"I'll take New Zealand for $800, Alex"

Let's say you are preparing for Jeopardy! and the category is New Zealand, one of the five "questions" you should expect would be:" Who are the All Blacks? ", in reference to their adored national rugby team.

As the tango is to Argentina, so is rugby to New Zealand. It is hard to fathom how deeply many (but not all) Kiwis feel about their team. I was not going to live in NZ and not go an All Blacks game. It took some time getting up to speed with the game of rugby, previously a deficiency in my sporting oeuvre, as my friend Curtis would say. I should have been more knowledgeable, since the Berkeley Golden Bears are a perennial NCAA powerhouse. Once you get into it, you can see that rugby and American football come from a common ancestor. It is strangely familiar: kicks, field goals, scrimmage, conversions, tackling, tries (the TD equivalent:in rugby since you only get points crossing the goal line when you "touch down" the ball to the ground). Yet it is oddly different too (scrums, rucks, mauls, line outs).
The All Black team (named for the all black uniforms) has been at or near the top of the rugby world since the turn of the 20th Century. It has long been common ground for the Maori and Europeans: the first rugby international superstar was the Maori man George Nepia.
NZ will be hosting the World Cup of rugby Sept-Oct 2011, and the preparations are evident everywhere. There are large billboards and countdown clocks and daily news reports of stadium upgrade delays and controversies over tearing down old sheds on the Auckland waterfront to create a huge tent for "party central" to entertain visitors. On the field preparations include selecting the elite All Blacks 2010-11 squad, and tuning up with traditional matches ("tests") against major competition, such as the South African Springboks

A springbok

and the Aussie Wallabies in the Tri-Nations Cup Series, pitting the three Southern Hemisphere powers against one another in a "round robin"  tournament. We might consider these "exhibition" games, but they are bigger than that.
We were fortunate enough to get tickets to see the AB's vs. the Springboks in Wellington, July 17. This was the match-up featured in the Clint Eastwood/Morgan Freeman/Matt Damon film "Invictus", telling the tale of how Nelson Mandela helped to unite a nation through rugby. The Kiwis have a different take on the 1995 World Cup, remembering it as a dark day, when the superior AB team was undone by the South African home team, possibly aided by some "home cooking" in the form of food poisoning (not that anyone is making excuses).
Westpac Stadium (named for a bank) in the capitol was the venue, a clean and tidy place seating 45,000,  

protected by the local deities.

A highlight of the All Blacks games is the Haka, a traditional type of Maori chant of greeting (not necessarily "welcome"). It is meant to test the mettle of visitors, to frighten and intimidate the opponents, and to see if guests are worthy of entering the grounds. They take it quite seriously, and there is always lot of grimacing, grunting, and fearsome facial expressions with tongues protruding and eyes bulging.

One of our Maori tour guides in Waitangi pointed out that cannibalism was part of their history, and suggested that the oral gestures warned visitors might end up as the main course.

Perhaps it all worked because it was all All Blacks from the opening kickoff

and they prevailed 31-17.

We were lucky enough to see the ABs again August 7 in Christchurch play the Aussie Wallabies

and again prevail 20-10 and essentially wrap-up the Tri-Nations Trophy (Yay)!