FAMILY MATTERS by Jude Dobson

In less than a couple of weeks - on April 27 - tickets go on sale for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. That leaves exactly 500 days until kick-off. Historically, I have not been a big rugby fan. But two things are changing that.
The first is a newfound appreciation of the fun and fervour a Rugby World Cup event brings. We planned a family holiday with another family (the intrepid "party of 10") using the RWC 2007 as the excuse upon which to hang the trip. The blokes were most keen to see games, but we girls were not too bothered about the rugby. We were happy to use it as a reason to take the kids to England and France.
The second thing that has piqued my interest is having a son playing the game. He started with the round ball in his early years but there was a seismic shift when he and his mates were about eight. Suddenly, soccer was so yesterday and it was all about rugby. Out came the favourite Hurricanes shirt and it has since had to be prised off to get it to the washing machine. He even wore it to a recent Blues-Bulls match. Easy to find him, I guess, in the crowd.
So here I am surprising myself, but maybe not, really, by making a note to go online on the 27th and sort out some Eden Park pool match tickets.
Yes, you can pay a lot of money ($450 for an adult category A ticket), but the kids' tickets are pretty reasonable at anywhere from $20 for the Fiji-Samoa match to $60 for the NZ-France match. Being in the stadium, as I discovered in Cardiff, was the important thing, regardless of whether you're in the cheap seats or you've paid a small fortune for it.
I've been to three All Black matches in my entire life. One was against the Lions way back when, perched high in a very windy, cold seat in Wellington's Athletic Park. It's not a memory that made me keen to do it again.
The second one was at Eden Park seeing the French with the family, and that was better because the kids were into it. I managed to identify a couple of ABs and even the hairy French player but, mostly, I was in the dark. The kids took great delight in teaching me the nuances of the game and correcting me on names.
But the most exciting match I saw was in Cardiff when the All Blacks lost to the French. Naively, I thought it would be a no brainer that we would win but, alas, it was a very quiet Kiwi contingent heading out the gate.
I was glad, however, we were not back in the land of the long black cloud as we could only imagine it to be.
Before it all went pear-shaped, it was a great experience to be part of. Crowds of people all dressed either in black or in the tricoleur walked through the streets. I recall an interesting sign language chat with Asterix and his mates at the local about who might win.
I failed I think, until I was there, to appreciate the enormity of a World Cup. Seeing the rugby ball hung underneath the Eiffel Tour certainly brought it home. Even if you aren't into rugby, you'd have to appreciate the effect the event will have on boosting tourism numbers countrywide.
I'll just have to brush up on who is who and what position is what before I get to Eden Park, so I won't be the annoying mother always asking pesky questions! Just need to make sure we don't end up with the same ending as the last match I watched.