At the Rugby

Six months ago I bought some tickets for two Rugby World Cup matches. There was a plan at the time but a lot can happen in six months. By the time we were booking a two week trip to Turkey leaving on 29th September I had forgotten all about the three tickets for South Africa v USA on the 30th - forgetful old fool that I am. Furthermore, 'the genius' is back in SA watching it on the telly when he should have been watching his team live here. Oh well, best laid plans and all that.

That still left two tickets for Samoa v Tonga - a South Sea Island local derby with no love lost, I am told. My very good friend, Kieron, said he would love to come over if he could fit it in with his work schedule, his wife's work schedule, care for his lovely kids and care for his bank balance. In the end money and work prevented him coming - I think the family were sorted - but he's still 'gutted' about it and sent me an email this evening to ask how it was.

Well it was an excellent day out in Montpellier and I'm very glad I was able to see at least one of the matches at this World Cup live and in the flesh. In the end it was Simon, whom I met whilst sat on an aeroplane that wasn't going anywhere very quickly about a week or so ago, who not only took up my spare ticket today but has also taken the other three for two weeks time off my hands as well.

As the organisers were clearly trying to discourage people driving to the matches, I decided to put my faith in the highly respected French railways. I went online yesterday and planned my route, times, trains and finally seat numbers - paid for them and then collected them at the station this morning from the automatic machines. The train arrived at the appointed time to the minute, my seat was as it should be (i.e. unoccupied by someone else) and it pulled into Montpellier station at 12.59 exactly, as advertised. In between I was treated to fabulous views of the Minervois, the Etang de Thau, the yachts on the Mediterranean and the towns of Narbonne, Beziers and Sete.

Simon had joined the train at Beziers and so, once in Montpellier, we set off to find a good pre-match lunch and catch up on what had been going on in the week since we had spent several wasted hours at Stansted airport. Simon knew a really good restaurant he had been to before, that specialised in the local fish and seafood, and would be just perfect. It would have been perfect but, being France, it was closed, naturally - I ask you, there is a Rugby World Cup match taking place in the city and about twenty thousand or so visitors with a load of cash to dispose of are milling around looking for somewhere to have a good lunch, so why would you possibly open up, unless you were worried about the prospect of making a profit and paying some tax or maybe they were put off by having to serve more than four tables. Incroyable! - as they say in these parts. It continues to amaze me how the French have an economy at all.

In fact, there were plenty of forward-looking entrepreneurial enterprises who were begrudgingly (it was now 1.20 or so) admitting 'late' diners for lunch. We just sat down at a table - yes, without announcing ourselves first - dreadfully rude, I know. Clearly our natural charm and good looks (not to mention Simon's excellent French) must have counted for something because we were served (eventually) a very decent charcuterie platter and some very drinkable wine which satisfied us perfectly.

The stadium is on the edge of the city and so we had to hop onto Montpellier's much lauded tram system for the 20 minute journey round the houses, university faculties and halls of residence out to the 'stade'. Once there, what struck me was virtually a complete absence of commercial exploitation of the fans - no program sellers, no burgers and hot dogs and chips, no ice cream stalls, no scarves and hats and badges, no police horses - it's not a proper match without a police horse. At least somebody checked my ticket and someone else did a very scant security check - as in they didn't look in my bag and they patted my pockets to which I replied 'camera' and 'phone' in turn and waved me through. They did take the plastic top off Simon's plastic bottle of water though, just to be on the safe side.

Mind you, an international rugby crowd is a different kettle of fish to an English Premiership football match - there is no swearing, spitting, racism, sexism or general air of menace - which is nice. Instead, there were people of all the rugby nations sat side by side in the glorious sunshine. There was a brass band at either end of the stadium playing bull-fighting trumpet calls to which the crowd responded 'Ole' and a succession of traditional local tunes, such as 'Roll out the Barrel !!'. There were people employed to start Mexican waves whenever it went a bit quiet.

And the game? Two Hakas for the price of one ticket was a good start. It took time to get going and looked like Samoa were on top but Tonga were fired up for the second half and scored the only try and hung on for a memorable win with two men short for the last ten minutes after a high tackle and a good old elbow to the head produced a red card for the No 6 and a professional foul produced a sin-bin for another. For Tonga the guy with the massive Afro hair stood out for obvious reasons as well as his rugby and for Samoa the No 11 is someone I would never ever like to see running at me with intent. There were a number of massive hits in the second half, mostly from Tonga, that bought a collective 'Ooohhh' from the crowd. From the body language at the end of the game I'd say the Tongans were 'over the moon' and the Samoans were 'sick as a parrot'.

Actually, I'm a bit sad I'm not going to any other games now. You can watch all the sport in the world on the TV, with different camera angles and commentary and stats but you can't beat being there and seeing it and feeling it - unless you are watching England that is.