Roger Moroney: It's fun, and easy, to play spot the Lion as rugby fans tour

Roger Moroney, staff reporter and columnist, Hawke's Bay Today. Photo/Duncan Brown

I like playing games so last Tuesday and Wednesday was the perfect opportunity to spot the English visitor . . . or the Welsh, or the Scottish or the Irish.

For this mid-week spell for some of them, rather than hit Wellington early to see their troops take on the Hurricanes, was a break away from the rugby circuit.

It was a chance to see something of this pretty little country so very far from their homes.

And hey, we're on the route south so why not take some refuge from the rains of the north and enjoy what to them would have seemed like a pleasant autumn or early spring . . . on highways which would have felt like little access roads between Chipping Norton and Gloucester.

Crikey, what would they have made of the dicey Saddle Rd having discovered that the key access highway to Palmerston North and the south was all closed up by several thousand tonnes of soil and rock?

"And they won the America's Cup?" many would have likely pondered.

Edging along the Kapiti Coast on that constraining seaside run toward the capital would have also had them wondering.

But not as much as those who chose to go down the Mangatainoka path and climb over the Rimutakas into Wellington . . . so long as the slips or snow hadn't stepped in.

But then that is part of the great appeal of being tucked away down here away from the madness of Europe and the Middle East and America.

We're okay with it.

She'll be right, mate.

And I like that.

I liked it even more when I was younger and had a very quick sports motorcycle because that Rimutaka run was just superb.

Wonder if any of our Lion Red visitors hired motorcycles?

So anyway, I spotted some of them walking the sunny streets of Napier last week and I could pick them immediately.

It wasn't the occasional camera around the occasional neck . . . it was the attire.

Red tops, although a couple of chaps blended green scarves with their scarlet jumpers so I figured they came from the land of Guinness and Paddy McGinty's goat.

Ahh, Ireland.

The one place I failed to call at while up that part of the Earth so many years ago.

Mind you, I'd likely have come across an old ancestral link or three in a pub and discovered someone far back on our side of the family who eventually left Ireland for the colonies still owed someone from their side of the family three quid.

I like the way the four nations unite to become one, in the name of sport, and wear their Lion Red livery which is adorned with great emblems showing the . . . emblems . . . of their own individual lands.

Those redcoats are removed, however, when England play Wales, Scotland or Ireland back there in the Six Nations Championship.

I daresay the chattering lads around the tables of Courtenay Place would barely acknowledge each other back there in Blighty whilst wearing their individual national colours.

And I like that as well.

It's called national pride.

Of course we don't team up with the Aussies or South Africa to form a composite crew to go and take on England or Wales or France or whatever . . . the closest we come to uniting on a national scale is herding players from provincial unions into one mighty force called the All Blacks.

And we're good at uniting as well because the Wellington boys have an ale with the lads from Auckland and Canterbury and Hawke's Bay whatever colours they are wearing.

Same for the fans who follow them.

I like sport when it's like that.

I cringe though when I see the football clans of some European, South American and even Australian lands taking the clashes to the seating areas and beyond.

So yep, I played spot the Lion Reds and it was easy for they were wearing their colours, and there were few tans to be detected.

Passing three or four of them outside a cafe I heard a heartening conversation about their delight with the fine food, the clean streets, the friendly people and the sunshine.

Suitably buoyed, I almost stopped to wish them all the best for the second test that coming Saturday but thought better of it.

You can only take the art of being a good host so far.