This is the continuation of my RTW diary from November 2003.So before I know what is what, it’s Saturday and the day of the Rugby World Cup Final.
I had planned to watch the match in my hotel room… in a bar it would have been too tempting to drink too much and I wanted a clear head for Sunday’s adventure to Xi'an.
There was a last minute panic however – the satellite feed into the hotel crashed thirty minutes before the coverage was due to start!!! No Star Sports! No Rugby World Cup Final?!!!! I spent several frenzied minutes calling round the sports bars of Beijing trying to find somewhere that was showing the match and had a satellite connection. If I could find somewhere on Mt Fuji showing the rugby, I was sure I could find somewhere in Beijing. Then hurrah! I did a final flick through the channels before I headed out of the door and discovered that the feed has been restored just as the coverage began.
The match kicked off at 5pm in Beijing, complete with Mandarin Chinese match commentary!
There are no Mandarin words for “Jason Robinson try” or “Jonny Wilkinson drop goal” though, so they use English terms amid the Mandarin and I got the gist! It’s when you watch a sport in a foreign language that you appreciate that most of the commentary is names anyway. Our commentating team seemed to especially like Josh Lewsey, as they said “wow” every time they said his name!
The Mandarin commentary didn’t bother me unduly until extra time, when I suddenly had no clue what was going on, or how long it was going to go on for! And I will never know what would have happened if it had been all square after extra time. By this point, I was as crawling up the wall with the tension.
Well we all know the outcome of the match. But maybe I should have gone to a bar to watch it after all… Just picture where you were when Jonny's drop-goal went between the posts, and think of me, in my hotel room in Beijing, jumping up and down on the bed, but with the duvet stuffed in my mouth because as Australia equalised at 17 all, there had been a complaint from someone in the neighbouring room about how loudly I was cheering on our glorious victorious team!
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