My First Rugby Game

My first Rugby game was long over due.

It all started so innocently, however it wasn’t to last that way for long. When two Western grads joined by a South African friend meet up half way around the world and go to a rowdy Super 14 Rugby game in Johannesburg at famous Ellis Park٭, copious beer consumption soon becomes the overwhelming aspect of the night. The setting demanded it.

We arrived 30 minutes late, but that didn’t matter. We had been cruising downtown in our taxi, windows up and doors locked, in a shiny new blue Benz, already downing beers in the back working on our pre-game buzz

Once arrived, we bought our tickets at the gates amongst the roars from the crowd inside the open aired dome. Excitement was in the air.

We made our way inside, but before we reached our seats, or should I say the best empty seats we could grab, we had important business do get to: beers.

Now, we’ve all been to the Skydome, or another stadium in where the lines are long, beers are flat and the price is high. Many places will often even limit your consumption. They don’t want to get the crows too rowdy now. This rugby game in South Africa changed all this for me. Here are their rules, and how it all went down:

First off, the beer tent was exactly how it should be – rammed, sloppy and filled with drunks. Empty beer cans were three deep on your feet, with the spilt beer turning the ground beneath to mud. Crowded all around with drunk white Afrikaners with their mullets were a plenty. These aren’t the people with mullets that you’d point at make fun of, no, no, no. These are some of the thickest, rowdiest, liveliest, scariest and drunkest sports fans I’ve ever came across. They were awesome. But back to the beer.

Secondly, you could only buy beer in 6 packs at R90 a pop (roughly $11CAN). To make things tricky, the South Africans had a rule that no beer cans were allowed into the stadium. This was solved by what is known as outright illegal back home in Canada. They give you giant plastic pitchers as your cups. Between the three of us, we immediately bought four 6 packs and pored them into 2 pitchers (pitchers were hard to come by, which complicated the process a bit) Once the beer was bought, it was a mad dash to get as much beer without spilling into the pitchers. Many a men soon found out that a 6pack does not easily, nor neatly, fit into that pitcher. Chugging became the name of the game. And you had to hurry – you had a game to get back to.

We managed to chug as much as we could, filled the two pitchers, and hid a few of the last cans into our jeans. It was now time to actually enter the stadium and watch this game called Rugby – that’s what we came here to do no?

Although the game was well under way, our entrance was timed perfectly. As soon as we walked in and saw the field, the Home Team (Golden Lions) scored a diving try, lighting up the audience around us. If I didn’t ask the South African we were with, I’d still be yelling out touchdown. That’s how much I knew of rugby.

And it went on like that – learning the game, boozing, screaming, chatting up our neighbours, chugging contests with our neighbours, and sometimes even watching the game; it was great. What a game it soon turned out to be.

The away team tied the game up to 31 a piece with 50 seconds to go. The air was thick; everyone was tense and many people a-cross-eyed by this time of night. The Lions needed to work their magic. A few scrums, and a few fine plays later, and ‘TRY’ (I agree, it doesn’t have the same ring as ‘TOUCHDOWN’ does it?) the win with 5 seconds left. The crowd was already rowdy – but now it was just drunk mayhem. Definitely not the scene after a Toronto Blue Jays win; rugby is crazier.

The best part of the game, however, was yet to be had. In the middle of the second half, the three of us had our ‘Field of Dreams’ moment, when we all heard a magical voice over the speakers telling us to ‘be sure to stay after the game to go out onto the field’. What’s this? We all looked at each other in disbelief. We can go and run out onto the field? We were quite drunk by then, and thought for sure it was our minds playing tricks on us. What stadium would allow the rowdy fans onto the field to muck-about? The legalities, the condition of the field, security, and so on would all be in jeopardy. But were in South Africa; rules are different here; and this is exactly what happened.

What better way to keep fans love of the game alive than to allow them onto the field that their heroes touched and played on only a few moments ago. The game had now ended, and we were watching from our seats in disbelief – fans were actually going on the field. We had refilled our pitchers in the second half, and so still had quite a bit of booze left. Add the fact that we were pretty much sloshed by this point, there was no way we were going to be allowed on the field. Kids were playing mini-games in their own pockets on the fresh grass. People were kicking their rugby balls high and through the posts, and others were simply tackling whomever they could find. We needed to at least try to get on that field.

And that we did; pitchers in hand, we walked straight past security and onto the field. What a surreal experience. We were running around and laughing like school children, still not believing that this was possible. We were waiting for security to politely ask us to leave, but they never did. We stood right in mid-field finishing our pitchers, like any fine gentleman would.

After watching everyone else kicking and passing their rugby balls around, we felt underequipped. But we were drunk and therefore quite resourceful. The lid of the pitchers became a Frisbee, and we played our own version of rugby with that for awhile. But then a stroke of brilliance came upon us. The idea of using the now empty pitcher as a rugby ball itself came to mind. We immediately went and lined up a field goal.



It never even came close to the posts, but it didn’t matter. The night was already a Touchdown, or at least a ‘Try’ I should say.

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٭ Entire books have been written on a historic event that happened here in 1995. This one event unified a divided nation, and brough Mandela into the hearts of whites. Read more here.