HUBBERS DOT COM BLOG

This weekend we decided to fly up to Glasgow on Saturday morning and have a night out there and train down to the match in Edinburgh on Sunday morning.

Whilst waiting for our plane at Gatwick we were approached by two security guards who wanted to know why we were wearing orange overalls. They left us alone when we explained that we were idiots from New Zealand who thought it would be fun to dress in bright orange overalls for the entire world cup. Later on we are asked the same question by two police officers armed with machine guns.

The rugby highlight of the weekend was the huge performance minnows Tonga put in against the lacklustre South Africans. Tonga gave the Saffas the shock of a life time and were still in the game at half time. The Saffas brought on all the big guns they were hoping to rest just after the second half and they had an immediate impact. The plucky Tongans never gave up and at the final whistle were just five points short of the greatest rugby upset of all time.

Following the game we toured the city and took in a few of the local bars until 4am. Surprisingly we were only refused entry to one location because of our bright orange overalls. The tour included a stop a Primark where I came up with the idea of a game where we could dress each other in anything we liked for a maximum price of five pounds. I thought this was another brilliant idea of mine until all the rest of the boys headed straight for the women’s department and we all spent the remainder of the afternoon looking like colour blind lunatics from the institute or cross-dressing alcoholics.

The most famous person we ran into this week was Will Mellor from “Two Pints of Larger and a Packet of Crisps”

Sunday morning we took the train to Edinburgh for our biggest match so far. Scotland’s fielded a second string side as they rested their top players for their all important clash with Italy in next weekends final round of the pool competition. The winner of the Scotland/Italy clash will progress to the knock out rounds. The loser will go home in humiliations. Despite racking up 40 points the All Blacks looked rusty with at least two other tries getting dropped and Carter missing half his kicks at goal.

After the game we went to Edinburgh airport for our flight to London. We unexpectedly ran into the All Blacks who we think were flying to Marseilles. I didn’t speak to any of them of course because even though I am 3 years older than the oldest All Black I still feel like an unworthy child around sporting superheroes. It was well cool to see them up close though and the whole airport stopped to stare at them.

Listening to a podcast on 95bfm I heard breakfast DJ Mikey Havoc called Member of Parliament, Brian Tamaki a coozer live on air. Russell Brown, his interviewee said “what a great word”. Then Mikey Havoc said Dave Dobbyn got him back into using it. Awesome! Coozer is coming back!

This is my previous post on the coozer game that I made up.

Lyon is a beautiful city in southern France with two wide rivers running through it. At nearly 30 degrees centigrade the weather was absolutely spot on for a touch of outdoor beer drinking and talking about rugby.

The game was the walk over everyone thought it would be with the All Blacks scoring 11 tries against Portugal, the 22nd ranked team in the world. The atmosphere in the stadium was awesome at the vocal Portuguese fans cheered all the way up to the final whistle. Later on that night we saw loads of them in local bars and they seemed pretty stoked by the days events despite the claims by some reporters that such obvious mismatches have no place in the world cup.

After the game Phil and I were interview by TVNZ. His overly verbose comments on the match were left on the cutting room floor while my more succinct analysis hit the chord with the reporter and were aired on New Zealand television :)

We were also lucky enough to run into New Zealand’s record break number 10 Andrew Merhtens. He was really friendly and posed for photographs but had to dash off as he was helping TV3 with their television coverage.

Dinner was in a restaurant called carnivores with a couple of Jo’s English friend who live in Lyon. Later that night we ended up in a small bar with a live rock cover band. They were awesome and we moshed so hard most of us would have sore calve muscles well into the following week.

Sunday morning started like a lot of Sunday mornings. Slowly with no loud noises and lots of rehydration.

We walked back to the river to have breakfast on a riverboat only to find the boat closed and a huge farmers market going on. Being the flexible opportunists that we are we bought as much food as out eyes thought we could eat and had a massive picnic by the river.

Later in the day we spent two whole hours renting bikes from the local bike rental scheme. The local government in Lyon have hundreds of computerised cycle racks and thousands of bike spread all over the city. The idea is that anyone can purchase a card from the machine by the bike racks and then swipe the card at any machine and grab a bike. The amount you are charged depends on how long it takes you to get the bike back into another rack. Journeys under thirty minutes are free. We had a few problems using the scheme as it was entirely in French. Also loads of the bikes didn’t work or the machines that isues them didn’t work. There were also long queues so the whole process took us four hours to get four bikes. Once we had the bike we immediately proceeded to push our bikes about a kilometre up the steepest hill in town. As the most vocal advocate of the bike ride and as I had loudly talked up how easy it would be, I copped a lot of flak for getting off my bike 50 meters into the hill climb covered in sweat and ready to collapse. The hard work was worth it to see the beautiful church and for the awesome ride down where I totally made my bike belch thick blue smoke from the breaks.

Tonight I am off to Lyon for a sunny weekend in France watching the All Blacks crush non-professional minnows Portugal. It’s going to be a cricket score :D

One thing I forgot to mention last week is that I invented a brand new drink that you might like to try. It’s an espresso with THREE shots in it. I am going to call it the Hubster (unless anyone can think of anything better) but until the name catches on just call it a “triple-espresso” and make sure you tell the waiter the drinks real name.

This is a photo from McDonalds’ special Rugby World Cup menu. I would suggest adding the following menu items. A low calorie bag of hot air for Australia. A very blunt instrument (probably a spoon) for South Africa. Something bland and disappointing for England. A bag of sour grapes for Stephen Jones to eat. A doormat for France after their first performance. And nothing dangerous that the Kiwis might choke on.

We touched down in Marseilles to the amazing news that Argentina had convincingly beaten the hosts France in the opening match. This is shocking news as the team that comes second in the so called pool of death will head to Cardiff to face the All Blacks. France ideally wanted to delay this encounter until Paris for the final where they would have had home ground advantage. Now they are playing for their lives and have to beat Ireland just to have a chance to progress out of the pool.

It took us a couple of hours to clear customs and clear up the booking mess made by our Etap hotel after they gave out rooms out to anyone and everyone who asked for them before we arrived. Thankfully we asked for a room from another couple and all was sorted out.

By the time we caught up with Russ, Russ, Cam and Phil who took an earlier flight they were well smashed. I took a great video of Phil ripping of a locked drinks fridge. There was little chance of getting caught as the French bar owners were drowning their sorrows.

Up at 11 the next day the nine of us decided to walk to the game as it was a very sunny day. Stopped for a beer on the way. When we got to the stadium we settled in and Cam spent forty euros on alcohol free beer for everyone. That was nice of him.

The Italians made an early mistake by ignoring the Haka. The snub must have really ticked off the All Blacks because it only took them 68 seconds to score their first try. Eighty minutes later the Italians had let in 10 more tries and the All Blacks took the game 64 – 14. Allowing the Italians one intercept try and another late one off a poorly judged kick in our own 22. The intercept was the worrying one as it was an intercept by Australia that put us out of the last world cup and we seem to give one away every game these days.

After the game we had a couple of beers (with alcohol) and a meal for the first court session. After only 24 hours on tour we had enough fines to finish off a bottle of Lemoncini between the 9 of us.

An all night drinking session followed. Later on in the evening we even met Brad Butterworth OBE the Kiwi yachtsman who won us the Americas cup and then went to work for another syndicate and won it back off us. It didn’t make him very popular at home. He was very approachable and seemed like a good guy.

I went home around one or two and managed to dislocate my thumb on the way. Luckily it popped straight back in. Some of the boys who got in around five were warned by friendly locals that they were drinking with that it was too dangerous for them to stay out. Apparently some of the other locals were looking for a fight with Kiwis and it was no longer safe to be out in Marseilles. We woke the next day to find out that three of our group had been pick-pocketed for mobiles or wallets (although one may have had that done by the local guy she was kissing). Someone also saw a guy on a scooter try to steal a handbag off the passenger seat of a parked car. Marseilles is a nice town but it seems you have to be pretty vigilant or the locals will rob you blind.

If you are travelling to Marseilles make sure you read this guide to spotting pockpocketers first.

On Sunday we had a relaxed start and the boys had a topless swim (when in Rome) with the locals at one of the beaches.

In other rugby news. A lot of the minnow teams made their major league counterparts look decidedly average. Samoa were only down 9-7 after 30 minutes. Ireland barely subdued Namibia 32-17. America made England work for every point of their 28-10 victory. And Canada led Wales 17-9 after 45 minutes.

The moment that rugby fans the world over have been waiting for begins today. The 7th Rugby World Cup kicks off in Paris with a game between France and Argentina.

New Zealand’s mighty All Blacks are the favourites again. In fact we have been expected to win most of the times we have entered but somehow it doesn’t work out that way. We won the first World Cup at home against the French in 1987 but since then we have struggled. In 1991 we were outclassed by Australia. In 1995 the entire team got food poisoning before the final in South Africa. In 1999 we were devastated by the French in the final 30 minutes of our semi final. Many Kiwis regard this as a worse offence than the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1985 by French Secret Service agents. Last time in 2003 we were also knocked out in the semi-final by the Australians who the whole world agreed were a far inferior side to the All Blacks. I wish someone has told the 15 Australians on the field.

As we are consistently ranked the number one team in the world it’s a bloody long four years each time we fail to bring home the cup. Our main competition this time should come from the South Africans who have an awesome defence but struggle to score tries unless the get a lucky intercept and the French who have hit a run of form and have the home ground advantage.

Tonight I fly out to Marseilles with the seven mates who are coming to all the games with me. The eight of us have seven weekends partying hard in Marseilles, Lyon, Toulouse, Edinburgh, Cardiff and two in Paris if we make it that far.

Wish us luck.

There is this shirt that I bought from H&M in Boston, USA in MAy 2007 and I have started to see it everywhere.

At days out in the park, on the tube, in pubs, in restaurants, garden bars, outdoor markets, in Zurich Airport, it joins checkout queues behind me and I have even seen it on television in a Branston’s Pickle advertisement!

Basically The Shirt is everywhere so I have started taking pictures and posting them to a Flickr group.

The socialist who run the unions that work on the London underground went on a 72 hour strike this week. In the end the union called off the strike slightly early after accepting the EXACT package that the Tube bosses offered them in the first place.

Why did they strike then? I have no idea. Maybe just to flex their socialist muscles.

One crazy spin off of the tube strike is that London’s buses and roads became way more congested. One Tuesday and Wednesday on my rides to work I saw some crazy stuff. The significant increase in traffic caused loads of extra pressure and I saw several vehicles do crazy things that you would normally never see. The worst of which was a car that cut across in front of an oncoming car when they both got green lights to go straight ahead. Crazy.

There were also loads of extra cyclists who were riding for two days. All those people who bought bikes and have rarely or never used them were able to dust them off and ride to work. The finniest part was that a lot of the “strike riders” rode in ways that regular riders wouldn’t, like all over the footpath.

There were reports in the news that the queues for the buses were so bad that fights broke out.

I wonder how many people got hurt or ended up in hospital so the unions could flew their socialist muscle.