Match 20 -- England v. Samoa

Saturday, 07 October 2023

My 20th match, and the 36th of the tournament, was England v. Samoa in Lille.

One of the food vendors in the plaza had street food. Hot dogs and waffles. I'm just not sure about "Made in Street" as the name. Maybe a translation/idiom challenge, but "made in street" sounds a little too close to "roadkill" for me.

"Made in Street"

 

A fun youth brass band performing in the plaza

From my seat

Military (snipers?) on the roof

National anthems

The haka

England were guaranteed first place in Pool D no matter what happened, but they didn't just send out a bunch of substitutes to start the match. They wanted to win. England are 8-0 all-time against Samoa, and they didn't want today to blemish that.

England got out to an 8-0 lead before Samoa stormed back to take a 14-8 lead into halftime. 

I talked to Keith, a nice English bloke next to me. He wasn't happy about it, but the beer made it better. When he arrived at his seat, a few minutes after kickoff, he had one of those holders for multiple cups of beer. He had three full cups in it, but I didn't see his mates. Yep, he was solo, and they were all for him. At least he wouldn't have to be coming and going much for refills that way.

Samoa was still in the lead until the 66th minute (17-11) when they got a yellow card, putting England at a man advantage for most of the rest of the match. I told Keith "this next ten minutes is just what England needed". Seven minutes later, England scored a try and took the lead, 18-17. Samoa threatened
a bit in the last few minutes, but England held them off. Final score: England 18, Samoa 17.

Keith handled his beer well, but several of his countrymen did not. Quite a few got drunk enough that they could not find their seats. (Or didn't care to.) So they just stood in the aisle. Or sat on the steps. Security did a pretty good job of rounding them up and moving them along.

I hung out afterward long enough to collect eight returnable cups and got 16 euros for them. But that meant the crowd at the Metro station was deeper than usual. It still flowed quite nicely, and I was back to the hotel only about ten minutes late to watch the Ireland v. Scotland match on the telly.

Oh yeah, Owen Farrell of England passed Jonny Wilkinson to become England's all-time leading scorer. That makes me sad. Jonny seems like a good guy, and Owen seems like a spoiled brat.

Two things that I hadn't seen before:

• A kick hit the cabling of the sky-cam. The referee noticed and awarded a scrum to the attacking team at the spot that the ball hit the foreign object.
• Owen Farrell had a penalty kick disallowed when he took too long and allowed the shot clock to expire. It's not only the first time I've seen that -- it's the first time it's happened at the World Cup.

...doug