The Other Rugby World Cup
19th March 2011
Disappointment and anger at losing the Rugby World Cup is coalescing into resolve among stricken sports fans in Christchurch.
Bob's Parka, spokesman for the city's mayor, voiced the concerns of many in Christchurch. “We've had the silt kicked out of us left, right and centre over the past few weeks and this is the needle that breaks the camel's last straw.”
Parka revealed a breath-taking plan to recapture the World Cup – and go one better. “Most of Christchurch went sideways in the earthquake and our thinking has to go that way too. We need to turn disaster into opportunity and use that to relaunch our city.”
The plan being hastily put together by sports administrators, community leaders, EQC and insurance companies is a carefully guarded secret but sources close to Parka have hinted at a major international rugby tournament to be staged in and around Christchurch at the same time as the Rugby World Cup later this year.
AMI stadium under-groundsman, Jock's Trap, compares the new tournament to Kerry Packer's cricket circus that challenged the status quo 30 years ago and ushered that game into the professional age. “The word going around is that we'll see a rival tournament of teams put together with some of the biggest names in international rugby playing a modified game that is fast, free flowing and totally crowd-pleasing.”
Looking across AMI's badly scarred grounds, Trap says the modifications to the game will probably be dictated by the state of the playing surface. “At the moment you'd struggle to hold a crazy golf tournament here so clearly we have to think away from the normal game of rugby. For example, you probably don't need an oval ball to give you unpredictable bounce. And with all those sand traps out on the pitch you'd do well to introduce golf clubs into the game.”
Starting a new tournament from scratch just months out from the official World Cup doesn't phase its backers. “The organisation's all there,” says Parka. “We just have to transfer it to the new plan.”
Parka was tight-lipped when asked how they will persuade top players to break their contracts with the IRB, but local rugby commentator Adam's Apple believes there are some very deep pockets backing the new tournament. “It's like that old movie about Watergate,” says Apple. “You have to follow the money, and when you see who's going into the meetings you start to put two and two together.”
Apple's concerns clearly point to the involvement of the EQC and insurance industry. Trap again: “why do insurance companies want to get involved in a rugby match? They're cooking something up.”
A leaked memo gives weight to their concerns. Sources close to Parka are worried that he and others in the council are being persuaded by the insurance companies to transfer their liability for the city's earthquake damage to the new tournament. They say that instead of paying out many thousands of small claims over many months or years, insurance companies and EQC will make a single payment of the total amount of damage to the city to fund the tournament.
Amy's Cott, an analyst for Robobank, says the idea is a gamble but it just might work. “It's the kind of blue-skies thinking we need to lift this country out of the economic mire. The tournament and its spinoffs could do for Christchurch what 20/20 cricket has done for India. If it works we could be the sole proprietors of the latest global sporting craze. The profits will be enormous, more than enough to rebuild the city.”
And if it fails?
“If it fails,” opines Parka, “then we're all up silt creek without a shovel, which is about where we are now, so what have we got to lose?”
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, March 07, 2011
Silt and Sausages
My mother, Drina, has departed her broken home in Dallington and joined the swelling throng of earthquake escapees in Ashburton. Among her observations of living through six months of tremors, one recurring thought is her helplessness in the grip of such random and unassailable forces.
Drina has a long memory. The last time her world fell apart was in 1940 when Hitler’s armies threw themselves across the South Willemsvaart canal and plundered her sleepy village in rural Holland. The Nazis remained for four years, but the earthquakes are far more terrifying.
At least with the Nazis, Drina says, you could see your enemy, hear him coming, grasp the length and breadth of him. A set of rules was imposed and you learned to live within them, subvert them, find the points of weakness that allowed you to reclaim some small measure of control.
There are no rules with earthquakes – and no control. Nothing prepares you for the herculean fist that smashes your foundations and has you cowering beneath a computer desk while your possessions rage through the house and the building bucks like a barrel ride. Nothing eases the small knife of terror that runs through every moment of waiting, anticipating the next after-shock, never trusting that which should be most trustworthy – the ground beneath your feet.
Helplessness, we discover, is not confined to those at the centre of the disaster. For us at the margins, whose homes are intact and lives largely untouched, there is also a feeling of helplessness, of watching a beautiful city and her people, our families and friends, torn and broken.
The desire to reassert some degree of control in these terrifying events is behind the great outpouring of assistance we are witnessing. We pare helplessness down to a single passionate syllable – help. “How can I help?” is our cry, and we come up with twenty clever ideas.
Generosity is not a uniquely kiwi trait but we have our own way of going about it. In an age of international aid teams and disaster specialists some communities might be inclined to keep away and let the professionals manage the response. Not us. Beneath the official rescue effort a thousand acts of kindness are blossoming. We bake, give and shovel. We ‘toot for tucker’ and dig into our wallets. We load the barbie on the back of the truck and cook sausages in Linwood Avenue for days on end.
Shovelling silt has become the gold standard of giving. It requires no specialist training, no permission to cross a cordon, no heavy equipment. It reaches deeply into the battered communities that have not yet seen a hard hat or USAR vest. It can be highly organised – the student volunteers, the Farmy Army – or touchingly informal, like the parent at my school who took his seven year old son to New Brighton on Sunday where the pair of them shovelled silt off the driveways of strangers.
We give because we hate watching people suffer, but also to ease our own suffering. This is our disaster too. Whatever ‘new normal’ arises in Christchurch we know our lives will also never be quite the same again and that knowledge makes us both angry and frightened.
Drina is right, the earthquake has taken not just our homes and streets, but also our most fundamental human trait - our will. The long, painful, difficult process of restoring Christchurch will not be just about renewing buildings and infrastructure but about reasserting our will over our environment, and over our deepest fears.
My mother, Drina, has departed her broken home in Dallington and joined the swelling throng of earthquake escapees in Ashburton. Among her observations of living through six months of tremors, one recurring thought is her helplessness in the grip of such random and unassailable forces.
Drina has a long memory. The last time her world fell apart was in 1940 when Hitler’s armies threw themselves across the South Willemsvaart canal and plundered her sleepy village in rural Holland. The Nazis remained for four years, but the earthquakes are far more terrifying.
At least with the Nazis, Drina says, you could see your enemy, hear him coming, grasp the length and breadth of him. A set of rules was imposed and you learned to live within them, subvert them, find the points of weakness that allowed you to reclaim some small measure of control.
There are no rules with earthquakes – and no control. Nothing prepares you for the herculean fist that smashes your foundations and has you cowering beneath a computer desk while your possessions rage through the house and the building bucks like a barrel ride. Nothing eases the small knife of terror that runs through every moment of waiting, anticipating the next after-shock, never trusting that which should be most trustworthy – the ground beneath your feet.
Helplessness, we discover, is not confined to those at the centre of the disaster. For us at the margins, whose homes are intact and lives largely untouched, there is also a feeling of helplessness, of watching a beautiful city and her people, our families and friends, torn and broken.
The desire to reassert some degree of control in these terrifying events is behind the great outpouring of assistance we are witnessing. We pare helplessness down to a single passionate syllable – help. “How can I help?” is our cry, and we come up with twenty clever ideas.
Generosity is not a uniquely kiwi trait but we have our own way of going about it. In an age of international aid teams and disaster specialists some communities might be inclined to keep away and let the professionals manage the response. Not us. Beneath the official rescue effort a thousand acts of kindness are blossoming. We bake, give and shovel. We ‘toot for tucker’ and dig into our wallets. We load the barbie on the back of the truck and cook sausages in Linwood Avenue for days on end.
Shovelling silt has become the gold standard of giving. It requires no specialist training, no permission to cross a cordon, no heavy equipment. It reaches deeply into the battered communities that have not yet seen a hard hat or USAR vest. It can be highly organised – the student volunteers, the Farmy Army – or touchingly informal, like the parent at my school who took his seven year old son to New Brighton on Sunday where the pair of them shovelled silt off the driveways of strangers.
We give because we hate watching people suffer, but also to ease our own suffering. This is our disaster too. Whatever ‘new normal’ arises in Christchurch we know our lives will also never be quite the same again and that knowledge makes us both angry and frightened.
Drina is right, the earthquake has taken not just our homes and streets, but also our most fundamental human trait - our will. The long, painful, difficult process of restoring Christchurch will not be just about renewing buildings and infrastructure but about reasserting our will over our environment, and over our deepest fears.
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