Tag: world cup 2010

Cape Town Rugby Festival – a few thoughts

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How any rugby fan could possibly ever complain about vuvuzelas after yesterday’s inaugural rugby match at the Cape Town Stadium is beyond me. At least they make you realise that you’re at a major sporting event.
As for yesterday, I have experienced more atmosphere on the moon. Not personally, obviously, but my good friend Buzz Aldrin assures me that it was one long party while they were up there, although bodily functions were a little difficult to perform. 
What a sterile occasion. Sure, rugby fans can drink a lot, but they are seemingly almost completely silent during big games. 40,000 of them, mainly white, quiet as mice for large periods of the game. When the stadium announcer has to organise and then continually propagate a Mexican Wave, then you know that something’s not quite right.  

In fact, the biggest cheer of the day was for Emperor of the Western Cape, Helen Zille and ineffectual City Mayor, Dan Plato, who entered the field pre-game to a bizarre Medieval-style regal trumpet fanfare, then gave overtly political speeches about how great it was to have a stadium, frequently interrupted by sycophantic and raptuous applause.
Quite where those speeches were for the football a couple of weeks back is beyond me, although every cynical bone in my body (and I have a few) is screaming something about the “wrong audience”.

Bryan Habana also got a huge ovation when he came out in the first half for a bit of a warm up. Later in the match, he came on for 20 minutes and didn’t touch the ball once. Obviously, he would have scored loads of tries if he had touched it though, because he’s Bryan Habana.

For those of you that don’t follow me on twitter, my son was horribly ill on Friday night and Saturday morning and wasn’t allowed to go to the match (Doctor’s orders). Both he and I were hugely disappointed. (Our plans for Saturday morning will also have to be rearranged). So he didn’t pass his World Cup readiness test.
The Stadium, on the other hand, did (I think). Yes – there were traffic issues on the way into town – mainly thanks to the disco effect traffic lights at Buitengracht and Western Boulevard – and yes, our seats were removed to make way for a TV camera position. But we got there in plenty of time and we were swiftly apologised to by Sail-StadeFrance staff and escorted to the VIP section to watch the game. Nice.

I haven’t heard much public opinion on the organisation for this event, but I certainly didn’t see any major problems. The traffic on the way out was amazing – 29 minutes from leaving our seats to getting home to Kenilworth. It regularly takes longer than that to get home from the rugby at Newlands, which is less than a quarter of the distance.

The stadium is looking superb, and despite the breezy conditions outside, was very sheltered within – no problems for the kickers. The pitch looked great and the players certainly seemed to enjoy the day. Even the Boland team, who were beaten 47-13. All in all, it seemed like a great success and who knows if it will help WPRU to do the sensible thing and move from Newlands.

If they do, they’ll need to import some more excitable fans, though.

Cape Town Rugby Festival set on flickr.

Doubling up

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After the huge success of the opening football match at the Cape Town Stadium, the next test comes tomorrow when the crowd limit is doubled from the 20,000 that watched the football to 40,000 for the Stormers v Boland rugby clash.

And while they are testing the stadium for World Cup readiness, I am going to use the opportunity to test the Alex for World Cup readiness.
I’d imagine that sitting watching egg-chasing with 39,999 other people might be quite an ordeal if you’re only 3¾ years old. And while I’ll take plenty of sweets along for bribes, I do have a feeling that he won’t enjoy it much. However, better to give him a chance to see the stadium and at least know what it’s like ahead of the Midwinter’s Day clash between the diving Porras and the enigmatic North Koreans.

Because even if he hates it tomorrow, he will be going along to that World Cup game – it’s always better to regret something you have done, than something you haven’t. And then, when he grows up, he will be able to tell his kids that he was there.

Note: I will also be test-driving Mrs 6000 on the new stadium tomorrow. But she went to Newlands once, so I think she’ll be fine.

Peter Delmar – Greed killing our World Cup prospects

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Following on from my Ashanti Lodge post (and their manager’s “charmless reply“), this from Peter Delmar in The Times yesterday:

You can stay at the two-star B&B for under R600 a night per room, including breakfast, which is about as much as it’s worth. But, the proprietor told me, she was doubling the price for the World Cup.

“Oh,” was all I managed to say in response. I wanted to ask: “Why?”

Why double the price just because of the World Cup? Did she have any bookings for the soccer? Not yet.

Just about everyone else is up to the same jiggery-pokery: jostling with their snout in the trough to milk fans, who are all supposedly as rich as Croesus, for six weeks or so. And now their chickens are coming home to roost. We’ve realised with a nasty shock that even the Germans, the richest soccer fans in the world, can’t afford us.

The greed-mongers are not only shooting themselves in the foot, they’re shooting the poorest of the poor as well.

None of us particularly likes our airline industry and it hardly came as a surprise to learn it was being investigated for collusion on pricing during the World Cup. The only real surprise was that it took our somnambulant competition authorities so long to twig to what was going on.

I’ve been to a few world cups in my time. Admittedly, none of them were soccer-related, but at all of them the profiteering was kept within limits. Or wasn’t even noticeable. But not South Africa 2010, it seems.

It’s not too late to tell the world: “Sorry, we got a bit carried away there for a moment and thought you okes were much richer than you really are.

Good points, good sense.

Are you reading, Sue?

Short-sighted Idiots

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As FIFA announced that 2 million tickets had been sold for the 2010 World Cup in June and took a well-justified pot shot at the idiots in the German and English media and “football family” (Uli Hoeness and Phil “Sphincter Face” Brown, they mean you) who keep taking unjustified pot shots at South Africa, [a regular reader] got in touch about the Ashanti Lodge in Gardens, Cape Town.

I actually know the place quite well – friends have stayed there (before we had a house big enough to put them up) and it’s a decent backpackers lodge like you’d find in any city across the world. Not spectacular, but then you don’t want spectacular when you’re backpacking – you want clean, comfy, basic and reasonably priced accommodation.
And that’s what you’ll get – well, until World Cup time.

See – Ashanti Lodge is one of those short-sighted businesses which has spied a quick buck ahead and is desperate to make cold hard cash as soon as possible. And it’s people like them who are putting tourists and fans off from coming to the World Cup. This short-sighted, greedy, money-grabbing behaviour also helps in discouraging those who do come out for the tournament from coming back. It is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a huge own goal.

Ashanti Rates – note that special conditions apply to the World Cup bookings as well

I’m familiar with the wonderful Capitalist ideology of Supply and Demand, and I’m also aware that a lot of people want to make Cape Town their base for the World Cup. However, in my humble opinion these two facts can not justify a 309% increase in the price of a room for the duration.

Take the En-Suite (woo!) QUAD: R3,600 is $480 or £300 – that’s R900, $120 or £75 per person to sleep in a room with 3 others.
Usually in June (remember – that’s winter here!), R900 would get you a pretty decent room in a 3 or 4 star hotel. Not a shared bed at a backpackers lodge with your wife, Farty Terry from Scunthorpe and his obnoxious brother, Jim.

I’m sure there are many other establishments out there who are going to try and rip World Cup fans off as much as possible – this one was just brought to my attention. I don’t expect any of them to change their behaviour based on this post.  But there’s still value for me in pointing out their greed, their short-sightedness and their apparent lack of business acumen.

These are fine examples of local people who are going to ruin the legacy of the World Cup for South Africa.

Cape Town Stadium: Truly Magnificent

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As promised, I can say I was there at the first ever football match played at Cape Town’s 2010 World Cup stadium. And what an experience. As ever, a big football match in the Mother City brought out the true spirit of the Rainbow Nation – every colour, every age – all just there to share in the historic moment and to have a great time.

The standard of the actual football wasn’t much to write home about, unless you are a fan of words like “rubbish” and “dull” and the phrase “couldn’t score in a brothel”, but the weather was perfect, the atmosphere superb, the organisation faultless and the stadium itself: truly magnificent. It was fascinating to watch as people came in and just stared in awe, open-mouthed.

I took almost a Gig of photographs, which I have managed to whittle down to 81 pictures and a video (HD, nogal!) of the very first kick off at the Stadium – courtesy of Ajax’s centre-forward, Diyo Sibisi.

Slideshow (in a separate window) | Flickr set

All in all, a brilliant day out and very promising for the World Cup. In a couple of weeks, we double the numbers for the Rugby – it’s going to be another sell-out and another great occasion.

EDIT: I’m told that there are some (continuing) complaints on certain (Cape Talk) radio stations about fans blowing vuvuzelas. The only noise I’m fed up with is the incessant whining of the whities who have suddenly become football fans (which is great) and now want to change the game to suit themselves (which is not). Bugger off.