All Blacks in Argentina

On Saturday Mark went to a match up of the New Zealand All-Blacks and the Argentina Pumas.  For the uninitiated, these are the national teams of their respective nations in the sport of rugby.  And the All Blacks are among the best in the world pretty much every year.  Argentina has a good team, but the All Blacks are the best (until someone better comes along, anway).

Aside from being a dominant force in their sport, the All Blacks are also well known for the haka that they perform prior to each match.  You would have to classify a haka as a dance, but that's a pretty aggressive dance.  It is derived from the Maori people of New Zealand and has a long history.  The All Blacks have been doing this prior to their matches for years as well.  It was pretty cool to get to see it in person.

Mark actually did play a little rugby on a club team back in Grinnell.  If memory serves, he scored his first try at the All-Iowa tournament in Iowa Falls.  Good times.  Despite this fact, Mark still never completely understood all the rules of the game.  Now, after years with little exposure to the sport, it's getting hard to remember.  So he had to do the analysis of the match through a hazy memory.  For example:

So we'll start with an easy one.  Rugby is known as a gentleman's game.  The players beat the living daylights out of one another and then hang out together afterwards.  The sportsmanship is such a strong part of the game in fact that the players in this match got together to try to find a contact lens that one of the players had lost:

Ok, so actually, this is a scrum.  It's one of the ways to put the ball into play.

Another way to put the ball into play is a throw in.  In the photo above the Argentine player on the right has just chucked the ball into play.  You can see that the third Argentine player from the right is about to lift the fourth Argentine player from right into the air to catch it.  

Ok, so the basic rules came back to me.  It helped that we were sitting directly in front of the New Zealand crew from ESPN who was calling the game.  It was like having Paul Allen right behind me explaining the Xs and Os.

 Even with the help, though, there were some things that were inexplicable.  The All Blacks won the match pretty easily.  The final was 36-17 (or something along those lines), but it really wasn't that close (29-3 at halftime when they started subbing out the starters).  So NZ pretty much ate Argentina's lunch.  Despite this, they fired off fireworks after the game.

And, of course, Mark does not understand American referees and umpires, he's sure not going to understand refs in other countries either.

Eventually, Mark got the gist of what was going on.  He even predicted that this guy was going to get rocked (and he did).  The circled Argentine guy was out of position and coming up to support on the outside runner from the All Blacks.  The outside guy for the All Blacks had some wheels and built up a full head of steam by the time he got the ball.  The poor Argentine guy  was late to the party and went low to make the tackle.  Which was great, except that the NZ guy pitched it at the last second, his teammate scored and the late to party Argentine player ended up with a concussion for his efforts.  Rough night for him.

But them's the breaks.  Anyway, the All Blacks were all they were cracked up to be.  Argentina played hard, but were a step behind all night.  And I am not sure if that guy ever found his contact lenses.