Today they announced that seats at Eden Park for the 2011 Rugby World Cup final start at $350, and the premium seats will be $1250. Apparently they are not making this up. About 25,000 seats total will be available for locals, by ballot. The other 35,000 seats in the park are all allocated to the International Rugby Board for sale around the world and for giving to their mates.
There are zealots here who will tell you instantly, day by day, if you ask, how many days are left before the NZ 2011 RWC begins. Don’t ask. We saw a clock in Christchurch Cathedral Square which exists for exactly that. Presumably it is going to remain there in the Square, counting down the days, hours and minutes, until the glorious apotheosis of Rugby Heaven.
Major public works are scheduled to be completed for the RWC, as though that were their entire raison d’être. A plan to integrate all fares and tickets on bus, rail and boat transport services in Greater Auckland must be ready, they demand, for the RWC. Presumably were it not for that incentive it would never get done.
It daily becomes clearer to me that the 2011 Rugby World Cup is something to be strenuously avoided. The game is of no interest to me whatever. Should it be?
Someone tried to tell me that, up here at Algies Bay, the tranquil waters of normal life will remain unruffled. Indeed he said, Algies Bay might be just the place to be. Like smoke it will. The highway from here to Auckland will be unpassable. TV, radio and the newspapers will be obsessed. Global warming will be speeded up. Thousands of drunken British rugby yobboes will descend on the land and spread their foulness everywhere. The police will be completely occupied elsewhere and burglaries and rapes will thrive.
That most execrable and objectionable of all the manifestations of Kiwi “culture”, the haka, will drive us all nuts.
So I am plotting to escape. Somewhere far away. Mary is not so sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment