A-League = Amateur league

31/1/10 - Pint of Pilsner, listening to a band playing covers in the sunshine

Last night I went to the ami stadium in Christchurch for Wellington Phoenix vs Adelaide United. Wellington are New Zealand's only professional club and they play in the Australian league. The ami stadium has been recently expanded to a capacity of 45,000 ready for the 2011 rugby world cup, there were nearly 20,000 watching the Phoenix with me and around 1,000 of those actually understood what was going on. Twice before the game I overheard people saying 'is it 45 minutes a half?', bloody egg chasers.

A-Leaugue football is shit. Very shit. In a pub before kick off an English man got served before the man next to me who then turned to me and said with anger "fucking pommies getting in the way of us drinking" I nodded and kept quiet for a minute but had to order my drinks with him still next to me. "Piynt of beeya pleeaayse" I said. It didn't sound Australian it sounded retarded.

I moved away to a friendlier looking group of Kiwis to ask them what I should expect from the game and they admitted the standard would be about League 1 in England. It was closer to conference football with Wellington winning 1-0 thanks to a terrible goal followed some woeful goal mouth defending.

I sat next to a man who didn't like football but had come because his daughter plays, after 40 minutes he asked me "Is it 45 each way?"

Wellington play 2 home games outside Wellington each year, one in Christchurch and one somewhere else (I wasn't paying attention when I was told) and apparently the Wellington fans quite like the days out so maybe the Premier League's idea of a fixture in Hong Kong or America isn't that ridiculous. 31 game seasons though, stupid. Fact.

The only saving grace for A-League football is that you can take beers in to the stands and the bar is open throughout the game. I bought 6 bottles because every one else queueing seemed to be doing the same. Feeling on my way to a happy level of drunkenness I ran from the stadium back to the hostel, picked up my bottle of wine and headed to the lounge.

(Note to Mum: Skip this paragraph)
There were a few people who had the same idea as me and after a while we moved to the kitchen to play some drinking games. I learned a new Ring of Fire rule called 'Gecko' which allows the 'Gecko master' to pick any time to run at a wall or surface and stick to it, the last person to follow suit drinks. The drinking was fun and I chatted to people about things to do when I get to Asia but once I got in to town I was a mess and I have little recollection of the night except for being taken in to a strip club by two lads I had been drinking with only to get thrown out 5 minutes later for falling asleep at the bar!

I cocked up this morning. Missed my bus to Kaikoura, by a mere 4 hours. I bought an alarm clock today so hopefully it shouldn't happen again.

Although it was a bit of a wasted day if I hadn't missed the bus I wouldn't have got a t-shirt printed with 'I do like a t-shirt' on the front and I wouldn't have seen Mario, queen of the circus - a juggler at the World Buskers Festival who did his act dressed as Freddie Mercury, to the music of Queen!