Rugby Game
Later on Saturday, March 18th: Anjali and I went to the rugby game.
First lesson learned was that getting tickets through one of the local bars would have been smarter. You can purchase tickets through the local bars, and they not only provide you with a beverage prior to your gaming experience, but also a bus to get to the rugby game. But since we were not aware that one could do this, we ended up walking to the game. Carisbrook, the stadium at which the Otago Highlanders play, is far, far away from our meager little flat complex. I think one can safetly say we got our workout.
Upon arrival to the stadium, we stood in line to get standing-only tickets, which were $13 NZ as opposed to the $25 NZ for seats. This, my knee feels, was a mistake. Standing for hours is not so good. Particularly when you are two young women, neither of whom are really 'into' rugby as a sport.
This was our third error: Attending the rugby game without anyone there to explain the rules. Or, who, well, was into sports. Anjali doesn't attending sport games period, and bless her heart is about as far removed from being a sporting fan as one can possibly get. I am what one could call a 'medicore' fan. I sometimes get excited, I sometimes don't. I enjoy going to sporting games because of the atmosphere and the chance to watch people, in addition to the game. But it is rather difficult to get excited over a foreign team (in this sense, just meaning a team that I'm not familar with) in a foreign game surrounded by strangers. Sporting events are definitely best enjoyed in large groups of people in such instances as this.
Thus it was that we stood there for an hour or so, munching on delicious fatty chips and corndogs (the best corndog I've had in a while, actually), trying to figure out what was going on while being swarmed by drunken teenage Kiwis who didn't seem to be really paying attention to the game...exception being the few people I photographed above.
Observations
From an anthropology of sport point of view, it was an interesting event to see. The stadium was not as large as I would have imagined it to be, particularly since this was supposed to be the equivalent to American football. It was by no means as small as a high school stadium, but I've seen US university stadiums that are larger. Concessions were also -extremely- limited. Whereas when I go to the MCI Center in D.C., there are about 25 different places to get food, and it's all extremely expensive...the variety at this stadium was even smaller, and about equivalently priced, to my high school's concesion stand.
That being said, one other difference that I noticed concerned alcohol.
Kiwis are very keen on their alcohol. Very keen. In the States, there seems to be this overreaching desire to limit the amount of alcohol one can consume at a sporting event, in order to prevent violence or havoc, and so forth, from happening, not to mention to promote a more healthy family atmosphere....this is not the case in Dunedin. One could purchase a case of beer right there in the stadium, and there didn't seem to be any restrictions on how many you could purchase over the course of a game.
This led to another interesting observation. The majority of people, at least in the standing section, were teenagers. Young teenagers, even, not even college-aged students, but mostly high school aged. In small groups, in large groups, there were tons of young adults roaming around. Drunk, or tipsy, and unsupervised. The above pictures of the children and the older gent are exceptions to this rule. I definitely felt like we were surrounded by young people.
This is interesting for me because, in my limited experience with sporting games at this professional level, this is not the case in the States. Most professional-level sporting events are attended by older people, especially middle-aged men. What could this age differential indicate about New Zealand culture? I wonder if this is simply because the tickets were so cheap, or if the tickets are made cheap so as to encourage a younger crowd to attend?
In the end, I still know nothing about rugby.
posted by Hoot @ 3:58 PM
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