Eden Park v Mt Smart Stadium
It’s a battle where there can be no winners.
If you read The Bounce yesterday, or indeed late last week, you will know it’s been an absolute bonanza of live sport for me over the past seven days.
It made sense to use the opportunity as a little matchday-experience exercise1.
Because context is important, I had different motivations for going to the All Blacks v Ireland than I did Warriors v Wests Tigers.
For the former, I wasn’t going until a friend from the ’Naki managed to source me a ticket with less than 24 hours to kickoff. I went to the Warriors on a media accreditation to write a bit of colour here and there ($). When you get to my age and your childhood friends live busy lives, often in different parts of the country or world, any time spent with them is treasured, so my mindset was more positively predisposed to the rugby.
Also, if I had to choose one of the codes to watch for the rest of my life, it would be union. It’s super, super close and I’d miss league dreadfully, but the international factor and the slightly less rigidly structured elements of the 15-man game (I’ll always argue that coaches are league’s worst enemy), tilt it for me. This is a choice I’ll thankfully never have to make and if there’s a type of human being I’ll never understand it’s the “never-the-twain-shall-meet” types who love one code and feel they have to bash the shit out of the other.
Anyway, this is not a head-to-head on the quality of the matches, but the venues. So here goes…