B&I Lions 2017
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Slightly related; Paul O'Connell has written a book and this is an extract from The Times:
A few days after the Lions lost the first Test against New Zealand badly, I was on a training pitch in Wellington. After five minutes of the session, it felt as though every emotion I’d experienced since the beginning of the tour — every ounce of pressure I’d been feeling — was being multiplied by 10. Am I going mad here? Can I not take the pressure anymore?
I’d never been as worked up in training. But then I’d never taken something called Focus before putting on my boots. You could call it an energy drink, but that wouldn’t cover it. It contained a massive hit of caffeine. Whatever you happened to be feeling at the time, whatever mood you were in, it exaggerated it.
The previous night, four days before the second Test, Clive Woodward had spoken to us in the team room. Or rather, he had teed up someone else. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin doctor, was with us because Clive had figured the Kiwi media would try to work us over. He wanted a big hitter to have our back.
After we were hammered in Christchurch, there was a press conference called to talk about the spear tackle that put Brian O’Driscoll out for months. Clive kept asking why Keven Mealamu and Tana Umaga hadn’t been cited for it. I understood the frustration, but didn’t think putting the incident up on a big screen in slow-motion, in front of a roomful of journalists, was going to help our cause. You can maybe do that when you’ve won the game, but when you’ve been absolutely hockeyed it’s a little more difficult.
I liked Alastair. I know his intentions were good. But his big speech to the squad didn’t go down well. He said he knew next to nothing about rugby, but he did know what it felt like to be under serious pressure when everything was on the line. He talked about fighting elections for the Labour Party. When they were taking on the Conservatives, he said, it was like going to war and they’d do anything to win. Then he upped it.
He told us that in every campaign and every crisis, there comes a moment when the people in the thick of it realise they need to dig deep — or they’re in serious trouble. He talked about Northern Ireland, then Kosovo. He said he didn’t get that feeling when he looked at us. He didn’t have the sense that we were fighting back.
I was really insulted. I wasn’t playing well, but I could not have been trying any harder. I was emptying myself in every training session and every match. It annoyed me that anyone would question how much I wanted to win for the Lions when I was going to the depths of what I had in me. On the training pitch the following morning, I was still thinking about Alastair’s few words and getting more and more p***** off. I decided what I was going to do when the session was over: find Alastair and knock him out.
There wouldn’t be any need for questions or explanations. Everyone would know what it was for. But by the time training was over, the effect of the Focus had worn off, and I was back to passed for normal on that tour.
In the afternoon, once I’d done my analysis, I headed off into the city on my own. I remember sitting in a book shop drinking tea and reading Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, enjoying my own company and deciding I’d go back the next day and do the same.
I was finding the tour a lonely experience. The players had separate rooms. Looking back, that wasn’t the greatest idea when you’re trying to bring a team together for the first time. The dream I’d bought into was nothing like the reality. In trying to find the winning edge, Clive had broken with Lions tradition, and all these years later it’s obvious that something important was lost. At the time, I couldn’t really see that. I felt as if I was contributing to the downfall of the Lions. There was very little perspective when you were in the middle of it.
After that first Test I started smoking the odd cigarette in my room. To this day I don’t know why. When I was younger, most of my friends smoked. If I had a few drinks on a night out I might take a cigarette off them, but until that tour I hadn’t smoked one in years.
I was brushing my teeth six or seven times a day: I wanted to brush away the smell of smoke. I wasn’t getting a whole lot out of the tour and I remember thinking there might be one benefit before it was over. At least I might have white teeth by the end of this f****** trip.
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well i turned down a free ticket to the Auckland test, does that count?
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@Rapido Did you not see the link on the fern? AllBlacks.com gave permissions to all ferners and that other NZ rugby website (No8?) to a link that got test tickets before public notification.
I gues as a thanks for the support kind of thing
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I think limited tickets went on sale for season ticket holders and Club affiliates or something?
Although I thought they were being released in stages like the RWC and the test ballots were not out yet?
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@nzzp said in B&I Lions 2017:
Got it through season ticket passes. If you had an Eden Park pass for this year and resubscribe, you get tickets thrown in.
Presales are ONLY for the non-test match games
Yeah I just renewed my membership
I believe the Balcony Bar membership is already sold out. North Lounge membership would get new members the Lions tickets (2*Test & Blues) as well as all the other rugby and cricket
I believe normal ground membership just gets you priority purchase for the Lions
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So Gats firing some early shots.
"Anyone could coach All Blacks"
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11741478"All Blacks fans embarrassing"
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11740545Please tell me this isn't going to descend to the depths of the Woodward-Campbell circus.
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He's playing to his audience. He's way overstating the booing thing. I was at the game and I heard the odd person boo when he got the ball, but that's just it, I could actually hear individuals booing, it wasn't a crowd-wide thing at all. Maybe 1000 people out of 45,000 tops. Every population has idiots, can't do much to stop them being idiots at the end of the day.
His comments in the "anoyone can coach the All Blacks" article are pretty reasonable, apart from the "anyone can coach the All Blacks" part, which is probably just a bit of jealousy on his part as I'm sure there's nothing he'd want more then to be coach of the ABs.
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@No-Quarter yeah it was sections of the crowd, hardly anyone up our end booed, so I expect little pockets and then a few around did it to feel cool.
Maybe thats why he said 'anyone' cos he can be 'anyone'
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