SAM WHITAKER | Sport
METEOROLOGICAL SABOTAGE.
Travelling Blues fans are once again looking to the skies for excuses as their team prepares to play the Hurricanes in New Zealand’s only cake-shaped stadium.
“I swear it’s the design of it, aye,” says passionate Blues fan Andrew, who’s travelled down for this weekend’s clash at Hnry Stadium (formerly Sky Stadium, formerly Wellington Regional Stadium, formerly just “Westpac”).
Donning a KFC bucket hat and Blues jersey over fifteen additional layers to keep warm outside of Auckland’s “all-year summer weather,” Andrew tells us he has evidence to prove his claim isn’t just “a bullshit excuse.”
“My mate’s mum works at MetService and he swears she’s seen Jordie and Clarky (Laidlaw) up there just the other day. I swear they were conspiring to adjust the wind so Beaudy can’t get his signature bombs up.”
Reminded about the fact that Beauden Barrett was in fact once a Hurricane player himself, Andrew responded with: “well, you know Auckland changes you aye – the only wind we get is when a real estate agent sighs at a damp two-bedroom unit in Remuera only selling for three million.”
Andrew’s theory became even stranger as he began talking about Hurricanes management “negotiating with Cyclone Vaianu”. While the rest of the Pacific treats the tropical low as a weather event, Andrew seems convinced the Canes have signed the cyclone to a one-week development contract.
“It’s suspicious, isn’t it?” Andrew whispered, sheltering his oat flat white from a rogue gust. “Vaianu just happens to turn up the same week the Blues arrive? It’s basically a tactical sub. I think we all know by now that somebody’s controlling the weather. They’re bringing in 150km/h winds just to ruffle us. It’s unsportsmanlike, and King Carlos himself would’ve never stood for it!”
Locals have also responded in kind. Long-time Wellington resident and Hurricanes season-ticket holder, Baz, was less than sympathetic while leaning into a 45-degree gust.
“Bless ‘em,” Baz shouted over the roar of a bin being blown down Manners Street. “They come down here with their ‘tactical kicking’ and their ‘structured play’ thinking it’ll hold up in conditions they haven’t seen since that ‘brutal’ 8.2 degree high day in 2011.
The Blues have reportedly requested the match be moved to a more “equitable” environment, such as a heated yoga studio in Ponsonby, or at the very least, that the Hurricanes be prohibited from using the southerly “as their 16th man.”
Andrew was last seen trying to staple his KFC bucket hat to his forehead, while Baz was seen comfortably eating a mince and cheese pie in a sideways downpour, unaware that his umbrella had turned inside out three suburbs ago.
More to come.
