Phoenix Fever!



Wellington has a decent sized stadium that is used mainly for rugby. I've been to a few games and it's a soulless affair. If ManU had the prawn sandwich brigade and Highbury was the library, then one might forgive you for thinking that you had just paid to be entertained at the local morgue. Why so? Sky shows all the games down the boozer and the stadium is occupied by a handful of corporate monkeys grinning inanely at clients. The whole insipid shebang has been reflected in the quantity of punters and the fact that most that do turn up don't have a pulse or took a confused, wrong turn after leaving the lobotomy ward.

Auckland had a team in the Australian A-league. Their franchise went bust when these same fools didn't understand that football was a different beast imbued with emotion and passion, with games that feed off crowd participation. That's until yellow fever arrived in Wellington. In general I hate property developers, however one local rich dude stumped up the cash to put a team from NZ back in the A-league from Wellington.

There are only 8 teams, no promotion, no relegation, there's no local rivalry or derby games (nearest team a good 4 hours flight away) and for the same reason no away support at games. But damn it, 10,000 people regularly turn up at home games to cheer on the Phoenix, and it's great fun. The crowd understand that anger combined with apoplectic joy, profane abuse and screaming songs at the top of your voice is not just acceptable in certain environments, but a primal cultural vacuum that needs to be filled.

Forza the Phoenix!!