The signs are too hard to ignore, something special is going on this weekend. I tried to get a slice of pizza and a beer on Friday afternoon in Central only to be told by the proprietor of the pizzeria that he was out of stock. 'You're out?' I asked. 'Yeah, I got no food left, nothing at all,' he said. 'Totally caught me by surprise.'
Must have been quite the surprise, 12.30 on a Friday afternoon and you're out of food? When told that the Bledisloe Cup was happening the next day and that the town was full of rugby fans, he just shook his head. 'How was I supposed to know?' he replied.
Sorry man, but rugby fans are like the Coneheads. They consume mass quantities, always have and always will. You don't take that into account and you deserve to lose a ton of money. That's the thing about the Bledisloe Cup, it brings the All Blacks and the Wallabies into town and with them some of the best rugby players in the world. It's only one game though, albeit a very prestigious one. Businesses around town are conditioned to think one thing when they think rugby and that's the Hong Kong Sevens.
And while the Bledisloe Cup will never touch the Sevens for sustained debauchery, it's not exactly chopped liver. This is the All Blacks and the Wallabies and if you are a true rugby fan, you can't ask for much more.
'Yeah, should be a good match,' says Matt, who is originally from England but has lived in both Australia and New Zealand and now resides in Hong Kong. 'I like to see anybody at the top of their game, doesn't matter if they're singers or athletes. Like I said this should be good and not bad for a dead run.'
Ah, there's the rub, a dead run. The Bledisloe Cup has been contested since 1932 between these two neighbours and this year by the time they came to Hong Kong for the fourth and final match, it was a fait accompli. The Kiwis had won the first three and already sewn things up for the eighth year in a row. There really is no drama, only rugby.