At any sporting junket involving pretentious national prestige, you can guarantee that the ritzy no-expense-spared ‘resplendence’ of a dire and irksome opening ceremony matters far more than any of the actual sport which follows it. Rugby union’s World Cup curtain-up promises the full phonily festive fanfaronade next Friday (7 September) in the Stade de France in Paris. As the cast of thousands strut their swank and fly their flags in front of presidents, prime ministers and princes — all hands to the pomp — I’ll hope to catch the rheumy eye of a few old hands and we’ll sigh in sweet remembrance of the first innocent village-green fête which launched rugby’s inaugural World Cup only 20 years ago in Auckland.
It was the last week of May 1987. Only the hosts felt the need of such a novelty. Well, apart from its rugby religion, I suppose, New Zealand had only scenery. Certainly, the four teams from the British Isles didn’t take it too seriously — rugger’s just amateur fun, ol’ boy, not cold-eyed competition. The Brit players treated that first tournament as a lark, a free summer jolly. Auckland’s opening ceremony took place on a working-day Friday, as Paris’s will. The Eden Park stadium was less than half full. The gentle Kiwi drizzle was as relentless as ever: it made sad, damp squibs of a small pack of overture fireworks. A couple of freckled, frozen chorus lines from the local ‘academy of dance’ enacted an obligatory cheerleaders’ pom-pom greeting, a boys’ brigade brass band had a stretch and a blow, a few kilted bagpipers from the nearby Caledonia Club strangled a cat or two and, it goes without saying, a bunch of boa-twined barefooted Maoris writhed, wriggled, rolled their eyes and brandished their spears in the routine war-dance haka.
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