Sir Geoffrey strikes again! (You'll need to concentrate..)
7.10.07 - I fielded a phone call from Geoff on Friday suggesting I come over to their place for the All Blacks match at 5.00am on Sunday - and, after a spot of breakfast, watch the Wallabies match at 7.00am. I popped over to the shop at lunchtime and confirmed that I'd be there. On Saturday, I picked up a withdrawn version of Chris and we did the usual visit to Choclatté (pic 1) and then had fried rice for lunch before heading back to Vermont St at 3.00. They weren't back yet, so Chris and I went for a walk and discovered a local grade cricket match in full swing. (pic 2) I got home just before Bill arrived and we loaded up the van and headed to Ormond Hall by an unnecessarily circuitous route for a sound check at 5.00pm. We weren't on till 10.15 according to our running sheet, so Bill had time to exercise his right to be taken back to my place and pick up his car so that he could leave for Strathewen straight after the gig. As it turned out, the running sheet was wrong, and we should have started at 9.15, so we compromised and started

just before 10.00. No dramas.
After the gig I hung around for a bit, but eventually did the sensible thing and headed home for a relatively early night so as to get a bit o' kip before the alarm at 4.00am. When the alarm woke me from my fitful doze, I was slapped in the face with the news that England had (already) beaten the Wobblies 12 - 10. So Geoffrey got that wrong. Let's hope he was a little more accurate with his forecast about the starting time for the All Blacks match.
When I arrived at the McClatchys' at 4.45am, all was quiet. I knocked on the door apprehensively. A startled looking Geoffrey, clearly woken from his sleep, answered the door. He was amazed to hear the Wobblies had gone down to the England juggernaut, and I said I was equally amazed I had taken his estimate of the said match's starting time seriously, given his record interpreting clocks, radios, messages from Kath - you name it. Despite my misgivings, the All Blacks' match duly started at 5.00am, and the shock/horror result is known to all.
As I was leaving I rang Dick. He was clearly in shock and despondently said he was going back to bed for the entire day. There has already been too much analysis on why the ABs lost, but nobody has mentioned (in my hearing, at least), that the problem actually lay in their electing not to wear the traditional, (and not even optional for fuck's sake), all black strip. There was no reason why they couldn't - the French had sportingly donned white shorts so the viewer could distinguish their Gallic loins from the Southern Hemispherical tackle. I can only assume the decision was a continuation of the policy that they debuted in the ABs/Scottish game, where both sides wore the identical away strip, challenging the viewer to decipher what the fuck was going on at any stage. The NZ Union reputedly spent millions on their campaign - how much could it have cost to ensure they got such an important detail right?