Scotty Stevenson: Memorable but bizarre night of rugby in Albany

A Super Rugby match broke out at North Harbour Stadium on Saturday night.

Albany; A Saturday night; February. The people of Albany, a suburb of Auckland's North Shore given over largely to big box retailers and franchise universities, was surprised on Saturday night when a Super Rugby match broke out at North Harbour Stadium.

Although the match, between the Blues and the Chiefs (heretofore considered one of the premier rivalries in the New Zealand conference), had been scheduled for some months, resident spokesman Frik van der Merwe, a biltong retailer from neighbouring Mairangi Bay, said the lack of cricket confused some of the crowd attending.

"In all honesty, I think most people thought this was a Cricket World Cup match," he said. "Needless to say there were quite a number of people who turned up in Black Caps shirts, and were a tad disappointed."

Mr van der Merwe and his friends, Jean van der Westhuizen and Toks du Plessis, say they were aware that it was the opening weekend of Super Rugby only because they had received numerous text messages from their two remaining friends in South Africa. Mr du Plessis added they only thought to stop in at North Harbour Stadium when they saw the lights on, after paying a visit to Fred's Fine Foods to purchase a large milk tart and some Ouma rusks.

"I tell you, we're glad we did, though," he said. "I'm not sure we'll see anything like that in a hurry."

The match, memorable for one of the more surreal moments in Super Rugby history, when Sonny Bill Williams celebrated a try by sprouting wings and ascending to the heavens, got off to a shaky start when the Chiefs team bus was 30 minutes late on account of being stuck at the Eden Park security gate while each of the players' bags was swabbed, and their retinas scanned.

Despite realising that the team bus was, in fact, at the wrong ground, a security spokesperson said once they had started the process, they felt duty-bound to complete it. Especially with the Cricket World Cup in town.

"All things considered, this has given us a great real-time exercise," she said. "And while we are apologetic to the Chiefs team, at least they will know better next time before they try to sneak water bottles and other food into the ground.

"I think everyone has learned a valuable lesson here."

Despite the delay in the scheduled kick off time, it didn't take long for normal service to resume. The Chiefs scored the first five tries of the match in the opening 10 minutes, each from counter attack, before the Blues hit back with four of their own, and a dropped goal to Tony Woodcock in the second quarter, which ricocheted off Jimmy Cowan's head and over the cross bar. Blues skills coach David Hill says they had practised the move at training.

"We call it the Donger," he said, referencing the veteran halfback's nickname. "We got tired of thinking too hard about line speed and exit kicks and boring stuff like that and thought, 'how do we take advantage of a dodgy foot and a really hard head?'. It worked a treat, didn't it?"

The second half provided another bizarre moment when Chiefs' reserve first-five Marty McKenzie, older brother of starting first-five Damian McKenzie, refused to give his sibling the kicking tee. The pair needed to be separated by a close relative and the matter was settled after the match with a game of pea-knuckle, and the provision of separate rooms.

Another element of intrigue came in the form of large red telephones that had been placed in each of the coaching boxes before the match. While details were sketchy around who was on the end of the line, both Sir John Kirwan and Dave Rennie were seen answering the phones, and their calls were quickly followed by substitutions for key players and a host of positional changes. One spectator said they had also noticed a large searchlight in the night sky above the ground, with what looked like some kind of bird insignia, possibly a shag.

The match did eventually settle into a rhythm with the Chiefs disrupting the breakdown and profiting from turnover plays and the Blues disrupting the Chiefs' breakdown and profiting from turnover plays. The scrums disintegrated only when Ben Tameifuna accidentally ate replacement halfback Brad Weber.

Fans were mixed on the result, though Mrs Helen Milner, an Albany local who had attended her first game at the stadium, summed up the prevailing mood when she said, "It was good to see a team chase down 300. And at least the All Blacks didn't get injured. We'll need them for the World Cup."