Very confusion...: Rrruuggbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*hic*

As predicted by many many people, the time lag between my blog posts is getting slowly longer. Believe me people this isn't due to me becoming bored of the the blog, I still love these surrogate conversations I have with you all, it's just that my life is pretty much all about work at the moment. And unless you want the world's most mediocre food blog, I've really not got a whole lot else going on in my life at the moment. having said that however: Saturday was a whole lot of fun.

The rugby 7s tournament is a BIG DEAL in Hong Kong. For a place that by-and-large doesn’t give a crap about sports, the effect is pretty dramatic as the whole of Causeway Bay gets turned upside down when this event comes to town. It is exciting when your city hosts an international event, I’ll give them that, like how Melbourne has the Melbourne Cup & the Grand Prix, Adelaide has the Fringe, and Alice Springs had that family day that one time in the 80s where Kevin Bloody Wilson was there. Classic. But even so, there is something a little different about the 7s that helps it stand out from your ordinary social/cultural drawcard. And that is the hundreds upon thousands of pissed expatriates descending upon the place dressed in the most crazy array of fancy dress costumes you’re ever likely to see in one place at one time.

Now Hong Kong stadium isn’t big. I know this isn’t the football capital of the world or anything, but I honestly expected a city of nearly 8 million people to have slightly more seating capacity that the 15,000 that this little dome holds. I mean, you’re talking about a very impressive Victoria Park in Collingwood. But the horde of clowns, cops, Indians, Fred Flinstones, Lego Men, bees, caterpillars, Spongebobs, superheroes, rockstars, ladybugs, ladymen, & every other conceivable whacko costume that flock to the place on the three days of this tournament defies belief and all sense of good taste and somehow manage to squeeze themselves all into to this teeny thing.

Generally, the majority of the ruckus is confined to the South Stand. By the time I rolled into the stadium at 12pm it was waaay too late to get a seat in there as the queue reached almost the length of the ground & had a big sign up saying “3 hour wait”. We did a quick survey, pooled out intellects, & came up with a very reasonable ‘f*ck that’.

Yep. F*ck that.

So, wending & weaving our way from stand to stand, dodging batmen & the ever-present, effervescent & horrifyingly ubiquitous Carlsberg girls along the entire Eastern end we realised fairly quickly that there was not a seat to be had on the whole ground floor. Well, there was nothing for it, we had to take to the 2^nd tier stand. Via escalator of course. I mean, this is Hong Kong after all: world’s greatest escalator market. We popped out of the dugout into a pleasantly sunny & relatively quiet stand thinking this was our lucky day. Three seats in a row. Bonus! It became immediately apparent however, that this was due to the no alcohol rule we’d somehow bypassed. Dammit! Now, we had to sneak our jugs of beer past the security girls like minors. Oh well, we were still happy & still drank beer. Not so much the families around us who are amazingly like Mormons at a sports event: That is to say, sweaty & horrified at my foul language.

Bit of explanation is probably required at this stage. I didn’t just go to a dry stand, spray beer all over everyone then start yelling about how the French are C*%#$! No. Firstly, I said that about the Canadians, not the French. And secondly, it’s because Australia ran out only minutes after we’d finally sat down & started getting thrashed by these guys straight up. An insult! Now, I don’t really know a thing about rugby & I sure as hell don’t have anything against the Canadians. But I mean, COME ON! They’re not famous for their try tally are they?! We were supposed to be annihilating these mongs & here we were having rings run around us. And with only 7 minutes to a half, I was getting very excitable. Okay, I am exaggerating a bit, but it was pretty nail-biting stuff, seeing the Aussies cop so much punishment in a period of 3 minutes. But all’s well that ends well. The green & gold stemmed the deluge of tries & juuuuust managed to scrape in at the end.

Australia playing the ball out of their own try line.

The final result. Hey, a win's a win right?

So anyway, I’m sure you’re dying to know about the costumes. A large portion of the photos that I ended up taking were just shite as I was a bit spaz by 5:30pm. It’s remarkably difficult to keep your phone/camera hand still while you’re simultaneously yelling “look at that” and waving a beer around. But I will start with one that was taken a little earlier in the day. From the dry stand no less. So I didn’t end up asking this bloke why he decided to dress in a full Batman costume & then cop out of partying down because he wanted to sit with his plainclothes wife & kids, but it didn’t stop me musing on it. Did he get in trouble in the car & he wasn’t allowed to drink with his buddies? Was he a fetishist that just wanted an excuse to wear his favourite sex suit in public? Was he a simpleton & dressed like that all the time? Who was this mystery man behind the mask? And why, if he went to all the trouble of getting dressed up like Batman, could he not be arsed shaving his face? I couldn’t work it out.

Unshaven Batman watches match intently.

Unshaven Batman BUSTS the guy taking photos of him!! Oh! Nothing gets past unshaven Batman.

Oh, & just before the photo jam: One more sad, lonely looking bastard in completely the wrong costume. Bees are happy, hardworking & very social, right? Wrong.

Depression Bee: Bzzz...sigh...bzz

People! People! Friends??!!?

No...

Alright, now stories from the South Stand:

Devo Man - Awesome

Best shot I could get from this angle

A sea of booze

A sailor chick ensuring the sea stays boozy

About as close as I could get to the freakshow unfortunately

What's that leopard costume guy doing...?

iPhone zoom sucks

We sneaked around a bit & got pretty rad seats by the end of the day. Check some of the ground-level ‘action’. They were great seats.

See?

Rugby actually did happen believe it or not. There was more to do than just drink & spot bizarre costumes. Like, marveling at the hilarity of a 6 man scrum:

Get in there boys! Don't worry about the point, just grunt heaps!

So at around 7pm, the day finally wrapped up after several dozen games, many thousands of litres of beer & Pimm's, & a whole lot of yelling & laughing. Last game of the day was played by tournament favourites (& eventual winners) New Zealand. Being a small guy, you just stop noticing how monstrously large some dudes are after a few years, but these guys were BIG.

Mountains that can run.

And finally, once it had all finished, feeling a little disappointed with the photos so far, I decided to get a medley of the sloppy remnants staggering away from the stand after the final game. I just kept my camera more-or-less still & let them fizz past me. Rubbish photos, but they give you an impression of the level of messy exhaustion the day ended up with.