Rugby x A Ruined City

This is Christchurch's skyline as of yesterday morning. Note the various cranes.


She'll be beautiful again. Mark my words.

McCaw flips the bird to Reason.

As a Cantabrian I was outraged as I read an opinion post by "rugby journalist" Mark Reason on Stuff.co.nz earlier this week. Reason labelled McCaw and the Crusaders cheats. Going so far as to hope that we lost our game yesterday night.

What irked me even more was the fact our very own paper had the nerve to run the atrocious attack.

I accept it is an opinion post; Reason is, of course, entitled to that opinion. But an attack to that level was uncalled for and unfounded. And most certainly not one that should have been put to print in our local newspaper. It was utterly distasteful and infuriating to read at 8am in the morning.

We toe the line, yes. But when our captain has apparently (and I do not doubt this) scored 100% on a referee test, I think it's fair to say he knows what he can get away with. Every team tests the waters with each ref, interpretations vary from human to human. This is a fair call. But cheating and intimidating the ref? No. Every captain is entitled to talk to the ref to understand calls or have a whinge, and each and every team's captain does it. This isn't a one way street. What McCaw and the Crusaders do are exactly the same things that every other team in the competition and world do.

To single one man, one team out? I think somebody is a little butthurt.


So it gives me great pleasure to say that we beat the Bulls 28 - 13; with McCaw putting on a man of the match, bird flipping performance.

A stunning game from the Crusaders, not so much from the Bulls who outscored us two tries to one. But a lack of discipline cost them and Carter cashed in.

Bring on the Chiefs and the semi finals!

Wait, what? We're already midway through twenty twelve?

Again, she's flown by in the blink of an eye.

And there's been some big changes in the city and my life. The city is being picked apart building by building. It's a patchwork quilt of barren pieces of central city land with some buildings thrown here and there.

And I own my own house. Say what?! Yip. I've taken the plunge and I now own a little 102 year old beauty right opposite the city's slightly damaged and currently out of order main sports stadium.

Hopefully I'll be in at the end of the month or beginning of next month... I should be painting the interior next weekend!! Pics to follow of course.


It's come to my attention, not only that I've been very neglectful of this blog since the 22 February earthquake in 2011, but the blog itself has turned, somewhat, into an earthquake blog... Well for the handful of the posts I've done since maybe the beginning 2011.

So let's turn a leaf and I'll try not to post so much on the earthquake stuff. But first... A little comparison photo of a central city intersection. And a short earthquake spiel.

We've literally lost BLOCKS of buildings. I don't think the people of Christchurch are aware of how much we've actually lost; and I'm certain that the people of my own country have no idea what it's like to a) experience earthquakes like what we have had to deal with over the last year and a half and b) how incredibly bad it actually is.

Hell I'm not even aware of how bad it is in the central city. Add to that the numerous suburbs that are devastated and will soon be cleared of all houses and probably won't be built on again or will have multi million dollar engineered ground work done to try and make the land safe to build on again.


Anyway enough of that. Next blog will be a bitch about the Crusaders loss to the Rebels last night. I'm far from being a happy camper.