Newlands rugby

This last friday saw us lighting a sneaky braai in the face of the changing weather on the balcony. Having had a long week (yet again) I was in a blah mood, that is, until I saw the flames and smelt the wood smoke. All of a sudden I felt much happier. I realised how much of an identity it was to South Africans to braai (ok, so we all know that but we've been using brickets and it wasn't cutting it) and how much it meant to me. Strange how you can miss what is effectively a cooking method when you're using brickets instead of wood- from now on, its wood fires all the way!

This Saturday was rugby time! I don't watch that much rugby but when I do I like a big crowd to watch it with. So when Callum invited us to watch Stormers vs Sharks at Newlands I jumped at the chance. Turned out even better than expected- the day was absolutely beautiful and we got to watch UCT vs Stellies (intervarsity) as the pre-game (needless to say UCT lost, badly).

We headed off to get a beer (for me my traditional brandy and coke- only ever drunk at the rugby stadium) only to find the bar rammed with drunk, very drunk students. After a long fight for the bar we managed to get to the front and had the long wait to actually get a bartender to pay us any attention. During this time the Maties (stellenbosch supporters) sung there song (no idea what is was, ever so slightly more complicated than uh-U, uh-U, uh-U-C-T!), jumping up and down and spilling beer on everyone (really, I thought these guys would value their beer enough not to waste any of it!). An interesting point was that when the Ikeys (UCT supporters) started their song in retaliation the Maties sang along, louder and changing it to uh-U, uh-U, uh-Useless Team, which I thought was rather funny and clever (despite having studied at UCT myself!). Ah well, a long wait, with much shoving later saw us equipped with two drinks each, to last us the next 20 minutes.

Pre-drinks in the sun (Callum top, Simon pulling a face)

In the pub

Outside the pub (in the stadium)

Garth and I were supporting the Stormers and Callum and Simon the Sharks (traitors!). A good first half followed with Stormers doing alright. Then the second half began with the Sharks gaining the upper hand for the rest of the game. Now I'm no rugby expert but I think this might have something to do with actually using ball posession to score tries, unlike the Stormers who seemed to have the ball a lot but didn't seem to know what to do with it. Ah well, a fun game (more so because it was live than because it was good).