Time to give someone else a turn

And so another World Cup comes and goes, and for me all that's left of RWC 2011 is some last-minute shopping followed by the journey out to Auckland airport early on Thursday ahead of the long flight home. In some ways it’s hard to believe it has been nearly seven weeks, in other ways the arrival here seems like another lifetime ago, and not only because of the sleeping pills.

A lot has been piled into these weeks – enjoyment, hard work, some entertaining rugby, some not so entertaining rugby, some controversial moments without which a World Cup just wouldn’t be a World Cup, and of course the highs and lows that watching or writing about sport is all about. As I wrote after the Springboks’ quarterfinal exit, if we didn’t mourn when the team loses, what would be the point of celebrating when they win?

Life must be flying by, for watching the New Zealanders celebrating on Sunday night it was hard to believe that it was already four years on from the emotion that flooded through me when John Smit held the Webb Ellis Cup aloft in Paris. Four years? You must be joking! It seems far less.

No doubt the next four years will fly by too, so before we know it I will be writing about the end of the 2015 World Cup in England. Will that tournament be able to match this one? Well, it will probably be different, and maybe a lot more like the one in France in 2007, for it is only really a true rugby country like New Zealand that can provide the unique experience that was enjoyed by those who made the journey south.

This World Cup was far more like the one in South Africa than the others I have been to, and for the same reasons. Will the British newspapers sweep soccer off the main sports pages in 2015 to accommodate the wall-to-wall coverage afforded to rugby that the Kiwi media did? I think not. If Liverpool and Manchester United are playing the same day as New Zealand and South Africa, there will be more focus on Old Trafford or Anfield, for that is just the way it is.

What the England event will probably provide though, is a more cosmopolitan and international atmosphere, for England is just easier to get to for people from most countries. That said, full marks to the Kiwis for the way they embraced the minnow teams and got behind them, sometimes even wearing the colours of countries I doubt few of them had ever been to.

And thanks too to the people of New Zealand for being so embracing and friendly, with the exception obviously of the Taupo police officers who accused my gentlemanly colleague from the Pretoria News, Vata Ngobeni, of being a drug fiend, and the nutters who smashed expensive windows in a hired car to steal Brenden Nel’s Ipod in those early weeks in Auckland.

My World Cup ended where it had started all those weeks ago – at Eden Park. Having caught the media shuttle to the opening game between the All Blacks and Tonga, I opted to do the Fan Trail this time, and some trail it was. I have to admit I couldn’t understand all the shows and displays that were put on en route to the stadium, a distance of just over five kilometres from Queens Wharf to Eden Park. For instance there was one where images of witches were hanging blowing in the wind. Huh? Maybe I missed something there. If so, excuse my ignorance.

What was important though, was that it was festive and there was mass participation. Being part of the sea of people walking up through the town made me think of the Comrades Marathon, though there wasn’t anybody who arrived at Eden Park broken. At least not broken physically, for there may have been some who suffered for other reasons as there were some good pubs on the trail, including some impromptu unofficial ones that were parts of residential homes.

The Auckland city minders also did well to open extra areas on the waterfront to Fan Park use. When I got down there by lunch time the Queens Wharf itself was already overflowing, with a long line of people forming outside, so it was good to be able to just pop alongside to the other venues, whose names have now been forgotten.

Having witnessed and even felt the nervousness of New Zealanders in the earlier parts of the tournament, I was struck on Sunday on the walk to Eden Park just how different it all seemed. It really did feel like most Kiwis thought their team was going to just dust off the French challenge in the first couple of minutes and that would be it, and that they were heading to the final to celebrate.

So it was great to see France getting stuck in and making the match a contest for the entire 80 minutes, and I must admit that towards the end I wanted the underdogs to win. But in retrospect, as I have written elsewhere, it’s better they didn’t as France didn’t play well enough before the final to deserve to be recognised as the world’s best team.

And there can also be no denying that New Zealand deserve to finally have their status as the world’s top team recognised officially, and even as a non-New Zealander I had a bit of emotion hanging around when Richie McCaw, Uncle Ted and the rest of the All Black squad paraded the trophy in Auckland on Monday.

Talking of Uncle Ted, the last attributed quote in World Cup diary entries for 2011 should go to him as he responded to a question about whether he might be prepared now to go and help England over the next four-year cycle.

“Mate, if that happens there will be a divorce”.

And that is what will happen to me if I don’t switch off from rugby for a while once I get home. It’s been an interesting year. Pity about the Boks, but they have been World Cup champions for eight of the last 16 years. It’s time to give someone else a turn…