The 'City of Smells'

Sunday 18th October 2009

I PROMISED our readers the tale of my trip to Rotorua on Wednesday for the Kiwis' Four Nations warm-up game against Tonga.

Rotorua, for the uninitiated, is a city three hours south of Auckland known for its leisure pursuits (such as the zorb, a giant inflatable ball into which willing punters are inserted, then propelled speedily down a hill) and its smell (Rotorua sits on a thermal energy field and pungent sulphuric steam vents up randomly through the town).

Usually, the Kiwis use the island nations as a combination of opposed training and confidence-boosting, dole out a thrashing and turn to the more serious stuff. This Tongan team, however, was almost entirely composed of NRL players, many of whom could've qualified for New Zealand (a couple had actually played for the Kiwis). Only one could genuinely say he had been raised and learned his football on the islands, Warriors second row Ukuma Ta'ai, although that is another tale.

The Tongans played simple, energetic direct football and relied almost entirely on their captain and Parramatta Eels five-eighth Feleti Mateo, who had a beautifully varied passing game which continually troubled the Kiwi edge defenders. That meant that made an entertaining game of it.

The Kiwis played well in patches and those spells came when they produced very quick play the balls, used their big men to punch holes, had hooker Issac Luke run out of dummy half to trouble the Tongan 'A' defenders and give Benji Marshall time to come up with something against a retreating defence.  But this didn't happen consistently enough to make it a comfortable evening for them, although their coach Steve Kearney was typically unruffled afterwards as he rolled out the usual lines about it being good preparation and a useful start.

The NZRL had budgeted for 6,000 spectators. Five days out, that seemed ambitious, with the town's only two direct ticket outlets, the Mad Butcher shops, having dispensed the sum total of 186 tickets between them. The Butcher himself, Peter Leitch - a celebrity fan whose status in New Zealand would be inexplicable to British fans - declared that if the locals did not front up, they didn't deserve another test ever again.

This was no idle threat: it's 14 years since the city of smells had a test match and that was only against Papua New Guinea. And on the night, the rain poured down. My two Star-Times colleagues predicted a pitiful gate. But when we arrived, the queues were down the street. The gate was 7,500 - clear profit, said NZRL chief executive, Jim Doyle, smiling broadly.

The resulting atmosphere was remarkable. The Rotorua International Stadium -a ridiculously grandiose title for a giant bowl with one covered stand - was pumping. And midway through, the crowd appeared to change sides when the Tongans roared back to level at 24-24 with a quarter to play.

The Kiwis, of course, ended that rally, with three late tries nudging the score out to an unforgiving and unfair 40-24 (particularly as the Tongans had two tries very harshly ruled out by the video referee, to the visible disgust of coach Rohan Smith, perched next to me on the press bench). But he crowd were sated; the game was worth the three-hour drive from Auckland, and despite the rain, Rotorua does still smell.