Originally Posted by Slava
I thought that I would post a quick review of my attendance at a couple of the RWC games. I know that this thread is mostly for news and such, so I will keep it pretty brief. Overall though, it was awesome!
I went to Ireland/Romania at Wembley, in large part to see a game at Wembley. It was a new RWC record for 89,000+ and I would guess 89,000 were supporting Ireland with a few hundred supporting Romania. The atmosphere was awesome, and as one commentator noted a lot of Irish can't get tickets to games for things like the 6 Nations so this was a special event. Obviously the singing and cheering was awesome with the Irish winning in a walk. Afterwards I would guess about 70 of the 89k all wanted to take the underground. It took a while, but was incredibly well coordinated (more on that later) and the now drunken Irish fans were awesome. There was a lot of singing. I partook in some, but other songs I didn't know. Like I know of the "Fields of Athenrye" but don't don't know the words. I loved the "Wild Rover" as that was a song we sang back when I still played. I also enjoyed a seemingly made up song to the tune of "She'll be comin round the mountain" that just went "you can shove your f'in chariots up your hole" They were clearly thrilled that they were rolling and the English had lost to Wales the night before and looked in tough to make it to the knockout stages.
The next game I attended was at Milton Keynes and that was Canada/France. Lets be honest, we knew that the outcome was probably predetermined, but then Japan beat SA, and of course that's why the play the games and all that. We got there early and as we stepped off the train were greeted by RWC people to make sure we knew how to get home and had some arrangements for that. More importantly we were asked not once but by two different RWC people on the way out of the station whether we were going to the "Canada Bar". Of course we were! This was a bar right beside the hotel where team Canada was staying and it was full of Canadians and Canadian supporters. It was great to talk to a bunch of Canadians from all over the place who had made the trek. A fair amount of beer was consumed here, and then they had shuttles to the game. The game was pretty awesome. I had good seats here (not amazing, but good) and we were seated next to a couple British boys and their dad. They were supporting Canada of course, and were asking me about the players and whether we had any good "Canada chants" (and we don't!), and things like that. They were rather impressed with Canada in the warm-up, but that faded pretty quickly. We had a great time though, and supporting your country somewhere else was just incredible!
Overall, the RWC was fantastic. I think that the coordination and logistics are the best thing I have seen. Just excellent in terms of making sure that people got where they needed to go, and were looked after. The people were super friendly and helpful and (maybe on account of the jerseys, red wigs and flags) knew that we were in search of a bar or shuttle to the game immediately. The game at Wembley really conveyed that though; can you imagine 4 Saddledomes emptying and all heading home at the same time?! One is bad enough.
The merchandise was ridiculously priced (like 20 pounds for a T-shirt which is basically $40), and a simple hoodie was over $100 Canadian. That was my only real complaint I guess. It was probably for the best though, because had the prices been a lot more reasonable I would've spend too much money on things.
Overall the experience was awesome, and if you can get over the costs in general, I would highly recommend it to fans of the game. The next one is in Japan and I think I might go to that as well if its possible.
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