Kiwis – Out With the Welcome Mat
by Mick Cleary | 04 March 2010 (14:09)
I’ve had a stack of emails recently from various operators in New Zealand, banging on about what great deals there are to be had for tickets and hotels during next year’s Rugby World Cup. It’s the usual guff. Sign up now, or risk missing out. Bargains galore ! Cut-price rates ! Cut-throat rates more like to judge by some of the hotel prices quoted for the final fortnight. As others have done before them, so NZ are doing now – trying to make a fast buck.
But punters are too savvy these days, as tour operators down in South Africa are finding out. There was a huge clamour 12 months ago about the need to get in quick and early for the football World Cup. Don’t be a mug. Buy now ! Don’t be left high and dry. Upshot ? There are hundreds of thousands of tickets still left. The internet is the great friend of the consumer. There are now ways and means to outflank the official operators, to get a deal that suits you, not some corporate rip-off merchant.
Let’s hope that NZ sees the light. Everyone does. Prices were high in France and before that Australia, yet both countries staged magnificent World Cups, as did South Africa in 1995. The 1999 event in Wales and across the five nations was a hotch-potch gig, primarily because its focus was spread too thinly across the countries.
No such worries in NZ. I’ve no doubt that the tournament will be a success. The Kiwis hosted the Lions superbly in 2005, getting into the spirit of old-school welcomes the length-and-breadth as the fans took to their camper vans. Mind you, there was one key difference back then. The Lions were rubbish, soundly beaten in all three tests, and were never a threat. The rest of the world will be a threat. Pick any from the usual Big Three suspects along with France and, maybe, Ireland. England ? Who knows ? They defied the odds in 2007 to get to the final so they can never be written off.
But the thing is this. The Rugby World Cup is an event, an occasion, a coming-together of the rugby family. It’s not an opportunity for the All Blacks to lord it over everyone else. Of course, you back your team. Of course, you want them to end their 20 + years of hurt. But the bigger picture is even more important than that. The World Cup has to be a festival of rugby, of camaraderie. That’s what has made the last two World Cups so special, not the fact that England and South Africa won them. That’s why it will be important to get to the next stage of the build-up, and that involves the sight of prices tumbling. Because unless the world comes to watch and join in, it won’t be much of a World Cup.
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