After a night in a dorm at the backpackers on Anstey’s beach in Bluff, I met up (again, as we’d already done a few beers at Jo’burg airport on Friday afternoon) with Chips and Trouve (who had conveniently arrived in from Jo’burg just gone 8am) for a fry up in a café on the beach.
We had a bit of a rigmarole finding the accommodation, Ocean Blue Guesthouse, but fortunately a Bluff local, David, pulled over as we were attempting to hike up the road (just shy of a 5km walk to the guesthouse from where we were) to our guest house with our bags. Turned out that he headed up the local tourism group, as well as owning a restaurant called the Chicken Shack. So, David gave us a lift, and we were in our accommodation by 10am. Ended up being a two bedroom apartment overlooking the Indian Ocean, all for R600 a day!
The only missing piece at this point was Adam (often called Adam “The Liability” Davies) – having received scattered updates from him, we knew that he was heading up from the Wild Coast and was likely to be late.
So - Adam got lost. And after various phone calls relaying directions, he met us at the Chicken Shack and by 1pm, we were all set to head to the ground, a little later than planned, but a good 2hrs ahead of kick-off. David’s mate Howard gave us a lift in and after a slightly fraught time hunting down our hospitality area, we were properly getting into it (well the beer at least).
Turned out all the cash we had forked out for the tickets had not been entirely squandered, as we had excellent buffet food, and plenty of beers laid on. So after a plateful of lamb and 16 beers delivered to our table we started feeling at home. Only issue was we had 30 minutes to neck the beers before we had to get into the ground.
In the end, we were in our seats by 2:55pm with the roar of “Lions, Lions, Lions” ringing round the Kings Park stadium. The stadium itself is next door to the new stadium they’re building for the 2010 World Cup, which is looking quite impressive. Kings Park is pretty special though, with immensely steep stands on both sides, everyone seems to get an excellent view. The atmosphere was awesome. Even seemed to be better than I remembered the Kiwi tour to be back in 2005.
Adam, taking in the atmosphere
The anthems
A Good Start
The game kicked-off to the anticipation that a) the Lions would continue to perform as well as they had done in their provincial games b) we would kick any penalty coming our way with Jones playing and c) we would be dominant in the scrums. After the first 40min we had a pretty dismal performance.
Vickery had single handedly concede 4 penalties, and was being out scrummaged (possibly unfairly) by “The Beast”, Jones had missed the 2-3 penalty chances he had, and we really weren’t firing. We did have one try on the score board, and Ugo had come extremely close to getting another (stopped only by seemingly lucky defence and the Third Match Official (TMO)). Half time was, 19-7 to the Saffers.
The 2nd half was in contrast remarkably different. After 5 minutes Vickery was pulled off and replaced by (Adam) Jones, and all of a sudden the scrum looked shored up – good to see. Then the Lions seemed to have more possession, strung together some reasonable phases (and Chips eventually relented and went to the bar to get some beer for us!) and things seemed to be turning, but as the game entered the last 10 minutes, it did look out of reach. Then we got a score to put us within 5 points of the lead, with a few minutes on the clock.
We might just snatch it
The atmosphere really grew – all the Lions fans saw that we could snatch a win, and the Saffer fans could see it too. Sadly, South Africa got their hands on the ball and closed down the game, winning 26-21.
The end
Overall disappointing – poor 1st half scrimmaging, a couple of TMO’s disallowed tries, a few missed penalties – on another day it could have been the Lions game.
The only thing left for us to do was drink! Back to the hospitality, the guys went to the bar, and I went to the toilet. Walking out, I bumped into Richard Heberden, a chap Chips and I played rugby with at Old Wimbledonians. It turned out he was over with a few of the old chaps (Frank, Scally (Mike) plus a few others) we played with 8-10 years ago, including his brother Martin. We cracked through a few with them then headed into the car park where Adam had arranged to hook up with a distant relative of his, Ro, for beers and a braii.
The Old Wimbledonians crew
Ro had laid it all on, even buying in carefully selected Ale style beers for us real ale drinkers. As the evening progressed it became steadily clear we were going to drink him dry (not a problem, but I think he thought he had bought a truck load to cater for us!). So, he pulled out a bottle of Jamesons, cut the top off a 2 litre plastic beer bottled, and started to mix whiskey and waters in it, pouring it into glasses and sharing it amongst us.
Ro and friends
For some, this was the final straw. Well, for Trouve at least. He had already gone walkabout a little earlier in the evening, and now we found him asleep / passed out on the grass. All the guys we were with were going “Is your mate Ok?‘’ and “How does he sleep with his leg up like that?“. Knowing Trouve as we do, we simply said “He’s fine” and carried on drinking.
Trouve takes a well deserved break
A while later, we admitted defeat (as we had ran out of booze) and decided to let one of the Saffer chaps we were drinking with take us to a bar, Harvey Wallbangerz, somewhere in Durban (we’re still not sure where). By this point, Trouve had slept off the worst of it and was having a second wind. In Harvey’s we drank some blue muck out of a jug, the memory thereafter is a little hazy, but eventually we got home at 2am ish.
In the aftermath the next morning Chipsey revealed that he managed to climb into bed with Trouve, after falling asleep in his own bed?! Sleeping arrangement were – 2 bedrooms, Trouve and I in one with two single beds, Adam and Chips in the other sharing a double bed. So Trouve and Chips shared a single bed for most of the night. No one was sure why or even how they managed to fit into one bed, but they did! They won’t be living this one down!
