A Dark Day

After the All Blacks’ exploits against Scotland and Wales, we were looking forward to the game against England. England had played pretty rubbish in their earlier matches, with their captain making some match-losing calls towards the end of their games against Australia and South Africa. Still, the English press were talking the England team up while the word on the street was how big the All Blacks’ winning margin was going to be.

We got to the stadium in plenty of time – we trained to Clapham Junction and they had special trains from there going to Twickenham. We got a hot pork roll on our way to the game, and I also bought a disposable set of ref ears so that I could listen to the referee during the game. Our seats were right up in the Gods. While I knew that we would have seats that were far removed from the action, they had a better view than I expected. Unfortunately, it was a good view of a great game from England. The first half was tough going with the All Blacks unable to turn over any ball. As a result, when we got any ball it was in our own 22 and so we kicked it away. Dan missed three pretty easy kicks and we were down 12-0 at half time.

England grabbed another penalty just after half time, and things weren’t looking great. Then we scored two long-range tries in very quick succession and suddenly it was 15-14 and all on. The English fans went pretty quiet, and we and the NZers around us were giving them everything – well as much as a few Kiwis packed into the corner of the stadium could. Any other English team would have capitulated at that point, but instead England came back and scored two great tries of their own. We started playing catch-up and gave them another try. So England scored an historic win, but at least played a great game of rugby to do so.

The English fans were very good about it too. In wearing all of my All Blacks gears, I didn’t get hassled much on the way home. In fact, we had a couple of great conversations on the trains on the way home – with English fans who were of the view that they had witnessed something special – England playing to their potential on a day when the All Blacks had an off-day.