Go the Lions!

Back in the States you may think you have it made right now in the sports world. What with your World Series, your NFL games, the BCS rankings and college football and – oh, what the hell am I saying?! It really is the best time of year for sports right now back home and I miss it and ESPN like I miss a cold beer. I am pretty sure I can get ESPN and all the other sports on Sky satellite TV but I don’t have the dough for it right now. Nowhere in NZ will you find ‘gridiron’ football on television, and same goes for baseball.

But what I was going to write was that this weekend our very own Wellington Lions are in the Air New Zealand Cup final against Waikato. The game is on Saturday night so hopefully I will have recovered from my 25-hour long shift (you read that right: 25 hours) in time to see it.

Fortunately we have rugby aplenty over here, pretty much year-round, and it’s fun to watch so at least I have that if I can’t watch the NFL easily. It certainly doesn’t hurt that my home team is in the championship, either! Would be cool to see them win it all my first year here, and the Lions do have some of my favorite players from the All Blacks, such as Jerry Collins, Rodney So’oialo, and Tana Umaga. The Waikato Mooloos do have this game at home, however, and they certainly had the best season out of all the teams in the league. In spite of their silly mascot name, Waikato are a formidable side. The Lions will certainly be underdogs in this one but it should be an excellent match nonetheless.

Incidentally, a mooloo is a cow, and the Waikato region is big into dairy farming, and they have their very own rugby team. So there you have it.