I took my son to see the Highlanders (Otago/Southland in NZ) play the Queensland Reds at the Ballymore Stadium in Brisbane on Friday night. It’s the one night this year the two teams meet up here in Queensland. Assuming they won’t meet in the Super 12 semifinals or final.
Rugby Union isn’t big here in Australia in the same way it is in New Zealand. There’s steep competition from Rugby League and Aussie Rules (AFL). After Friday night I can see why. The play is interrupted so much by penalties and injury time. It’s hard for a crowd to get excited when the clock is ticking away with nothing happening.
Having said that, it was good to be part of the live action instead of watching it on Fox Sports. It was a warm clear night. The crowd was full of courteous well behaved people. The drunken element were on the XXXX Hill at the other end.
And who won? The Highlanders of course.
So far this season they’ve been beaten by the Auckland Blues in Dunedin, drawn with the Investec Stormers (Western Province) in Dunedin, trounced the Blue Bulls (Pretoria) in Dunedin, floored the Coastal Sharks (KwaZulu-Natal) in Durban, and narrowly beaten the Cats in Johannesburg.
This time it was the Reds they beat 23 to 16. Josh Blackie took two excellent tries in the first half an hour. Ben Blair kicked 13 points in conversions and penalties.
I was impressed with the public transport put on by Queensland Rugby Union. It meant we could leave the car at work, train into the city and then get the free bus to the stadium. It was a chance to mingle with the fans.
There was one scrap out of one of the rucks. Who knows what started it. But the most visible feature of the fight was when Wendell Sailor and Josh Blackie eyeballed each other. In full view of the crowd and ref Sailor punches and head butts (or brushes with head) Blackie. And he doesn’t even get sent off. This was a bit steep when Craig Newby was sent off for backchat. Mind you later on in the game Sailor was sinbinned for tripping Ben Blair when he’d missed the tackle. I note that Wendell’s been cleared to join the Reds in South Africa. Either there were extenuating circumstances or Wendell is just too valuable to be dropped.
Sponsors and TV Advertising
Advertising is a key part of the Super 12. Tooheys is the major sponsor. They’ve got a couple of blokey TV ads in mpeg format, featuring a lost dog, a bloke and a babe.
Queensland Reds are sponsored by Bank of Queensland, Castlemaine’s XXXX, and Canterbury I’m not impressed by the absence of television advertising on the Castlemaine site. They’ve put out some crackers over the years. But they’re floating around online in poor quality. Castlemaine is more popular in the UK than in Australia it seems. It would help if they could keep an archive of their ads online.
Otago Highlanders are sponsored by Ford, Speights and Adidas. Once again, the beer site is troubled when it comes to TV advertising. The Speights ads are all there to view – but due to a codec problem (codec 75) it’s seems impossible to watch the asx format videos. Having said all that, the ads portray a classic stockman/shepherd ‘Southern Man’ approach to life in which beer and mateship are higher priorities than finding the right woman. The NZ shepherd has a tougher image than in Australia where traditionally shepherds were regarded as soft versions of cattle stockmen.