My Sporting Bucket List – been, gone and still to come.

I walked into Wembley last night to watch England play Ukraine in a World Cup Qualifier. Four hours earlier I had been walking through Twickenham. Two sporting cathedrals. Two places I had dreamt of going to as a kid. Two places that I could tick off my sporting bucket list.

What was on my list and what I had already done wasn’t something that I spent a lot of time thinking about. Recently however, with a lot of extra time on my hands, it has been something I have been giving a little bit of thought. It all stemmed from a conversation with a mate last Friday night. ‘What’s on your sporting bucket list?’ he asked.

After talking it through, I realised I had already done a lot of the stuff that I had wanted to do. Seen the games I wanted to see. Cherished the live victories that I wanted to be a part of. So I thought, with the aforementioned extra time on my hands, I would write about the big sporting events and great experiences I have been a part of.

I’ll go through them post at a time, in chronological order. Some of them are obvious, some of them are more obscure sporting ‘experiences’ that I wouldn’t have changed for all the money in the world.

15 August 2004

70 odd minutes gone, Eden Park. Bay of Plenty vs Auckland for the Ranfurly Shield.

The same place where we had conceded a tight-head in 1997, Auckland had thrown it wide, scored and Matt Carrington (anyone remember how mediocre he was?) kicked the conversion to break Blue and Yellow hearts.

Not today though, today there would be no mediocre provincial journeyman to deny us our date with destiny. Today, it would be our own mediocre provincial journeymen who delivered the kind of glory an 18-year old Steamers fan could simply not understand.

As I remember it we were up by one. The ball goes wide to Anthony Tahana (see, provincial journeyman!) who somehow gets the ball down in the corner. I can’t remember if we had video refs back then, or if it just seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for the referee to consult the touch-judge, but eventually the hand went up in the air. The try was awarded and BOP was up by 6. 6-points with 5 or so minutes to go (as an aside, I can’t find any footage on youtube!). Still plenty of time for us to choke, as we would inevitably do. The conversion was from the sideline, we just assumed it would miss. Jacko was having a good day (hell, he was a genius that day) but it was windy and pressure didn’t come much bigger than this. How wrong I was, Jacko kicks the conversion and we were up by 8.

By this stage I had moved from my seat in the Old South Stand to pacing the aisle, I think at some stage my Dad joined me and we paced together. The moment that will always stick in my mind from that day, more than Jackos conversion or Wayne lifting the thing, was the realisation that it was ours. That we had done it. It came when Auckland were awarded a penalty, with time up. Eight points, that moment of realisation should have come long before then but alas, remember Matt Carrington my brain kept saying. Daniel Braid was the Auckland captain – eight points down, time up on the clock, the Shield up for grabs. What does he do? He points at the sticks, of course he does. The penalty would get them within 5, a bonus point. NPC points mattered as well. Not to us they didn’t, that pointing to the posts only meant one thing. That heavy, unwieldy wooden monstrosity which had so long eluded us was ours. I can’t remember if the kick went over, I don’t think I was watching. By this stage, the pacing in the aisle had become jumping and dancing with my Dad, I think even my Mum may have been on her feet by this stage. Everyone in our colours around us was on their feet by this stage, including as it turned out – the coaches wife and new born baby. We had won the Shield, the trophy that still means the most to New Zealand rugby fans.

I had been there to see my team do it, those kind of days are always made that much sweeter by remembering the days that weren’t sweet in any way. I distinctly remember watching us play Thames Valley in a random Division 2 game, the day we got smashed by Counties (92-93?) at Rotorua when Counties fans outnumbered BOP fans by about 2-1 with promotion was on the line, the day we played the Central Vikings in a semi-final at Rotorua and got humped, year after year of having to play Hawkes Bay in those promotion-relegation playoffs which so favoured the incumbent. None of them mattered, not any more. It turns out this isn’t what Florence and the Machine say, but it sure sounds like it “The dark days are over”. They were, we had a trophy.

I don’t really remember much of the presentation, not sure I could see huge chunks of it but I seem to remember it took an age (because of TV). The players did the lap of honour, the front railings of the whole ground were lined with the Blue and Yellow army by then. It got to us, I think it may have been Bernie Upton carrying it by that stage but it didn’t matter. It was a moment for the fans, those of us who had gone through so much with that team.

As it turned out, we defended it once, against Waikato. I seem to remember David Hill having one the worst games I have ever seen a professional rugby player have. Who cares though, we kept it! Until…. Next week. Canterbury came to town, All Blacks in tow and beat us. We put up a fight but the Shield was leaving. If we had beaten Canterbury it didn’t get much easier. The next two challenges would have been Otago and Wellington. As it turned out we beat both of them! We went onto make the semis where we came up against Canterbury again, got humped. But it didn’t matter. We had won the Shield; I had been there to see it. I had been able to share the experience with my Dad, he who had sat through just as many dire BOP occasions as I had all because I had wanted to go.

As it turns out the Ranfurly Shield would come to play a much bigger part in my life further down the track but that’s for another post.

Bay of Plenty won the Shield, when was the last time you did that Hawkes Bay?