It was many years ago when fell in love with rugby. π I had many male friends from Australia and New Zealand who introduced me to the game. Having grown up with sports always on TV and an appreciation of the community that is involved in watching it, I was interested in this very international one that resembled American football – but better. π€ͺ
Perhaps it was because I was living in Japan where it can often be hard to distinguish between a man and a woman when looking at them from behind, but I came to truly appreciate the rough edges of a rugby player. Soon, the New Zealand All Blacks became my favorite team due to their pre-kick-off tradition of the haka.
If you’ve never seen one, here is a sample:
What’s not to love?! β€οΈ
Anyway, then I met an Englishman who also loves his sports including rugby. So, we make sure to enjoy matches live where we can. Last year was the Rugby World Cup, so we saw a match in Nice, France.
This year, we took in a Six Nations opening weekend match in Rome of England vs Italy.
It was fun to see the Italian way of supporting their team and watching the crowd get involved. There were also a lot of white-shirted English team supporters as well, which made it lively. I told my partner that it seemed as if the Italian fans were “fair weather” cheerers while the English were “foul weather” fans – cheering more when they were down than up. π
All in all, it was a good time and I think we might make a regular event of it if we are around to watch matches in Rome. π₯°
PS Sorry for the weird photo of us, but I didn’t want to post with the other unknown faces in the background. π¬
~T π₯πβοΈ
