New Zealand Tour, England V Scotland Game RWC 2011, Shame on you English Rugby Squad!

It only took about 3 hours to drive from the peaceful town of Kawhia to Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Once we go off the winding roads onto the SH1 it was easy driving.

It was time to say ‘goodbye’ to this campervan, so we drove to the Britz HQ at the airport. The offices were all decorated for the Rugby World Cup, and very busy with Rugby Fans. Britz provide a fixed fee taxi back into the city, this journey took almost as long as the drive from Kawhia to ALK had taken. 

We headed to the centre of Auckland, where I had booked The Mercure Windsor Hotel for two nights. Auckland was Rugby Ready! Everywhere was decorated, and a Fanzone had been created on the quayside. This fanzone was outstanding. The large rugby Ball, we had seen it in Paris in 2007, had come home and inside was a fantastic 3 D film of New Zealand, made better by the fact that we had already visited many of the locations. I loved the sheep and winding roads...so very true! The large screens available for fans to watch matches were the best quality screens I have ever seen and the atmosphere inside was as good as being at the game! I was regretting spending thousands of pounds on tickets as this place was free, warm and dry!

Unfortunately the The Mercure Windsor Hotel was not as good. I booked this hotel during with Expidia, and as the England v Scotland Rugby Match was on I knew that the prices would be high, however at £300.00 per night this is one of the most overpriced hotel rooms I have ever booked, and is most certainly the worst value hotel room I have ever had. The room was small, it had two small ‘double’ beds in it. The two beds did not match the single headboard, the mattresses were old and too large for the bases! I was surprised to find a fully equipped kitchen area, Due to the kitchen area the occupants in the rooms on each side of me chose to cook, the smell of food cooking was evident on all floors of this hotel and was not a good look for a Hotel. The bathroom had only a shower and neither the towels or soaps/ shampoos ect were replenished on day two. The hotel corridors and room looked in need of a major refit, The curtains were old, did not fit and shabby looking. To use the Spa /Pool you had to ask a member of staff to unlock the door, and due to the rugby all the staff were run off there feet, so I did not want to add to there burden.........But the worst thing about this Hotel is that it is very noisy, I was repeatedly woken on both nights we used the room, in fact this was the worst sleep I had in our 8 week tour of New Zealand. But I was not going to let the poor quality hotel spoil our stay! We enjoyed Auckland and its waterfront, eating at all the very overprice restaurants there.
On Saturday 1st October it was the big event, England V Scotland. Auckland pulled out all the stops, the sound of bagpipes filling the air along with the Scottish dancers...where were the English Morris Men or Flag-Crackers? http://www.folk-now.co.uk/directory/teams_west.html the train transport to Eden Park was free and there was loads of entertainment on all around the stadium. To start us off we watched the fantastic match Tonga V France, with Tonga winning and all the Tongan fans in the Fanzone going wild! Then set off up to Eden Park on the train. Hoping, really hoping for a good display of Rugby (like we had just seen, Rugby played with passion!), not the boring stuff England had subjected us to so far, I was beginning to wonder if some of the England players were actually proud to pull on the white shirt, or was that left up to us fans? Also, we had started to hear disturbing stories about Ball Tampering, Dwarfs and lude remarks made in hotel rooms? What the hell was going on?
So we were nervous but hopeful as we sang our Anthem, interestingly many of the ‘Scottish’ supporters in the Stadium did not know the words to Flour of Scotland, they read them from their i phones! Plastic Scotsmen I feel? By the 10th minute it became clear that we were once again watching a team (England) who did not appear to understand the rules of the game that they were playing. Whilst Scotland played with commitment and passion we had to endure over 80 minutes of totally boring, dull rugby, and it cost us a lot of money to watch shit such as this.......I am thinking of of switching and watching Rugby League if this keeps happening, it is disgusting. At the end of the match, the last game in this pool, the English Rugby Team did not even come out onto the pitch to acknowledge and maybe 'thank' the fans that may be going home now. I found the behaviour of the England Rugby Squad 2011 both on and off the pitch to be very arrogant, unprofessional and deeply disturbing, they seem to be treating the Tournament a some jokey school Rugby Tour who obviously do not need the support of people like us!  I will be surprised if we beat France next week....in fact I have seen a nice French Rugby Shirt in the RWC shop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scottish Rugby Fan

England Rugby Fans.