To the next four years...

Three weeks later and I found myself wanting to wake up at some ungodly hour to watch the games again from last weekend. It's barely believable that 4 years of waiting and anticipating as we watched the team develop and players struggle through an overall disappointing Super season (well...if you're a Hurricanes fan, that is) and then a Tri-Nations season which made me shudder to think of what the RWC final could look like. New Zealand possibly losing to Australia in the final? Could a Quade Cooper overcome being the Public Enemy #1 and turn France from being our very own pet monkey into himself. A new monkey – named Quade.

And then me...do I cheer for Canada? I am Canadian – we are supposed to cheer for them...right? I still have a bitter taste in my mouth from my days and brief encounters with the beast called Rugby Canada. I realize that all sports have their politics...the two are as married as sport-enhancing drugs and baseball. I suppose the disease of politics runs deeper than just Rugby Canada – it's sport funding in Canada altogether. But I don't want to jump on that soap box. We don't have the time...well, you don't. I'm sitting in an airport with a three hour lay-over. If I get bored enough – we'll see where that leads. Back to Rugby Canada and it's nasty birthmark...money/funds/men ruling the roost. Man this drives me nuts. After about 3 years of playing twister with Rugby Canada in my mid-twenties I found myself with a very bitter taste in my mouth. As I said – this isn't just a rugby problem but it was my experience and by golly – this is my soapbox. As women, we were required to pay to play. That was actually the policy's name. Do you know where the money went when we paid to be a part of our national training camps and resident training camps (and provincial teams, and tours, and...)? It went to the men. Who were paid to play. They were paid to play on the Superteams (not really relevant now as they've made those into development teams. But the Wolfpack and the Bears get money). So I got this bitter taste in my mouth that I could never shake. Things are better now – women who are carded (short-listed athletes) get money but they still have to pay to go on tours and training camps...that's what the carded money is for (oh and to paid for gym memberships). Forget equality for a second...doesn't it make our Canadian rugby teams look even better when the woman haven't been ranked LESS than 5^th in the world and our men came dangerously close (and if weren't for an inconsistent and lucky France – they would have succeeded) to automatically qualifying for the next world cup with a 12^th place ranking.

Bad taste. How do I support Rugby Canada when I know first-hand how it treats it's athletes and then so freely serves up criticism when they don't achieve what we think they should. What do our hockey players get? What do our Olympic athletes get? Probably not earth-shakingly more. And coudos to TSN for televising nearly all of the games. But please, please, PLEASE toss the dude with the accent and the analyst. Gareth Rees was the only one with any sense of good commentary. So what, the analyst predicted the final two teams...week by week he certainly wasn't saying that. He's as bad as the Aussies. Was he even watching the games?

I definitely felt more Kiwi than Canadian when the World Cup started. And that's ridiculous because I maybe only have a shred of Kiwi in me and that's atleast one times removed. But boy oh boy, those Canucks made me a believer. From the first game – I couldn't take my eyes off the boys in black and red. Paddy – who I have met and have played rugby with his fiance at Burnaby Lake, was stellar (well, maybe not his throwing but we're going to stay away from that soapbox too). Adam Kleeberger is now a name and a beard that will be remembered for years to come, and they will be a squad to watch. Especially that 16 year old. It would be super next time around if we could crack that number 12 position but that's just assuming Rugby Canada doesn't treat their coach this year like Sluggo was treated.

I think I can speak about the final now. I could barely watch it...are you kidding me? I set my PVR and watched it two hours later (some of us have to work on Sundays) and cheated at 60 minutes when I could not bare to watch 8-7 and the time clock tick down. I checked my phone. The first message was from a friend...”I'm going to be sick”. My heart stopped beating. She had sent it around the time that the game would have ended. Then I checked twitter. The second time my heart stopped was RuggerBlogger saying that Stephen Donald had kicked to win the world cup. Phew. But that didn't change anything. I still couldn't watch the last 20 sitting down. Somehow knowing the outcome was not a big enough comfort. I could have imagined being there at Eden Park – not for the 80 and certainly not for the after-party.

There was some criticism for New Zealand and our mighty Richie McCaw (and Ted) for not acknowledging France and the fight they put up. Bollocks. Here : Good job France. Thanks for playing big when it counted and playing like crap when it didn't. We really appreciate the rollercoaster ride. It makes for epic finals and better payouts.

Well, that's it for the RWC 2011. I shall promise that I won't utter another word on the matter. Okay – so that's a big fat lie. But I promise not to write an ENTIRE post on the matter. Does that count? Maybe. I feel as though this post is a little too late but these last few weeks have been quite blurry and I have a ton of upcoming posts about Florida coming up. It's been fun and for the last time, thank you All Blacks for giving us good dreams for the next 4 years.