Quick Hands
David Wilson (68)
They flocked to those games. My school chums and I got to the queue the night before; some folks got there mid-week. It wasn't much different for the Canterbury game.
When I got to Auckland I watched the ABs train on the Thursday. In those days of over-the-top amateur rugby touring teams had a big advantage because the home team wasn't allowed to convene until the Thursday before the match.
I've told this story before - but I got to the queue which was hundreds of yards long about 8am and after waiting a while I asked the people next to me to save my spot because I wanted to stretch my legs.
I walked towards the front of the queue yarning to a few people on the way. The gates weren't supposed to open for hours but for some reason they must have reckoned the crowd was going to be so big they would open them earlier.
It caught everybody by surprise. I was walking along and the gates opened and everybody started getting their stuff together to go in and I hardly even broke step as I walked through them towards the ticket booth. I was one of the first hundred people to get in and I camped on the halfway line at Eden Park.
I was a teenager and it was then I realised that I was going to be a bad man—I should have gone back.
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If only some professional teams could display the same tactical nous as the teenage LG