Super 14 Kicks Off!

The waiting is over! Super Rugby has kicked off for the 2010 season.

But first, a wee heads up on how the rugby competitions work over here. Iain initially worked for Harbour Rugby, a Provincial Team who play in the National Provincial Competition against the 13 other professional teams in NZ. The competition runs from approximately July to November and is known as Air New Zealand Cup.
The best players from these teams then move up to the next tier where they are selected to play in their local Super Rugby franchise. NZ has five Super Teams; The Blues (based in Auckland and taking players from Auckland, Harbour & Northland), The Chiefs (Waikato), Hurricanes (Wellington), Crusaders (Christchruch) and The Highlanders (Dunedin). The five NZ teams are joined in the competition with five South African teams and four Australian team (five Aussie teams will be in the revamped Super 15 competition in 2011). The next step is pretty much the All Blacks. So that's it. The Blues had a buidling season in 2009 with new managment and coaching staff and we're looking forward to an exciting competition this year!

The first match of the season was played at North Harbour Stadium in Albany where we're used to going with the Harbour NPC games. The rest of the season we'll be over the bridge at Eden Park - Auckland's premier rugby/cricket ground. Here are some photos from the first game of the season. It was amazing - 23,000 people there and loads of pre-match fun and games for the fans. Deffo the biggest game Iain's worked at.

Sadly it was a loss for the boys but it's early days and Iain's certainly confident its going to be a good season ahead...