You can never go back

..differentiates
Melbourne from the rest of the world. Or maybe just Australia. It gives locals
the joy of being the best in the world at a game that no one else plays or wants
to play; in this it is like gridiron football writ very small. Rugby is at least
played by more countries though unfortunately some participating nations may
cease to exist with the next king tide in the South Pacific.
As with every major event Auckland’s trains failed just at the time that
people were encouraged to use them to avoid the crowded roads; too many or too
few people turned up to events and a lot of beer may was consumed to the joy
of the sponsors. The media amused itself as it always does with filling the
airtime and the column inches with colour, light and movement. It was entertaining
in a peculiar way but there wasn’t much actual news. The bigger teams
usually beat the smaller teams, though minnows such as Japan played with endless
courage against physically much larger opponents. However, despite all the media
generated noise, the plot unfolded as expected, things happened more or less
as expected at the place that they were meant to happen at – and the rugby fraternity
were a forgiving lot when things didn’t go according to plan. There is
still a touch of amateurism of the nicest kind about the sport which the tsunami
of professionalism has not entirely eliminated.
The rest of the world was largely oblivious to what is, after all, a niche sporting
event, although if the New Zealand All Blacks don’t win there won’t
be much forgiveness by their countrymen and women.
Rugby can be a glorious game at its best, fast furious and graceful. At its
worst it resembles trench warfare amongst hippopotamuses. It has two rules that
Aussie Rules should adopt; the yellow card (or ‘sin-bin’) for persistent
low level infringement, where a player is sent off the field for ten minutes,
and the Red Card where the player is sent off for the rest of the game. The
latter occurs for dangerous and reckless play. What it almost eliminates is
the deliberate player on player assault – the ‘king hit’ behind
play or the deliberate elbow to the head, which is the most unsavoury aspect
of AFL.
What was amazing was that there were no incidents of ill-behaviour associated
with the rugby or the crowd. Some excessive enthusiasm, perhaps less sportsmanship
towards the Australian team than they deserved may have been displayed, but
when I left all was going extremely smoothly.
The opening ceremony was a treat and there were a surprising number of international
travellers who had made the journey to what is the end of the civilised world
as we know it. They could be seen cruising up and down the country in campervans,
mostly on the correct side of the road, admiring the scenery through the rain.
Of which there was quite a lot – both rain and scenery.
I was actually in the Shaky Isles to visit my relatives of which there are a
number and whilst we have not achieved the excess of the chunky Samoans who
were reported by the Auckland Herald as visiting their sixty large grandchildren,
it is still beyond replacement level. I visited the minimum respectable number
of aunts, brothers, sisters, parents and cousins and took a few detours to see
sights that had impressed me as a youngster. Perhaps unsurprisingly they are
no longer impressive when you are taller and have seen more of the world. But
I was still surprised that some of the places where I had thought I had been
I certainly hadn’t, and most of the places that I could validly recollect
had suffered the acne of inept and inapt development. They were better left
unexamined.
But the instance that caused me to reflect was going through my mother’s
photo albums and finding a few images of myself, and my brother Michael, as
youngsters. In the earlier photographs I look like a blond dwarf with the head
the size and consistency of a Besser block perched on small but sturdy frame.
And as I was my mother’s second output unit there are a lot fewer photographs
of me than Mike as the novelty of children had truly worn off by the time of
my arrival. However if the gesture in the picture below is any guide, maybe
I had an attitudinal problem.
I have no recollection of the photographs being taken because they were a record
for my parents; fragile and infrequent souvenirs of times and people past. Taking
photographs was not the casual event that it is today where digital images are
created with casual disregard for quality or posterity. These small out of focus
black and white images had survived the intervening sixty years better than
I had and will probably outlive me. At least the way things are developing.