus along Lake Rd, which was gridlocked-by private cars, not buses-for hours. Had I decided to take up a friend on their invitation and meet them for dinner in Grey Lynn instead, it would certainly have taken much longer than that to get anywhere. None of this is acceptable, yet the focus on trains means we'll probably just have a shrug and a grin from the usual suspects, instead of a serious investigation into why our city's infrastructure broke down and stopped doing what it was supposed to do.
I mean, it's not as though TPTB can claim they didn't know that the RWC was on, right?
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A lot of it to me seems to come down to lack of planning and managing pedestrian traffic around venues. Were those who know about crowd control listened to?
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Radio Sport’s Rugby World Cup 2011 anthem …
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I had a lovely night - got my mojo back - for last night's game at least. Yay!
Wellington Batucada were performing in the Fanzone at 6pm after the Wellington International Ukelele Orchestra (w00t!) and we were planning to parade around the Fanzone keeping all the fans entertained.
However, there were so many people there by 6pm that once we'd made our way into the middle of the zone we were completely hemmed in by the crowds standing 10-deep watching us and it was clear we weren't going to be able to do any parading at all. We had a great time! The crowd seemed to really enjoy our performance and we got lots of cheers and smiles and applause all the way through.
After we finished our set we were able to leave all our drums in the Green Room and venture back into the Fanzone to watch the opening ceremony and then the game on the big screen.
Can I say how completely fabulous and awe-inspiring I thought the opening ceremony was? The graphics projected onto the performance arena were amazing - I'd love to know how they did that - it was jaw-droppingly good.
And the game - well, I thought that much of it was a thing of beauty - I LOVE it when the ABs are given sufficient space to play their running & passing game - it's like a sporting ballet - and some of those passes were pure poetry - like SBW's blind reverse pass inside to Toeva during the runup to the second try, and Dagg's backhanded pass leading up to the Kahui try. Fab.
The atmosphere in the Fanzone was fantastic - all very good-humoured and friendly, a few drunk-ish people but it just left them in a jolly mood rather than an aggressive one. They announced on the big screen that the Fanzone was at full capacity somewhere during the opening ceremony, and it remained packed but not uncomfortably so for the whole game.
Afterwards, like a haka flash mob, we all drifted away fairly rapidly, and I was able to catch a (very full) bus home no problem. The bus driver did his best to pack as many of us on as possible, and only had to refuse maybe 20 people along the rest of the route down Lambton Quay, which is about the same as you'd get after any game at the Cake Tin. I think Welli does public transport pretty well, all things considered.
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
you see a haka as clean and intense as this one
I'm sure you're right, George, but, sadly, this video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Rugby World Cup Ltd.
Mutter. -
Dancing Cranes. Dancing godamned Cranes. I think I can die happy now (yes, I'm easily pleased)!
The fireworks section of the opening ceremony was astounding. Co-ordinated musicians, vehicles, performers and pyrotechnics across half-a-dozen or so locations, dozens of camera operators, all directed with aplomb and edited into a smooth presentation. It'd be amazingly good if it was a highlights package for a tourism video, but that damn thing was put together and broadcast live! Amazing.
Shame the game that followed wasn't quite as good; but then, it was always going to be a bit one sided. Today's Romania vs Scotland game, on the other hand, had me sitting on the edge of my seat. Now that was fun!
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South Africa have 2 WC wins from 2 less tournaments than us, plus another loss in a final to go with the 03 quarterfinal exit. They’ve only ever lost two knockout games in 4 tournaments versus the ABs who have lost 5 knockout games in the last 5 tournaments.
That’s not necessarily a useful analysis. Using that model, you might have two teams, one of which always got beaten at the quarter-final stage, and another which always lost the final. And you’d rate them the same as they’d both lost the same number of knockouts.
Centre of Dunedin was well humming last night for the ABs game. Well set up with bars spewing onto the streets and no problems apart from trying to find a seat. Tonight hopefully will go well, there were crazy numbers of campervans driving into town yesterday. Go Argentina.Romania just played a fantastic game against Scotland – let in two late tries to mean they didn’t win, but gave it all with very limited speed. Scotland are going to have to be way better than that if they want to make the quarters.
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Minister McCully's official statement.
"Two areas of under-performance clearly require immediate attention. Auckland's public transport system failed to deliver to the required standard. In spite of reasonably successful trial events, there is no escaping the fact that last night's performance was short of the standard required. Urgent steps will now need to be taken to ensure that these matters are rectified before the next large Eden Park match next weekend,” he said.
"While Queens Wharf operations were highly successful, event arrangements for those in the Quay St area simply did not meet the needs of the extremely large crowd that gathered. While such large gatherings will occur infrequently, it is important that the structural problems evident in this area are addressed quickly.”
"I welcome the fact that Mayor Len Brown has committed the city to addressing the areas of deficiency that fall within its responsibility. Over the next few days I will continue to meet with relevant agencies to ensure there is a quick resolution of outstanding issues,” said Mr McCully.
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I’m sure you’re right, George, but, sadly, this video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Rugby World Cup Ltd.
Mutter.For the love of… the game, they’re not doing themselves any favours, are they?
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Sacha, in reply to
I guess it makes superficial sense from a brand manager's perspective..
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