Maybe it was the bellyful of blue cod and oysters, or perhaps it was the 14 layers of clothes I had bundled myself into but, whatever the reason, there was a warm glow in the commentary tower at Rugby Park, Invercargill, last weekend.
Then again, you could say there was a warm glow in commentary boxes up and down the country last weekend: under the roof of Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin, or in the rain at Baypark, Tauranga; upstairs at Yarrow Stadium in New Plymouth, or up more stairs at Waikato Stadium in Hamilton.
There was certainly a warm glow in Pukekohe on Sunday, as the afternoon sun made a mid-winter appearance and Poppy the Goat grazed behind the fence at the back of the big grass bank. The night before, 48,000 people had farewelled another GOAT at Eden Park. It was a good weekend for ruminating.
On Sunday, the Taniwha tried to win a slab of timber. They came up short, again. But hey, what's another year when you've been waiting 36? Manawatu were trying to get a win at Pukekohe earlier in the afternoon. What's another year when you've been waiting 35. History makes for a tough opponent. Even when none of the players were alive to remember "the last time".
So many of them were having their first time. There was Taleni Seu in Invercargill on Thursday, replacing a bloke not long out of rugby nursery school himself. Blake Gibson limped from the field and Taleni took over. Taleni Seu will be a household name soon enough. He joked on his Facebook page that the entire population of Niue had liked something he had shared. The entire population of the commentary team liked how he played.