Wales v. Fiji

Participated in rugby migratory activity this evening. Migrating is fun!

73,045 people were in attendance tonight!

Only one person got arrested for running out on the pitch. Right next to two signs that said "NOTICE: It is a criminal offense to enter the pitch!". I missed taking a picture of him -- he was really proud of himself though and kept turning around to show his cuffs to the crowd. I wish I could find a good man like that.

Hiroko's counselor, Steve, and his wife Felicity, met us and took us to the game. Hiroko did not go, because she lost nearly her whole paper somewhere on her computer last night and has been quite vexed about the whole thing. Understandably. Came home today to her vacuuming :)

Good times were had by all (except don't feel as if fully participated culturally, because had no Brains. But was too into game and it was too much trouble to climb out and go downstairs. lazy Bruner.)! (Above are, from R to L, Mari, Monirah, Fabiana and Steve)

Roof of stadium was closed tonight. Because of rain and, possibly, because it is 7C. Just maybe.

Coolest thing was when more than 70,000 people became utterly silent for a whole minute for Remembrance Day. Then a trumpet solo. It was very impressive.

The Fiji Team does a tribal dance before the game. They did play better than Wales for most of the game, but it did not help them in the end. (Team dance to R)

Okay, so in rugby, you cannot pass the ball forward. You can only PASS it backwards (yes, away from the goal line you are trying to reach). However, you may run or kick it forwards. There are loads and loads of penalties for everything. The clock only is stopped for serious injuries; the rest of the time, the medics just run out on the field and attend to the bodies littering it while the game is still going on! There is blood. No one worries about this. Punching is not really allowed, but "it is kind of a grey area".....right. You can also catch someone running at you with the ball (from the other team, obviously) and pick them totally up off the ground and throw them back down. (This appears to work best if you use their leg and neck areas together to get a good grip.) The only time this is frowned upon is if you nail them into the ground upside down, i.e., on their head. Periodically, there is this Grand Testosterone Moment called a Scrum (to L, sorry it's kind of small); this is where half each team lines up across from each other and then forms a circle (which has another guy with the ball in the middle of it) and then the teams PUSH, PUSH, PUSH as hard as they can to move the ball guy one way or the other. When the ball guy sees that they are going no further in the right direction, he throws the ball -- backwards, remember, or you get a penalty -- and then it goes into mad play again. Equivalent to touchdown is a "try" -- it is worth 5 points, and the ball has to actually TOUCH the ground. There is point conversion (0ne of the only things that made sense in all this), and it is for two points. Tricky thing here is that you have to do the point conversion from a point parallel to the spot where the ball touched the ground for the try. So you get interesting angles. It is all quite fantabulous.

The game is two halves of 40 minutes each. Final score: Wales 11, Fiji 10.

And there was much rejoicing!

My rejoicing will be continuing reading half the night about Cognitive Load Theory (CLT).